Good People
Based on a novel by crime novelist Marcus Sakey, Good People has good prospects as a modern crime thriller with aspiration to comment on the dynamics of modern economic life and gender roles. Tom Wright (James Franco) and wife Anna (Kate Hudson) are faced with the prospect of losing their house to the hard economic times. They discover a cache of money in their dead tenant’s apartment that could solve all their problems, but realize gradually that this seeming financial boon comes with some very nasty strings attached. Franco and Hudson navigate the conventional story like the true veterans they are, and are given great support by the likes of Tom Wilkinson as the investigating detective. Good People is a solid, workmanlike production that anchors its generic gangster movie in a social subtext that informs the plot and grounds the two central characters. Directed by Dane Henrik Ruben Genz, Good People strikes a good balance between violence, tension and character dynamics.
God Help the Girl
At first glance, it is hard not to like God Help the Girl, with its mopey outsiders looking for acceptance in a world of music. Set in Glasgow, the film tells the story of Eve (Emily Browning), a young woman who uses songwriting as a way of dealing with her emotional problems. She meets James (Olly Alexander) and Cassie (Hannah Murray), two musicians each at crossroads of their own. They spend a summer discovering themselves and each other. There are some echoes of The Perks of Being a Wallflower, but is constrained by its showcasing of the talents of the Scottish indie pop group Belle and Sebastian. In this respect, it also brings to mind Sunshine on Leith, a film founded on the music of another Scottish group, The Proclaimers. There is plenty of charm, and the young cast are attractive and natural, but the story itself never really gets much beyond being a series of music videos. If you like the music, then all is good and well, and you can put up with the rather thin story and pasteboard characters, but if you are looking for something more that a celebration of Scottish indie music, you are likely to be disappointed.
The Sacrament
Found footage has been going downhill for some time, but with The Sacrament, director Ti West has given it a new lease of life. West, who directed minor cult successes such as The Innkeepers and House of the Devil, uses this latest film to follow a news team as it trails a man as he travels to find his missing sister. They come to Eden Parish, a kind of religious commune that you know hides some dark secret. Paradise quickly comes apart at the seams and some pretty horrible things happen. The whole thing is well constructed and acting is committed, and the echoes of real events such as the 1978 Jonestown massacre give The Sacrament something a little more than most supernatural horror flicks. While West does not deviate much from the horror playbook, his technical proficiency provides plenty of unsettling atmosphere and the occasional gut-level shock. For all that, a real understanding of the psychology that makes such cultish communities a reality eludes the filmmaker.
The Amazing Catfish
Lovely little Spanish-language film from Mexico by young director Claudia Sainte-Luce that manages to find the elusive balance between understated realism and poignant feel-good optimism. Young supermarket clerk Claudia (Ximena Ayala) goes to hospital with appendicitis, and emerges semi-adopted by mother-of-four Martha (Lisa Owen), who is suffering from some unspecified but probably terminal condition. The new “sister” causes the dynamic of Martha’s family to change in all kinds of ways, but the family is desperately looking for a distraction from their mother’s illness. There is some splendid acting and a real intimacy between the characters, but the film is slightly marred by a overly self-conscious quirkiness.
The Attorney
A South-Korean movie by first-time feature director Yang Woo-seok is a bit different from the usual feasts of vengeance and brutal violence that characterize many of the nation’s movie exports. The Attorney charts the story of lawyer Song Woo-seok (Song Kang-ho), a man with few credentials but plenty of ambition and talent, who starts off as a prosperous tax lawyer who comes to the aid of his friends and eventually pits himself against the might of the judiciary and secret service. The film builds slowly, taking its time to establish Song as a cheery everyman, before it turns abruptly to the political drama. Song’s character is based on events in the life of Roh Moo-hyun, who became a human-rights advocate and later South Korea’s president, and has a rousing pro-democracy message. Yang does not shy away from melodrama, and his handling of the battle against entrenched power is blatantly manipulative, but the background story to the court case that Song fights, of a young boy whose “disappearance” at the hands of the police is covered up under the demands of national security, is powerful and instructive.
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
The following three paragraphs are just some of what the local Chinese-language press is reporting on breathlessly and following every twist and turn with the eagerness of a soap opera fan. For many English-language readers, it probably comes across as incomprehensibly opaque, so bear with me briefly dear reader: To the surprise of many, former pop singer and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) ex-lawmaker Yu Tien (余天) of the Taiwan Normal Country Promotion Association (TNCPA) at the last minute dropped out of the running for committee chair of the DPP’s New Taipei City chapter, paving the way for DPP legislator Su
It’s hard to know where to begin with Mark Tovell’s Taiwan: Roads Above the Clouds. Having published a travelogue myself, as well as having contributed to several guidebooks, at first glance Tovell’s book appears to inhabit a middle ground — the kind of hard-to-sell nowheresville publishers detest. Leaf through the pages and you’ll find them suffuse with the purple prose best associated with travel literature: “When the sun is low on a warm, clear morning, and with the heat already rising, we stand at the riverside bike path leading south from Sanxia’s old cobble streets.” Hardly the stuff of your
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