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.
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