Valentine’s Day
Best start with the most obviously timed of the New Year slate of offerings. A huge cast that crosses the generations locks horns with a limited timeframe and a dozen plot lines to try to deliver romantic entertainment for the masses. With Garry Marshall (Pretty Woman) at the helm, one might expect a brisk package of laughs and a few tears, but early reviews have largely dumped all over this one. Got a date? Maybe you should consider ...
I Love You Phillip Morris
Now this is a Valentine’s Day movie. Jim Carrey throws hypocritical Hollywood pseudo-liberalism out the window and takes up his role as a comically shaded gay criminal with devil-may-care gusto. In so doing he might lose a few fans (Variety wondered if the film “will give some fans of Ace Ventura heart attacks”), but he’s also bound to gain some, too. Carrey plays a real-life fraudster who ends up in prison and smitten with Ewan McGregor. Directed by the writers of the uproarious Bad Santa, which in itself is a reason to give this movie a chance, but with a warning that the humor will be in your face.
The Wolfman
Romance is in the back seat for this faithful version of one of the oldest — if less revisited — movie monster traditions. Benicio Del Toro is the afflicted one, Anthony Hopkins is his father, Hugo Weaving is the Scotland Yard detective on the trail and Emily Blunt the woman caught up in it all. Few previews available for this one, which usually suggests nervous distributors, and what reviews are out there are split down the middle. Includes many computer animation effects, which would not impress those of us brought up on The Howling and An American Werewolf in London. But it does have Benicio.
Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief
Based on a series of popular books, Percy makes it to the big screen but without the massive publicity blitz and nurturing of critics that preceded the first Harry Potter movie. In fact, as with The Wolfman, we’re two days out from a wide US release and there are virtually no reviews out there save those of Australian critics in an earlier time zone. Percy is a normal youngster who suddenly discovers he has blood ties to the Greek gods, and this is not such a good thing if there’s trouble brewing around Mt Olympus. Directed by Chris Columbus, who also made the first two Harry Potter installments.
Hidden Diary
A professional woman in Canada falls pregnant and returns to France; there, amid tensions with her mother, she discovers the diary of the title, which belonged to her grandmother she never knew, and whose sad experiences are recounted in flashback — or are they? A sober but searching family drama with more than a hint of wistfulness, this stars Catherine Deneuve as the mother and is a welcome adult entertainment for this holiday season. French title: Meres et Filles.
Changing Sides
The other French-language release of the week features another top actress, Sophie Marceau, as a woman who swaps working roles with her husband to save their marriage. In so doing, this crafty couple find that changing sides brings early frustrations but longer-term benefits, but not without a few relationship crises along the way. The swap also pigeon-holes the book on which the film was based, resulting in charges of gross sexism on the part of the filmmakers ... which leads to the question: Assuming the original author was unhappy with the film’s treatment of her work, why didn’t she have her name removed or changed? (Mme Alaina Smithee, perhaps?)
Bride Flight
Good to see New Zealand featuring on the big screen other than as a setting for hobbits, dwarves and monsters. In this Dutch period piece, three northern European women move to the Shaky Isles to start new lives with their hubbies-to-be, and the intrigue deepens as relationships form and suffer in the process. For more discerning and adventurous moviegoers who don’t want to be confronted by headlong comedy, this might be the Valentine’s Day pick. Rutger Hauer appears briefly as the love interest on his deathbed in the present day.
Boa
The last three movies this week started last week at the Baixue theater in Ximending as DVD promos, so get in quick if they appeal. The first is a 2006 wildlife-on-the-loose flick from Thailand whose poster gets down to business: A bloodied babe somewhere in the Thai jungle is half-consumed by a ravenous constrictor. Of course, there will be other youngsters on the menu. Really, boas don’t deserve this kind of press.
To Live and Die in Mongkok (旺角監獄)
As with Boa, get in quick to see this pair of movies from vet Hong Kong producer-director-writer-actor Wong Jing (王晶) that didn’t enjoy a proper theatrical release. In this one, co-directed by Chung Siu-hung (鍾少雄), Wong ups the self-conscious style quotient in a strange tale of a gang member who gets out of prison, but only in the literal sense (the Chinese title means “Prison Mongkok”). Stars Nick Cheung (張家輝) as the hapless gangster.
Underdog Knight (硬漢)
This earlier production by Wong Jing and directed by Ding Sheng (丁晟, whose Jackie Chan starrer Little Big Soldier starts in Taiwan in two weeks) also suggests that the king of populist cinema is trying to extend himself a little, even if he is hampered by Chinese content restrictions. Liu Ye (劉燁) is a People’s Liberation Army officer who becomes a simpleton after a diving accident; he then turns into a fighter for justice, albeit hamstrung by his condition. Co-stars Anthony Wong (黃秋生) as a sympathetic crook.
June 2 to June 8 Taiwan’s woodcutters believe that if they see even one speck of red in their cooked rice, no matter how small, an accident is going to happen. Peng Chin-tian (彭錦田) swears that this has proven to be true at every stop during his decades-long career in the logging industry. Along with mining, timber harvesting was once considered the most dangerous profession in Taiwan. Not only were mishaps common during all stages of processing, it was difficult to transport the injured to get medical treatment. Many died during the arduous journey. Peng recounts some of his accidents in
“Why does Taiwan identity decline?”a group of researchers lead by University of Nevada political scientist Austin Wang (王宏恩) asked in a recent paper. After all, it is not difficult to explain the rise in Taiwanese identity after the early 1990s. But no model predicted its decline during the 2016-2018 period, they say. After testing various alternative explanations, Wang et al argue that the fall-off in Taiwanese identity during that period is related to voter hedging based on the performance of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). Since the DPP is perceived as the guardian of Taiwan identity, when it performs well,
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A short walk beneath the dense Amazon canopy, the forest abruptly opens up. Fallen logs are rotting, the trees grow sparser and the temperature rises in places sunlight hits the ground. This is what 24 years of severe drought looks like in the world’s largest rainforest. But this patch of degraded forest, about the size of a soccer field, is a scientific experiment. Launched in 2000 by Brazilian and British scientists, Esecaflor — short for “Forest Drought Study Project” in Portuguese — set out to simulate a future in which the changing climate could deplete the Amazon of rainfall. It is
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