The Dark Knight Rises
In 2008, director Christopher Nolan made what is widely regarded as the greatest cinematic adaptation of a superhero comic with The Dark Knight, a film that transcended its trashy origins to achieve a mythic quality of deeply conflicted heroism and tragedy. Nolan’s second bite of the cherry has taken this epic quality still further, combining traditional fine script writing and superb acting with the most advanced motion technology to create the must-see movie of this summer. Christian Bale is back in the title role, and has a strong supporting cast that includes British actor Tom Hardy as Bane, the key villain, Anne Hathaway as Catwoman, along with Liam Neeson, Gary Oldman, Morgan Freeman, Michael Caine and Marion Cotillard. Action, poetry, fantasy, redemption and celebrity, The Dark Knight Rises has it all.
Motorway
Lots of car chases and a sound track with heavy bass guitar are not quite enough to make Motorway, a film produced by veteran Johnnie To (杜琪峰) a complete success. Directed by Cheang Pou-soi (鄭保瑞), who has emerged from small budget indie movies to a full-fledged mainstream action flick with Motorway, the film has great energy. Cheang’s management of the stunts is flawless, but in telling the story of a rookie cop who takes on a veteran escape driver on the streets, he is unable to make his characters come alive, nor achieve the engagingly noir feel of something like Nicolas Winding Refn’s Drive. The film starts Shawn Yue (余文樂) as the young cop, and he is simply too wooden to be interesting, but supporting cast is excellent, with a great performance by Anthony Wong (黃秋生) as an old cop who has seen it all before.
Ending Note
A documentary by Mami Sunada that follows the life of her father, a workaholic salesman, from the discovery that he has an inoperable cancer, to his death. Despite this rather heavy subject matter, Ending Note is in many respects an upbeat film that focuses more on what can be achieved in a small amount of time at the end of one’s life, rather than lamenting a life that contained more than its fair share of unfulfilling drudgery. The title refers to the writing of a dairy that Sunada senior uses to record the things he wants to do. Mami Sunada’s camera captures many candid and affecting moments, and portrays a man whose life is made richer through his ability to appreciate the whole trial of his gradual demise. The film is also an excellent study of the rituals surrounding death and dying as practiced in Japan.
The Woodsman and the Rain
Delightful comedy about a rustic woodsman who gets caught up in the making of a low-budget zombie movie taking place in his neck of the woods. Director Shuichi Okita has made good use of limited financial resources, and given the abundant talent at his disposal space to shine. The woodsman of the title is played by veteran Koji Yakusho, who creates his own idiosyncratic comic bassline to the screwball comedy centered on the zombie flick’s director, played by Shun Oguri, whose incompetence and the disdain with which he is treated by the crew also provide a rich vein of fun. For all the ludicrousness, the characters are rooted in real human responses, giving The Woodsman and the Rain an emotional core that is often missing when directors go for laughs at the expense of recognizable human emotions.
The Snows of Kilimanjaro
Not to be confused with the 1952 film of the same name with Gregory Peck and Susan Hayward, The Snows of Kilimanjaro is a film by French director Robert Guediguian, who in his choice of topic, his willingness to dramatize moral dilemmas and his political commitment, shares many similarities with British director Ken Loach. Built around the story of Michel (Jean-Pierre Darroussin) and his wife, Marie-Claire (Ariane Ascaride), a couple whose fiery socialist past has been mellowed by age and family. The two must face new realities as Michel is made redundant, and then must also face the consequences of a violent home invasion that brings uncomfortable moral ambiguities floating up to the surface. Solid acting, a belief in old-fashioned storytelling and a love of the characters make this film memorable.
A Room With a View
The release of this iconic Merchant Ivory production from 1985 seems to serve simply to highlight the many and various inadequacies of The City of Your Final Destination (see film review), the first film by James Ivory without his longtime collaborator Ismail Merchant. A Room With A View was arguably the most perfect adaptation by Ivory from the works of E.M. Forster, mixing in exactly the right proportions of humor and pathos, the sorrow of unrequited love and the vibrancy of youth. Sporting a cast of British acting royalty, from a young Helena Bonham Carter to the effortless presence of Maggie Smith, Simon Callow and Judi Dench, this is a film that even those allergic to period drama can come to love.
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
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
April 22 to April 28 The true identity of the mastermind behind the Demon Gang (魔鬼黨) was undoubtedly on the minds of countless schoolchildren in late 1958. In the days leading up to the big reveal, more than 10,000 guesses were sent to Ta Hwa Publishing Co (大華文化社) for a chance to win prizes. The smash success of the comic series Great Battle Against the Demon Gang (大戰魔鬼黨) came as a surprise to author Yeh Hung-chia (葉宏甲), who had long given up on his dream after being jailed for 10 months in 1947 over political cartoons. Protagonist
Peter Brighton was amazed when he found the giant jackfruit. He had been watching it grow on his farm in far north Queensland, and when it came time to pick it from the tree, it was so heavy it needed two people to do the job. “I was surprised when we cut it off and felt how heavy it was,” he says. “I grabbed it and my wife cut it — couldn’t do it by myself, it took two of us.” Weighing in at 45 kilograms, it is the heaviest jackfruit that Brighton has ever grown on his tropical fruit farm, located