Lucy
In 2011 we had Limitless when Bradley Cooper played a slacker who becomes a turbo charged killer after taking a drug that let him access 100 percent of his brain. This is the girls empowerment version with Scarlett Johansson in the Cooper role. In this case, Johansson is forced to be a drug mule in a deal that goes badly wrong. The drug inside her transforms her into a merciless warrior who wreaks havoc and reveals new possibilities for the human race. Lucy revels in the theme of waifish young women discovering their inner Shiva, and has distant echos of other Luc Besson films such as La Femme Nikita and Leon: The Professional, though visually venturing into gaudier science fiction territory. Lucy has all the hallmarks of his work, from its frenetic pace, stylized mayhem and visual sophistication, but this latest work actually seems to work as a story as well, other than going spectacularly off the rails toward the end — and even that kind of works in the context of this film. For local audiences, a point of interest will be that much of the action is set in Taiwan, with ample use made of local Taipei landmarks.
Boys
A made-for-TV gay interest movie from the Netherlands manages to provide some neat twists and turns to a plot that seems pretty formulaic at the outset. This is a coming-of-age, self-discovery movie about Sieger (Gijs Blom), who is training in the new athletics team for the national relay championships, and meets the intriguing and unpredictable Marc (Ko Zandvliet), who joins the squad. The two become close friends, and over the summer holidays, the friendship becomes something more. There is all the usual stuff about jealousies and insecurities as Sieger, trying to fit in with his sports team crowd, becomes involved with a girl. The treatment of this well-worn theme is sensitive and inventive, and performances are strong, and it has picked up a number of awards on the festival circuit.
Jacky In The Kingdom Of Women
Role reversal comedy from France, Jacky in the Kingdom of Women is a satirical take on gender politics, with humor that runs the gamut from biting to broad to scatological. It is not subtle, but occasionally hits the target, though it never tries to go much beyond its original setup, and the gender jokes quickly become a little stale. It is not helped by the Ruritanian backdrop, with star Charlotte Gainsbourg looking fetching in a variety of militaristic uniforms. The film is set in the Kingdom of Bubunne, where women are in power while men wear veils and do domestic tasks. Jacky, a lovely young man who dreams of marrying the ‘Colonelle’ has to struggle like a Cinderella to realize his dreams. Occasionally amusing.
Blind
This finely honed drama from Norway about a writer whose loss of sight only serves to sharpen her creative imagination. This debut feature for screenwriter Eskil Vogt is also a showcase for the talent of actress Ellen Dorrit Petersen (Troubled Water), in whose head much of the film takes place. Vogt proves a master of detail, and manages to “show” us a world perceived through sightless eyes, so that even making a cup of tea becomes a protracted suspense set piece. There is not much by way of plot, and the film moves forward as a extended portrait of its central character, whose uncertain or distorted grasp of reality provides dramatic tension. Vogt shows a fascination with the creative processes, and the uses of writing as a means of escape, vicarious experience, catharsis and self-discovery. He finds ingenious cinematic ways of visualizing a writer’s fickle temperament in a manner that echoes the Spike Jonze film Adaptation. For all its quality, Blind requires commitment from the viewer to appreciate the subtle uses of cinema to tell an interesting story.
Contracted
If you like to be grossed out by the various permutations of body horror, you could do worse than Eric England’s Contracted, in which the star of the show is undoubtedly the makeup artistry that follows the physical degeneration of a young woman (Najarra Townsend) after a drunken sexual encounter. Unfortunately, England fails to get much beyond the truly icky horror of the central performance to make wider references, and the changes in the young woman’s body, and her subsequent rage and despair, bring the film perilously close to melding into the zombie genre. The main characters themselves are not particularly attractive people, but Townsend certainly throws herself into the role of a rather petulant young woman inhabiting a spiritually vacuous world, and while England sometimes manages to drift tantalizingly close to the kind of black-horror-comedy that eviscerates the society it is set in, Contracted never quite manages to get behind the mask.
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
A fossil jawbone found by a British girl and her father on a beach in Somerset, England belongs to a gigantic marine reptile dating to 202 million years ago that appears to have been among the largest animals ever on Earth. Researchers said on Wednesday the bone, called a surangular, was from a type of ocean-going reptile called an ichthyosaur. Based on its dimensions compared to the same bone in closely related ichthyosaurs, the researchers estimated that the Triassic Period creature, which they named Ichthyotitan severnensis, was between 22-26 meters long. That would make it perhaps the largest-known marine reptile and would