Brighton Rock
An updated version of Graham Greene’s thriller of the same name. The background of mods and rockers might be a little jarring for lovers of the book (or indeed the 1947 film starring Richard Attenborough). Nevertheless, Rowan Joffe’s debut feature as a director (Joffe wrote the screenplay for 28 Weeks Later and The American) is taut and atmospheric and features some exceptional performances from John Hurt and Helen Mirren. Newcomer Andrea Riseborough is exceptionally good as Rose, a vulnerable young woman who becomes a pawn in a turf war, and Sam Riley as Pinkie, the young thug who callously manipulates her, exudes both style and conviction.
The Way Back
A road movie by Australian director Peter Weir that sees a group of escapees from a Russian gulag make a dangerous journey to freedom. Some less than perfect casting, including Colin Farrell as a Russian mobster (doing little more than providing the film with an A-list lead), do the movie no favors, but there are strong supporting performances from the likes of Ed Harris and Saoirse Ronan. Magnificent photography by Russell Boyd makes up for some of the improbabilities of the story (which is “inspired” by actual events), with more attention given to developing the film’s epic and melodramatic impact than to relating the practicalities of the characters’ survival.
Big Mommas: Like Father, Like Son
Martin Lawrence is back in yet another iteration of the Big Momma franchise. The humor deriving from one person in drag wearing a fat suit has worn very thin, so this time Brandon T. Jackson has been brought in as Agent Malcolm Turner’s son Trent. Trent witnesses a murder, and has to get into drag and a fat suit to hide in an upmarket girls’ school.
Life Is Miracle (最愛)
Also released under the title Til Death Do Us Part, this film is directed by Gu Changwei (顧長衛), an accomplished cinematographer with credits for major films such as Farewell My Concubine (霸王別姬, 1993) and Ju Dou (菊豆, 1990). Life Is Miracle deals with the taboo subject of AIDS in rural China, but manages to do so in a manner that is both glossy and maudlin at the same time. Aaron Kwok (郭富城) and Zhang Ziyi (章子怡) are both suffering from the dreaded “fever” and have been deposited by their respective spouses in a colony of patients on the fringe of town. In their slow dance toward death they discover physical passion and true love.
Will You Still Love Me (妳是否依然愛我)
A film by director Yeh Hung-wei (葉鴻偉), Will You Still Love Me follows the tumultuous romance between artist Ming Li and his model girlfriend Ya Chien, who is also being pursued by mobile salesman Tie Min. Megan Lai (賴雅妍), who came to prominence in CTV’s super-successful The Story of Time (光陰的故事), has the leading role. The quality of the acting is uneven, and the whole project feels like a TV soap transferred with little imagination to the big screen.
Kites: Brett Ratner Remix
An Indian film by Bollywood director Anurag Basu about passion and bank robbery, Kites opened in the US as the largest distribution of a Hindi film to date. Includes the genre’s obligatory dance routines. The director’s reputation and the presence of Hrithik Roshan, arguably the hottest man in Indian cinema, gives Kites huge commercial momentum. Roshan plays a man living on the edge, just one step ahead of the police, bounty hunters and others, all of whom want him dead. The only thing keeping him going is his passion for Natasha, played by Japanese-Uruguayan-Mexican model Barbara Mori. In a mix of English, Hindi and Spanish.
Saru Lock: The Movie
An action comedy based on a Japanese TV series. Sarumaru Yataro (Ichihara Hayato) is a regular teenager, but as the son of a locksmith, he has acquired exceptional lock-picking skills. While he uses these skills to check out a variety of beautiful women, he finds himself drawn into a police investigation.
Magic Journey to Africa
The title of this film pretty much says everything you need to know about the plot: A little girl called Jana makes a magic journey to Africa. She meets some magical beasts, including a winged horse, a talking lizard and lots of cute little animals. This is a Spanish production, though spoken in English, and seems to have been made as a kind of enhanced home-video. Acting, dialogue and pretty much everything else about the film are wooden and amateurish, and it is a wonder that local distributors have bothered to put it on the market at all.
May 6 to May 12 Those who follow the Chinese-language news may have noticed the usage of the term zhuge (豬哥, literally ‘pig brother,’ a male pig raised for breeding purposes) in reports concerning the ongoing #Metoo scandal in the entertainment industry. The term’s modern connotations can range from womanizer or lecher to sexual predator, but it once referred to an important rural trade. Until the 1970s, it was a common sight to see a breeder herding a single “zhuge” down a rustic path with a bamboo whip, often traveling large distances over rugged terrain to service local families. Not only
Ahead of incoming president William Lai’s (賴清德) inauguration on May 20 there appear to be signs that he is signaling to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and that the Chinese side is also signaling to the Taiwan side. This raises a lot of questions, including what is the CCP up to, who are they signaling to, what are they signaling, how with the various actors in Taiwan respond and where this could ultimately go. In the last column, published on May 2, we examined the curious case of Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) heavyweight Tseng Wen-tsan (鄭文燦) — currently vice premier
The last time Mrs Hsieh came to Cihu Park in Taoyuan was almost 50 years ago, on a school trip to the grave of Taiwan’s recently deceased dictator. Busloads of children were brought in to pay their respects to Chiang Kai-shek (蔣中正), known as Generalissimo, who had died at 87, after decades ruling Taiwan under brutal martial law. “There were a lot of buses, and there was a long queue,” Hsieh recalled. “It was a school rule. We had to bow, and then we went home.” Chiang’s body is still there, under guard in a mausoleum at the end of a path
Last week the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) released a set of very strange numbers on Taiwan’s wealth distribution. Duly quoted in the Taipei Times, the report said that “The Gini coefficient for Taiwanese households… was 0.606 at the end of 2021, lower than Australia’s 0.611, the UK’s 0.620, Japan’s 0.678, France’s 0.676 and Germany’s 0.727, the agency said in a report.” The Gini coefficient is a measure of relative inequality, usually of wealth or income, though it can be used to evaluate other forms of inequality. However, for most nations it is a number from .25 to .50