The Darkest Hour
The device of using invisible aliens to attack the world’s cities could either simply be a cheap way of making a horror sci-fi movie or a way of building up some serious paranoia among earthlings. Director Chris Gorak, moving up from the low-budget but effective horror-thriller Right at Your Door, seems to have been overwhelmed by this larger production. The story, such as it is, revolves round five young people holidaying in Moscow as aliens arrive to suck up the world’s power supply. Although some of the film was shot against iconic locations in Moscow, the effect of the camera work is to make everything look like a cheap imitation of the real thing. Gorak quickly dispenses with subtle atmospherics of apocalyptic dread, and goes straight for lets-save-humanity heroics. Leads Emile Hirsch and Olivia Thirlby do their best, but the material resists their efforts. They display that particularly American can-do spirit in combating the twirls of light from outer space, but it’s hard to be heroic against an enemy that looks like a lava lamp on steroids.
With Love ... From the Age of Reason (L’age de raison)
Feel-good dramedy with Sophie Marceau as a high-powered executive who discovers, after being handed a bunch of letters she wrote as a naive and idealistic 7-year-old, that her life is not all it’s cracked up to be. Although director and writer Yann Samuell goes straight for the heartstrings, yanking on them mercilessly through the last half hour, the film benefits from a top-notch performance by Marceau with solid assistance from a highly professional supporting cast. High-class chick-flick with a surplus of beautiful people and some cute Amelie-style effects.
Misplaced by Heaven: A Clockwork Angeloid
Fantasy anime populated by schoolgirls with super-sized breasts, super minis, bondage gear and large ravish-me eyes, Misplaced by Heaven: A Clockwork Angeloid is not a film targeted at young children. The story centers on a young man, Tomoki Sakurai, whose efforts to lead a peaceful life are endlessly disrupted when he becomes the unwilling chosen companion of a fallen angel called Ikaros. A combination of a personal slave and avenging angel, Ikaros has to battle her own enemies, and anyone who endangers Tomoki. Fortunately for the otakus in the audience, Ikaros also has a host of other angelic friends who help her in a conflict with the Master of Synapse, who has a passion for torturing angels. There are some serious bondage and fetish angles, but Internet chat suggests that there are people who are very excited about this film.
The Ledge
Love and religious extremism meet in Matthew Chapman’s The Ledge, which many critics have praised for being an intelligent thriller in conception, but which almost all agree has been badly let down by its formulaic and melodramatic execution. There is a lot of talk about faith and sin and so forth in this film. Charlie Hunnam spends time standing on the ledge of a high building preparing to jump. If he doesn’t, somebody else is going to die. The fact that the script seems to come right out of Screenwriting 101 undermines all the high aspirations of The Ledge to be something more than just another thriller.
In His Chart (Kamisama no karute)
Medical drama based on a best-selling novel from Japan. Dealing with the domestic issues faced by an idealistic doctor and his wife, In His Chart is closer to television drama than to cinema. Well-intentioned and good-hearted, the film, directed by Yoshihiro Fukagawa, is too straightforward in its presentation and its story to generate much interest except for fans of the book.
Japanese Salaryman NEO (Sarariman neo gekijouban)
Based on an NHK late-night comedy skit show, Japanese Salaryman NEO has not gone very far beyond its TV origins in its transformation to the big screen. The film is firmly set in the genre of the salaryman comedy, finding weary humor in life in Japan’s big corporations and occasionally sparkling with perceptive satire about the ills of this dog-eat-dog world.
Lang Lang Live on Franz Liszt’s 200th Birthday
A mix of interview and concert footage, this celebration of the 200th anniversary of Franz Liszt’s birth will be a delight for classical music fans. Lang Lang Live on Franz Liszt’s 200th Birthday provides an introduction to both the performer and composer for audiences not familiar with them. Host and interviewer Becky Griffin is perhaps not as knowledgeable or skilled as might be hoped, but the live performance of Liszt’s Piano Concerto and Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 with the Philadelphia Orchestra from the Kimmel Center in Philadelphia, conducted by Charles Dutoit, has been highly acclaimed.
The Rabbit Horror (3D)
Japanese 3D pioneer Takashi Shimizu, who cut his teeth as a horror director with the well-known Grudge franchise, has followed up his The Shock Labyrinth 3D with this new and improbably titled sequel. The Rabbit Horror is not a spoof flick, but a serious attempt at the horror genre that might have worked better if Shimizu had left the 3D effects alone. Lurid cinematography from Christopher Doyle does its best to create a creepy atmosphere, but Shimizu has set himself the impossible task of trying to make a plush bunny a thing of choking horror. He is more successful than you might expect, but its not quite enough to make the film work.
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