Sabotage
If you are desperate to see Arnold Schwarzenegger in another aging tough cop role, then Sabotage isn’t such a bad bet. Don’t get me wrong, it is in every way a truly terrible film, but like the best Arnie flicks, there is just enough tongue-in-cheek to keep you watching. The film is violent, sadistic, misogynistic, gratuitously nasty, and often stupid and confusing, but then you aren’t going to pay money to see Sabotage if you expected finely crafted drama. Sabotage moves forward with all the subtlety of a Hummer, ignoring gaping plot holes as it moves on to its next violent encounter between an elite DEA unit and a drug cartel out for revenge. Director David Ayer has had a mixed track record, but hit pay dirt with the outstanding cop buddy drama End of Watch in 2012 and also wrote the screenplay for another outstanding cop drama Training Day. Sabotage aspires to the same kind of ambiguity about the fine line between crime and law enforcement, but fails to find the same level of emotional involvement in the characters or thoughtfulness about its themes, and is content to make lots of noise and spill lots of blood.
Divergent
Another teen fantasy about being different and discovering who you really are. Divergent is at best mildly entertaining, but one-dimensional characters and the dominance of style over content pull the plug on the film’s appeal. Set in a dystopian future, there are echoes of Harry Potter and The Hunger Games, and ultimately a debt to Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. Sadly, it doesn’t have the entertainment value or depth of the above mentioned, and relies on the usual tropes of teenage rebelliousness seeing through the hypocrisies of adult society to do most of its work. In a society divided into factions based on innate physical and mental qualities, Tris (Shailene Woodley) learns she is a Divergent, a person who cannot be categorized within the system. Divergents are regarded as a danger to society and when Tris discovers a plot to destroy all Divergents, she joins with others in a race against time to find out what really sets her apart. There is plenty of room for sententious platitudes about conquering your fear and being true to who you are, and director Neil Burger fails to show restraint, making Divergent a disappointing comedown from films such as The Lucky Ones and Limitless.
The Way, Way Back
A charming film. Even an enjoyable film. It is heartfelt and warm. It is also trite and utterly predictable from beginning to end. And that does not really matter too much. It is a coming of age story in which 14-year-old Duncan (Liam James) goes on a summer vacation with his mother, Pam (Toni Collette), her overbearing boyfriend, Trent (Steve Carell) and his daughter, Steph (Zoe Levin). He has trouble fitting in until he finds an unexpected friend in gregarious Owen (Sam Rockwell), the manager of a water park. He starts to blossom as a thoughtful, sensitive and adventurous teen. The cast does excellent work throughout, and James and Rockwell build up a real chemistry that keeps the film afloat even though we know everything about it before we are halfway through. It has the same kind of oddball aspirations of Little Miss Sunshine and Juno, but without the edgy humor and anarchic sensibility of these films, it manages to be no more than a craftsmanlike piece of filmmaking that entertains but is not particularly memorable. You could do worse.
Oculus
A mirror possessed by evil that has brought death and desolation to families over a number of centuries. It all sounds a bit too familiar. And, for sure it, Oculus does follow the well-worn horror template, but director Mike Flanagan has taken something that sounds familiar and, by focusing on performance and the small details, created something that elevates the formula. The lives of teenage siblings Tim (Brenton Thwaites) and Kaylie (Karen Gillan) are forever changed when Tim is convicted of the brutal murder of their parents. Ten years later, Kaylie finds the mirror that she believes was the real murderer, and seeks to exonerate her brother, but soon realizes that the brutal nightmare of their childhood has begun again as her grip on reality begins to slip under the mirror’s malign influence. Flanagan swirls the viewer up in his dexterous reshuffling of horror conventions to create a deep sense of unease broken by occasional jolts of the unexpected.
A Tale Of Samurai Cooking – A True Love Story
The latest in a line of a stream of Japanese films looking at the lives of samurai beyond the common caricatures of stoic, sword-wielding superheroes, A Tale Of Samurai Cooking — A True Love Story tells the story of a careerist samurai relegated to the kitchens of a powerful lord. Initially angry and unresponsive, he eventually finds a purpose and achievement with the help of his culinarily gifted wife. The film has echoes of Yoji Yamada’s Love and Honor, which also had a background in the kitchens of a feudal lord, and while director Yuzo Asahara goes for a more conventionally romantic tone, focusing on the difficult relationship between husband and wife that gradually grows into love and respect, he stays away from the usual comic antics in films involving cooking contests and culinary connoisseurs. A background of feudal politics provides a sense of context without blurring the more intimate focus on the relationship between the protagonists.
Last week Joseph Nye, the well-known China scholar, wrote on the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s website about how war over Taiwan might be averted. He noted that years ago he was on a team that met with then-president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), “whose previous ‘unofficial’ visit to the US had caused a crisis in which China fired missiles into the sea and the US deployed carriers off the coast of Taiwan.” Yes, that’s right, mighty Chen caused that crisis all by himself. Neither the US nor the People’s Republic of China (PRC) exercised any agency. Nye then nostalgically invoked the comical specter
Relations between Taiwan and the Czech Republic have flourished in recent years. However, not everyone is pleased about the growing friendship between the two countries. Last month, an incident involving a Chinese diplomat tailing the car of vice president-elect Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) in Prague, drew public attention to the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) operations to undermine Taiwan overseas. The trip was not Hsiao’s first visit to the Central European country. It was meant to be low-key, a chance to meet with local academics and politicians, until her police escort noticed a car was tailing her through the Czech capital. The
April 15 to April 21 Yang Kui (楊逵) was horrified as he drove past trucks, oxcarts and trolleys loaded with coffins on his way to Tuntzechiao (屯子腳), which he heard had been completely destroyed. The friend he came to check on was safe, but most residents were suffering in the town hit the hardest by the 7.1-magnitude Hsinchu-Taichung Earthquake on April 21, 1935. It remains the deadliest in Taiwan’s recorded history, claiming around 3,300 lives and injuring nearly 12,000. The disaster completely flattened roughly 18,000 houses and damaged countless more. The social activist and
Over the course of former President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) 11-day trip to China that included a meeting with Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Xi Jinping (習近平) a surprising number of people commented that the former president was now “irrelevant.” Upon reflection, it became apparent that these comments were coming from pro-Taiwan, pan-green supporters and they were expressing what they hoped was the case, rather than the reality. Ma’s ideology is so pro-China (read: deep blue) and controversial that many in his own Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) hope he retires quickly, or at least refrains from speaking on some subjects. Regardless