Promised Land
Gus van Sant likes to tackle issues, but always manages to give them a human face. In Promised Land he takes on fracking, the controversial method of tapping into natural gas resources, and puts on it the very appealing face of Matt Damon. A salesman (Damon) for a natural gas company experiences life-changing events after arriving in a small town. It is the transition for being a pawn of the corporation to realization and love for the environment. There are those who will find the soft-sell script as a cop out when dealing with such a complex and ugly issue, but scriptwriter John Krasinski has steered clear of making the movie too confrontational, opting more for a Capra-esque lightness that some may find offensive, while others might admire it for the absence of heavy-handed moralizing.
Olympus Has Fallen
An explosive new action thriller from director Antoine Fuqua, maker of the excellent police flick Training Day. But when the blurb refers to Olympus Has Fall, it seems to suggest nothing more than that there are lots of explosions. There is also a star-studded cast. But what we have is just a cocktail of shop worn tropes, including Morgan Freeman, playing the House Speaker, spouting lines like “open the gates of Hell,” about Gerard Butler as the overlooked security agent who is on the inside when the White House is overtaken by terrorists and the President taken hostage. Butler is prime beefcake, and sometimes even attempts acting, and with Melissa Leo as the Secretary of Defense and Angela Bassett as Director of the Secret Service, clearly this film has its genre politics in the right place. As for the story, think back to Die Hard and you get the idea.
Beautiful Creatures
Plodding teen romance with supernatural overtones. Sound familiar? For those who managed not to find The Twilight Saga utterly ridiculous, there now comes Beautiful Creatures. Indeed, there is a beautiful supporting cast, including Emmy Rossum, Jeremy Irons and Emma Thompson -- the two British actors verging on vaudeville with their take on the voices of the American deep South. The campiness among the supporting cast is great fun, but it does not make up for the total lack of charisma and chemistry of the leads, Alden Ehrenreich and Alice Englert, who do little to give the skimpy backstory about reincarnated Civil War lovers any emotional punch. This is the sort of film that makes people believe that Robert Pattinson’s Edward Cullen is a finely crafted exposition of the inner world of bloodsuckers.
Quartet
Another film to prove that age will not wither them. And yet more echoes of The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, including the presence of Maggie Smith, in an irresistible, but also rather forgettable comedy about aging musicians trying to save their retirement home by overcoming decade’s-long animosities to put on a peerless show that will bring in the needed money. Of course, the rather practical goal becomes a whirlwind journey of remembrance, nostalgia and acceptance. With Dustin Hoffman, at 75-years-old making his debut feature as a director, and a cast that in addition to Smith, includes Tom Courtenay, Billy Connolly, Michael Gambon and a host of equally talented if slightly less known others, it really does not matter that Quartet is a confection lighter than the musical theater that it celebrates.
And If We All Live Together
A Gallic take on The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel without the bright colors of India but with a similar appeal to geriatric celebrity, boasting the participation of Jane Fonda in her first French-speaking role for 40 years. There are plenty of other old pros from the Francophone cinema scene who provide the non-too-subtle reflections on aging with the necessary theatrical ballast. While perfectly effective as a piece of light entertainment, the whole thing is too fluffy and predictable to gain much traction on the imagination.
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
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