Carrie
Much as it is a pleasure to see Chloe Moretz back on the big screen without the comic book Hit Girl outfit, the question is: Do we really need a remake of Carrie? The film that virtually created the subgenre of teen horror. Most everybody knows the story, and from the start it is clear that director Kimberly Peirce (Boys Don’t Cry) has nailed most of the main elements. But her control of tone is a little suspect, but with Moretz supported by Julianne Moore, an actress who has a line on crazy that few can match, it remains interesting to see how Carrie has been updated. The psychology of the relationship between mother and daughter is well captured, but the school scenes sometimes look just a bit too High School Musical to feel quite right. Peirce does not break any new ground, and has smoothed off some rough edges from the Brian De Palma original. Oddly, this manages only to highlight how we might miss the occasional weirdness of the original.
The Fifth Estate
The fallout of Wikileaks is still falling but already the drama based on actual events is ready to hit the big screen. The film cannot help but be topical, and there is an outstanding performance by Benedict Cumberbatch as Julian Assange, but in its headlong rush to cover all the contextual bases, The Fifth Estate burdens itself with a load of exposition under the weight of which the film is constantly in danger of sinking. Director Bill Condon is at pains to show that the Brave New World of technology we live in is like nothing else that has gone before, but unlike The Social Network, The Fifth Estate does not manage to remind us how new, and life-changing, all this techno whizz-bang really is. Condon seems content to let the mechanics of the political intrigue movie take over, and while the film gallops head-on, content with itself, it follows a groove that is a little too worn.
Homefront
Another action-packed Jason Statham cops and bad-guys flick that manages to tick most of the boxes for action fans but is not likely to stay in the memory for very long. The fact that Homefront was penned by Sylvester Stallone, putting it firmly in the screenwriting tradition of Rocky, Rambo and The Expendables, might give potential viewers some pause, but to give Stallone his due, the dialogue is far from being the worst you can find in this very high-paced, not to say, expendable, genre. Statham plays a DEA agent who finds his retirement disrupted when his identity is rumbled by the local meth chef in the small town he has retired to with his family. Bad things inevitably happen and Statham has plenty of opportunities to make the bad guys pay. James Franco makes for a sinister villain, adding a bit of luster to the movie.
Camille Claudel, 1915
Juliette Binoche plays sculptress and lover of Auguste Rodin, Camille Claudel, in a mini-biopic that focuses on a short period at the end of her life when she is virtually abandoned in an asylum by her family. A powerful, committed performance by Binoche provides a harrowing portrayal of the final days of a deeply troubled life, but the film’s sparse setting and grim emotions can be off-putting. Directed by Bruno Dumont, Camille Claudel, 1915 continues a body of work that has never been anything other than controversial, the film’s close and unblinking look at incipient madness and the final horrors of mental dissolution does not make for easy watching. The trade magazine Variety, not usually given to hyperbole, describes Binoche’s performance as “mesmerizing,” but the pace and the focus on abstract mental states, and the total absence of beautiful art and glamorous people mark Camille Claudel, 1915 out from the mainstream of artistic biopics.
Still Mine
Slow-paced movies about the elderly facing the prospects of physical and mental deterioration are not a rarity on the big screen any more, and they have provided a showcase for many fine actors no longer in their first youth. It has been proved over and over again that the concerns of seniors looking back over life and forward to dissolution can be powerfully affecting, and Still Mine, a film written and directed by Canadian director Michael McGowan and starring James Cromwell and Genevieve Bujold, does not disappoint. Cromwell and Bujold are both veterans who have both versatility and power. They are beautifully cast as an octogenarian couple living in rural New Brunswick who are not only coping with the threats of dementia, but also with a bureaucratic structure that is not sympathetic to their aim to live out their lives in the way they want. In an age of super-heroes, Still Mine is determined to be a big picture about ordinary people, and it captures the mix of innocence and pride of its determinedly self-sufficient couple who want nothing else from the world but each other.
May 6 to May 12 Those who follow the Chinese-language news may have noticed the usage of the term zhuge (豬哥, literally ‘pig brother,’ a male pig raised for breeding purposes) in reports concerning the ongoing #Metoo scandal in the entertainment industry. The term’s modern connotations can range from womanizer or lecher to sexual predator, but it once referred to an important rural trade. Until the 1970s, it was a common sight to see a breeder herding a single “zhuge” down a rustic path with a bamboo whip, often traveling large distances over rugged terrain to service local families. Not only
Ahead of incoming president William Lai’s (賴清德) inauguration on May 20 there appear to be signs that he is signaling to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and that the Chinese side is also signaling to the Taiwan side. This raises a lot of questions, including what is the CCP up to, who are they signaling to, what are they signaling, how with the various actors in Taiwan respond and where this could ultimately go. In the last column, published on May 2, we examined the curious case of Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) heavyweight Tseng Wen-tsan (鄭文燦) — currently vice premier
The last time Mrs Hsieh came to Cihu Park in Taoyuan was almost 50 years ago, on a school trip to the grave of Taiwan’s recently deceased dictator. Busloads of children were brought in to pay their respects to Chiang Kai-shek (蔣中正), known as Generalissimo, who had died at 87, after decades ruling Taiwan under brutal martial law. “There were a lot of buses, and there was a long queue,” Hsieh recalled. “It was a school rule. We had to bow, and then we went home.” Chiang’s body is still there, under guard in a mausoleum at the end of a path
Last week the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) released a set of very strange numbers on Taiwan’s wealth distribution. Duly quoted in the Taipei Times, the report said that “The Gini coefficient for Taiwanese households… was 0.606 at the end of 2021, lower than Australia’s 0.611, the UK’s 0.620, Japan’s 0.678, France’s 0.676 and Germany’s 0.727, the agency said in a report.” The Gini coefficient is a measure of relative inequality, usually of wealth or income, though it can be used to evaluate other forms of inequality. However, for most nations it is a number from .25 to .50