Elephant Song
Winner of this year’s Canadian Screen Awards for Best Adapted Screenplay, Elephant Song is a drawn-out psychological battle between the director of a mental hospital and a longtime patient who may be linked to a recently-disappeared psychiatrist. The patient is a prototypical psychopath — calm, manipulative and very intelligent, prompting a nurse to tell the director, “Don’t let him railroad you.” Yet, she’s probably involved in whatever’s going on somehow. Set entirely in the hospital (except for flashbacks), it’s one of those films that relies on acting chops and dialogue. There’s just one thing: unless there’s a miracle or he has more tricks up his sleeve, the hospital director doesn’t seem to stand a chance against such a dangerous dude. We’ll see.
The Gift
Be nice to people in high school — someone you wronged may reappear 25 years later hell bent on revenge. In typical deranged stalker thriller fashion, the film begins with a married couple who have it all, Simon and Robyn, moving into a new house. They run into Gordo, Simon’s eccentric high school classmate, who befriends them but starts getting a bit too intrusive. Things eventually turn sour, but the worst is yet to come. What’s not typical of this movie is that the husband seems to be hiding some dark secret of his own, perhaps something terrible he did to Gordo a long time ago. Robyn starts investigating Simon’s past, and the lines blur between good and evil. The action is more on the psychological side, but the tension and suspense seems to be there.
Wild City (迷城)
Wild City is Hong Kong action director Ringo Lam’s (林嶺東) first feature in eight years. Lam says the film completes a trilogy with City on Fire (龍虎風雲, 1987) and Full Alert (高度戒備, 1997) as all three touch upon the theme of being lost in the city. If you are a fan of Lam’s trademark over-the-top car chases, seedy underworld figures, gritty heroes, mysterious damsels in distress and lots of guns and explosions, you’ll enjoy this film. The story, revolving around a suitcase of US dollars, is nothing groundbreaking, but Lam says he wanted to explore what money can do to human beings. Also, it’s another cinematic collaboration for the Chinese-speaking world — featuring a Hong Kong protagonist who meets a Chinese woman and ends up fighting Taiwanese thugs.
Samba
French directing duo Eric Toledano and Olivier Kakache’s 2011 hit film The Intouchables featured the unlikely friendship between an African-immigrant ex-con played by Omar Sy and a wealthy, old French quadriplegic. Their latest film Samba features the unlikely romantic relationship between an illegal African immigrant (also played by Omar Sy) who is facing deportation and his neurotic immigrant French caseworker. With immigration and racism an issue in France, the directors should be applauded for tackling the subject even in a big budget, mainstream drama-comedy, even though they do it in a rather cliched “we’re all getting along” fashion.
Sinister 2
Marilyn Manson lookalike boogeyman Bughuul is back to recruit more children to do horrible things. This time, a mother moves into a rural and obviously haunted house with her two boys to avoid her abusive husband. The sheriff from the first film is back, trying to stop the same thing from the last film from happening. For some reason, the mother doesn’t care about the place’s history, and, you know what happens. Point to ponder: since the mystery behind what was going on was already solved in the first film, and the second film doesn’t explain Bughuul’s backstory (according to the director), what new tricks can it turn this go around? Will we learn something about Bughuul that would justify a second movie?
A few weeks ago I found myself at a Family Mart talking with the morning shift worker there, who has become my coffee guy. Both of us were in a funk over the “unseasonable” warm weather, a state of mind known as “solastalgia” — distress produced by environmental change. In fact, the weather was not that out of the ordinary in boiling Central Taiwan, and likely cooler than the temperatures we will experience in the near-future. According to the Taiwan Adaptation Platform, between 1957 and 2006, summer lengthened by 27.8 days, while winter shrunk by 29.7 days. Winter is not
Taiwan’s post-World War II architecture, “practical, cheap and temporary,” not to mention “rather forgettable.” This was a characterization recently given by Taiwan-based historian John Ross on his Formosa Files podcast. Yet the 1960s and 1970s were, in fact, the period of Taiwan’s foundational building boom, which, to a great extent, defined the look of Taiwan’s cities, determining the way denizens live today. During this period, functionalist concrete blocks and Chinese nostalgia gave way to new interpretations of modernism, large planned communities and high-rise skyscrapers. It is currently the subject of a new exhibition at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Modern
March 25 to March 31 A 56-year-old Wu Li Yu-ke (吳李玉哥) was straightening out her artist son’s piles of drawings when she inadvertently flipped one over, revealing the blank backside of the paper. Absent-mindedly, she picked up a pencil and recalled how she used to sketch embroidery designs for her clothing business. Without clients and budget or labor constraints to worry about, Wu Li drew freely whatever image came to her mind. With much more free time now that her son had found a job, she found herself missing her home village in China, where she
In recent years, Slovakia has been seen as a highly democratic and Western-oriented Central European country. This image was reinforced by the election of the country’s first female president in 2019, efforts to provide extensive assistance to Ukraine and the strengthening of relations with Taiwan, all of which strengthened Slovakia’s position within the European Union. However, the latest developments in the country suggest that the situation is changing rapidly. As such, the presidential elections to be held on March 23 will be an indicator of whether Slovakia remains in the Western sphere of influence or moves eastward, notably towards Russia and