Transformers 4
Transformers: Dark of the Moon, the third Transformers movie, set a new low for pointless, mindless, over-long, self-indulgent, merchandizing-driven action movies, even by the standards of director Michael Bay. It is hard to imagine 10-year-old boys, the target audience of the movie, not seeing through the creative bankruptcy of the production. It is a forlorn hope that this fourth iteration might be the last — it is subtitled Age of Extinction after all — but a fifth is already in pre-production. One can be thankful for the absence of Shia LaBeouf from this film, and Mark Wahlberg, the protagonist, is always a welcome screen presence. Wahlberg is Cade Yeager, an auto mechanic who makes a discovery that brings the Autobots, Decepticons and a paranoid government official down on him and his family. Kids in love with the Hasbro toys might get a buzz from seeing the hyper-realistic action of these popular figurines, and Nicola Peltz as Tessa, Cade’s daughter, will provide vicarious delights for slightly older children, otherwise known as fathers. At 157 minutes, Transformers 4 shows no sign of self-restraint, so be prepared to have your brain hammered into mush by this summer blockbuster.
The Journey
Road trip buddy movie from Malaysia stemming from cross-cultural romance is nothing to shout about, particularly with rather lame performances from Ben Pfeiffer (Benji) and Joanne Yew (Bee), who feature as a young couple (he from the UK, she from Malaysia) who need to get the blessing of the curmudgeonly Uncle Chuan (Sai Peng Lee) for their upcoming nuptials. Inevitably, Uncle Chuan has little time for the white bread Benji, a man with a remarkable lack of cultural understanding. The conflict between the two men is inevitable, and its development largely predictable. Chuan insists that the future son-in-law must accompany him on a country-wide trip to deliver wedding invitations, and the two men set off by motorbike across Malaysia. Despite language barriers and initial animosity, the two come to realize that their priorities are essentially one and the same. In a mixture of English, Mandarin and Hoklo, the film has an innocence that is charming, making up for much of the technical shortcomings and providing some insight into the culture of Malaysian Chinese.
Upstream Color
Intellectual sci-fi from director of the indie hit Primer, Shane Carruth does not have battling robots, star fleets or interstellar reptiles anywhere in sight. This is science fiction in its original meaning of art that seeks to explore the outer realms of human possibilities. It is serious, technically accomplished, well-acted and deeply annoying for its seemingly deliberate obscurity. Go with the flow of the director’s oblique storytelling technique, which is full of hints and possibilities, but never allows itself to be pinned down to a clearly defined narrative line. The film’s story might be about a young couple who become connected by a singular, mysterious experience, a form of hypnosis caused by body-snatching maggots that alienates them from everyone around them. If you like the idea, Upstream Color may work for you, but if you actually expect a story with a beginning, middle and end, you are likely to be banging your head against the seat in front of you 20 minutes into the film. And the director is not about to give you any help. An outstanding performance by Amy Seimetz establishes this young actress as someone to watch, but all the acting talent in the world is not going to make Upstream Color appealing to people who just want to relax in the cinema.
We Are the Best
A small film with a big heart, We Are the Best may not hit a lot of screens, but is undoubtedly the best bet for actual entertainment this week. Directed by Lukas Moodysson, based on a comic by his wife Coco Moodysson, this Swedish film is a coming-of-age drama about three girls in 1980s Stockholm who decide to form a punk band — despite having little musical talent, no instruments and flying in the face of the fact that punk, by this time, was well and truly dead. And you don’t even have to like punk, or even, for that matter, any style of contemporary popular music, to feel the vigorous pulse of this movie, which hits the spot in any discourse about the aimlessness of adolescence and the power of friendship. Moodysson, who was once deemed a “young master” by Ingmar Bergman, has had some ups and downs in his filmmaking career, and with We Are the Best, we have someone of enormous technical accomplishments taking on stale genre materials and making from it an unforgettable gem.
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
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
Approaching her mid-30s, Xiong Yidan reckons that most of her friends are on to their second or even third babies. But Xiong has more than a dozen. There is Lucky, the street dog from Bangkok who jumped into a taxi with her and never left. There is Sophie and Ben, sibling geese, who honk from morning to night. Boop and Pan, both goats, are romantically involved. Dumpling the hedgehog enjoys a belly rub from time to time. The list goes on. Xiong nurtures her brood from her 8,000 square meter farm in Chiang Dao, a mountainous district in northern Thailand’s