The Sorcerer and the White Snake (法海:白蛇傳說)
From the hands of director Ching Siu-tung (程小東), a veteran of Hong Kong cinema who took the helm in Chinese Ghost Story (倩女幽魂) parts two and three, as well as The Legend of the Swordsman (笑傲江湖之東方不敗), this is a big, effects-heavy take on a well-known folk story that is a standard of traditional Chinese opera. The legend tells of a white snake demon who falls in love with a young scholar, Xu Xian. She uses her supernatural powers to help him, but when her real identity is revealed to him by the monk Fa Hai, he flees. The white snake and her sister the green snake battle Fa Hai, and after many twists and turns, love conquers all. The Chinese title of the film underlines the fact that the main character is the monk Fa Hai, who is a peripheral figure in the traditional story. Jet Li (李連杰) plays the kill-joy monk, but he does not get much of a chance to display his martial arts talent, as he is the only real fight specialist in the film. White and green snakes are played by Eva Huang (黃聖依) and Charlene Choi (蔡卓妍), respectively, and Vivian Hsu (徐若瑄) has a cameo as one of Fa Hai’s early demonic victims.
Four Hands (麵引子)
Historical melodrama by director Lee You-ning (李祐寧), Four Hands relates a family drama that spans China and Taiwan over three generations. The story deals with a veteran of the Chinese Nationalist army who retreated to Taiwan only to discover that the dreams of “reconquering the mainland” are empty rhetoric. He builds a new family in Taiwan, but after his wife dies, goes back to China to visit what’s left of his family, including a son he has never seen. He returns, disappointed, to Taiwan, having failed to connect with a man who cannot understand his father’s abandonment. Only when he is near death does his son rush to his father’s bedside, where half a century of misunderstanding is resolved.
The Thing
John Carpenter’s The Thing from 1984 remains an iconic work of horror even after more than 25 years, so one cannot really hold out too much hope for the 2011 prequel/remake by Matthijs van Heijningen Jr. Carpenter’s film was all about pacing and the gradual buildup of tension as members of an Antarctic research station gradually get taken over by a mostly unseen alien creature. The remake follows a similar formula, and has a perfectly adequate cast led by Mary Elizabeth Winstead (most recently seen in Scott Pilgrim vs the World), but the action has been put on fast-forward, so while it never gets boring, the characters don’t hang around long enough to make an impression.
I Don’t Know How She Does It
How does Sarah Jessica Parker do it? She keeps on getting leading roles in movies; and the sad thing is that I Don’t Know How She Does It actually has an interesting premise, an above-average script and a wonderful supporting cast that includes Pierce Brosnan and Greg Kinnear. But Parker does not cut it as a high-powered financial executive juggling work and home life. You just know that she is going to start getting the vapors over a pair of shoes at any minute, and so much of her personality is a straight riff on Carrie Bradshaw. Perhaps its the only role she has ever been comfortable playing, but 13 years on from the first release of Sex and the City, whatever appeal this persona might have had has long since worn off.
Cirkus Columbia
Director Danis Tanovic’s clever and nuanced exploration of the social and political environment that preceded the breakup of Yugoslavia. Tanovic, whose film No Man’s Land, a tragicomedy of the war in Bosnia, lit up the art house circuit in 2001, has a fine eye and ear for absurdity, and captures the disbelief with which many ordinary people greeted the breakout of a conflict that was notable for its bloody-minded savagery. The story centers on Divko (Miki Manojlovic), who has returned home after 20 years as an exile from the communist regime, and wants everyone to know that he has made it big. The film focuses on a small circle of friends while keeping the bubbling conflict in the background, to the detriment of the movie as a whole.
All That I Love (Wszystko, co kocham)
Four friends form a punk band in Poland as the struggle for democracy grips the country. The band members come from different social backgrounds, and the group’s part as a mouthpiece for disaffected youth has ramifications beyond its fan base. Secret police look on and people disappear. The film was nominated at last year’s Sundance Film Festival. This is a more than adequate film about coming of age and loss of innocence, and there are some solid performances, but neither the story nor its telling break any new ground.
The High Cost of Living
Critics seem to agree that this debut feature by Canadian director Deborah Chow shows oodles of ambition, artistic integrity and good intentions; they disagree however on just how awful the result is. The impossibly improbable conceit at the heart of the movie, in which a man finds redemption for the unintentional killing of a child through a romantic involvement with the child’s mother, is a major part of the problem. That said, performances by leads Zach Braff and Isabelle Blais are strong and committed, pushing through the superficial complexity of the movie’s structure. Not a film that is easy to like, but one that suggests Chow is someone to watch.
Happy Together — All About My Dog (Inu to anata no monogatari: Inu no eiga)
Six shorts by six directors exploring the relationship between pet dogs and people. For dog-lovers only.
The Lion King 3D
Retrofitted for 3D, this is the classic Disney movie put back on the big screen with an extra dimension, less light and the need to wear uncomfortable glasses.
Shark Night 3D
Made by Snakes on a Plane director David R. Ellis, Shark Night 3D fails to realize the same kind of campy horror that made Snakes so much fun. A third dimension may have been added, but the humor and the gore have been removed, and while it is far from terrible, Shark Night hasn’t much to offer on the theme of people getting chewed up by sharks.
Forbidden Games POP Cinema
A mini-festival at Spot — Taipei Film House (台北光點) running until Nov. 4. The festival aims to showcase controversial films from different periods. A full list of films and screening times can be found at www.spot.org.tw/time.
In late October of 1873 the government of Japan decided against sending a military expedition to Korea to force that nation to open trade relations. Across the government supporters of the expedition resigned immediately. The spectacle of revolt by disaffected samurai began to loom over Japanese politics. In January of 1874 disaffected samurai attacked a senior minister in Tokyo. A month later, a group of pro-Korea expedition and anti-foreign elements from Saga prefecture in Kyushu revolted, driven in part by high food prices stemming from poor harvests. Their leader, according to Edward Drea’s classic Japan’s Imperial Army, was a samurai
The following three paragraphs are just some of what the local Chinese-language press is reporting on breathlessly and following every twist and turn with the eagerness of a soap opera fan. For many English-language readers, it probably comes across as incomprehensibly opaque, so bear with me briefly dear reader: To the surprise of many, former pop singer and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) ex-lawmaker Yu Tien (余天) of the Taiwan Normal Country Promotion Association (TNCPA) at the last minute dropped out of the running for committee chair of the DPP’s New Taipei City chapter, paving the way for DPP legislator Su
It’s hard to know where to begin with Mark Tovell’s Taiwan: Roads Above the Clouds. Having published a travelogue myself, as well as having contributed to several guidebooks, at first glance Tovell’s book appears to inhabit a middle ground — the kind of hard-to-sell nowheresville publishers detest. Leaf through the pages and you’ll find them suffuse with the purple prose best associated with travel literature: “When the sun is low on a warm, clear morning, and with the heat already rising, we stand at the riverside bike path leading south from Sanxia’s old cobble streets.” Hardly the stuff of your
Located down a sideroad in old Wanhua District (萬華區), Waley Art (水谷藝術) has an established reputation for curating some of the more provocative indie art exhibitions in Taipei. And this month is no exception. Beyond the innocuous facade of a shophouse, the full three stories of the gallery space (including the basement) have been taken over by photographs, installation videos and abstract images courtesy of two creatives who hail from the opposite ends of the earth, Taiwan’s Hsu Yi-ting (許懿婷) and Germany’s Benjamin Janzen. “In 2019, I had an art residency in Europe,” Hsu says. “I met Benjamin in the lobby