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.
Sept.16 to Sept. 22 The “anti-communist train” with then-president Chiang Kai-shek’s (蔣介石) face plastered on the engine puffed along the “sugar railway” (糖業鐵路) in May 1955, drawing enthusiastic crowds at 103 stops covering nearly 1,200km. An estimated 1.58 million spectators were treated to propaganda films, plays and received free sugar products. By this time, the state-run Taiwan Sugar Corporation (台糖, Taisugar) had managed to connect the previously separate east-west lines established by Japanese-era sugar factories, allowing the anti-communist train to travel easily from Taichung to Pingtung’s Donggang Township (東港). Last Sunday’s feature (Taiwan in Time: The sugar express) covered the inauguration of the
The corruption cases surrounding former Taipei Mayor and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) head Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) are just one item in the endless cycle of noise and fuss obscuring Taiwan’s deep and urgent structural and social problems. Even the case itself, as James Baron observed in an excellent piece at the Diplomat last week, is only one manifestation of the greater problem of deep-rooted corruption in land development. Last week the government announced a program to permit 25,000 foreign university students, primarily from the Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia, to work in Taiwan after graduation for 2-4 years. That number is a
This year’s Michelin Gourmand Bib sported 16 new entries in the 126-strong Taiwan directory. The fight for the best braised pork rice and the crispiest scallion pancake painstakingly continued, but what stood out in the lineup this year? Pang Taqueria (胖塔可利亞); Taiwan’s first Michelin-recommended Mexican restaurant. Chef Charles Chen (陳治宇) is a self-confessed Americophile, earning his chef whites at a fine-dining Latin-American fusion restaurant. But what makes this Xinyi (信義) spot stand head and shoulders above Taipei’s existing Mexican offerings? The authenticity. The produce. The care. AUTHENTIC EATS In my time on the island, I have caved too many times to
In a stark demonstration of how award-winning breakthroughs can come from the most unlikely directions, researchers have won an Ig Nobel prize for discovering that mammals can breathe through their anuses. After a series of tests on mice, rats and pigs, Japanese scientists found the animals absorb oxygen delivered through the rectum, work that underpins a clinical trial to see whether the procedure can treat respiratory failure. The team is among 10 recognized in this year’s Ig Nobel awards (see below for more), the irreverent accolades given for achievements that “first make people laugh, and then make them think.” They are not