Rated PG-13, directed by Jan Hrebejk, with Bolek Poliva (Josef Cizek), Jaroslav Dusek (Horst Prohaska), Anna Siskova (Marie Cizkova), Csongor Kassai (David Wiener), Jiri Pecha (Frantisek Simacek), running time: 117 minutes.
One of this year's five Best Foreign Film Oscar nominees, Divided We Fall takes a horrific, hilarious, touching and revolting look at Czech loyalties during Nazi occupation. Josef and Marie are a childless couple who live a quiet and comfortable life. They are befriended by Horst, an extroverted Nazi who frequently comes to visit and flirt with Marie. Life becomes tense when an escaped Jew and former neighbor, David, appeals to them for help, ultimately staying for two years in the couple's pantry. When Horst asks them to house a wayward Nazi soldier, Marie quickly lies and tells him she's pregnant, even though her husband is impotent. The onus is then on her to get pregnant quickly or risk being discovered and the possible wrath of the Nazis.
Towering high above Taiwan’s capital city at 508 meters, Taipei 101 dominates the skyline. The earthquake-proof skyscraper of steel and glass has captured the imagination of professional rock climber Alex Honnold for more than a decade. Tomorrow morning, he will climb it in his signature free solo style — without ropes or protective equipment. And Netflix will broadcast it — live. The event’s announcement has drawn both excitement and trepidation, as well as some concerns over the ethical implications of attempting such a high-risk endeavor on live broadcast. Many have questioned Honnold’s desire to continues his free-solo climbs now that he’s a
As Taiwan’s second most populous city, Taichung looms large in the electoral map. Taiwanese political commentators describe it — along with neighboring Changhua County — as Taiwan’s “swing states” (搖擺州), which is a curious direct borrowing from American election terminology. In the early post-Martial Law era, Taichung was referred to as a “desert of democracy” because while the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) was winning elections in the north and south, Taichung remained staunchly loyal to the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT). That changed over time, but in both Changhua and Taichung, the DPP still suffers from a “one-term curse,” with the
Lines between cop and criminal get murky in Joe Carnahan’s The Rip, a crime thriller set across one foggy Miami night, starring Matt Damon and Ben Affleck. Damon and Affleck, of course, are so closely associated with Boston — most recently they produced the 2024 heist movie The Instigators there — that a detour to South Florida puts them, a little awkwardly, in an entirely different movie landscape. This is Miami Vice territory or Elmore Leonard Land, not Southie or The Town. In The Rip, they play Miami narcotics officers who come upon a cartel stash house that Lt. Dane Dumars (Damon)
Today Taiwanese accept as legitimate government control of many aspects of land use. That legitimacy hides in plain sight the way the system of authoritarian land grabs that favored big firms in the developmentalist era has given way to a government land grab system that favors big developers in the modern democratic era. Articles 142 and 143 of the Republic of China (ROC) Constitution form the basis of that control. They incorporate the thinking of Sun Yat-sen (孫逸仙) in considering the problems of land in China. Article 143 states: “All land within the territory of the Republic of China shall
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