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.
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
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
Peter Brighton was amazed when he found the giant jackfruit. He had been watching it grow on his farm in far north Queensland, and when it came time to pick it from the tree, it was so heavy it needed two people to do the job. “I was surprised when we cut it off and felt how heavy it was,” he says. “I grabbed it and my wife cut it — couldn’t do it by myself, it took two of us.” Weighing in at 45 kilograms, it is the heaviest jackfruit that Brighton has ever grown on his tropical fruit farm, located