Animal Kingdom
Top-notch Aussie drama about Josh Codey (James Frecheville), a young lad caught in the grip of his family, a group of Melbourne criminals under the leadership of matriarch Smurf Codey (magnificently played by Jacki Weaver), a petite blonde grandmother who calls hits on rivals while popping a casserole in the oven. The Codeys are engaged in a war with the cops of the armed robbery division, who are almost as corrupt and violent as the criminals they pursue. Gritty and hard hitting, Animal Kingdom portrays suburban Melbourne as a jungle, and its characters grimly fight to stay alive, fending off enemies from without and betrayal from within. Animal Kingdom will not make you feel good, but it will keep you enthralled.
Las Buenas Hierbas
Family saga from Mexican director Maria Novaro focusing on a mother suffering from Alzheimer’s disease and her grown daughter’s attempts to cope. The director, who first came to prominence in 1989 with the highly praised Lola, eschews melodrama for a richly textured tapestry of modern Mexican life. Novaro has been described as an impressionistic director for her weaving together of sometimes disconnected bits of story to build up a complex and unresolved picture of real life. This makes a perfect fit with the understated musical interludes of guitar and percussion, which enrich the mood without obtruding on the meandering flow of the narrative.
Black Heaven (L’autre monde)
French film by Gilles Marchand that uses an alternate reality video game as its main trope. The setup is promising: A young couple, Gaspard and Marion, find a cellphone at the beach. It rings, they answer, and with that they are drawn into the discovery of the sexy Audrey (Louise Bourgoin), who has apparently tried to commit suicide. This action is somehow related to the online game Black Hole (a darker version of Second Life), and Gaspard opens an account to see if he can discover Audrey’s story. Amazing computer graphics and dark eroticism are not quite enough to save the film from its confused and confusing narrative.
The Ghost Must Be Crazy
Horror comedy out of Malaysia made up of two separate shorts by different directors: The Day Off, a story of the supernatural fears of a bunch of military reservists undergoing training in the jungle by director Boris Boo (巫培雙) and Ghost Bride, a film about the consequences of making Faustian pacts, by TV-host and first-time director Mark Lee (李國煌). The general mood of slapstick and some occasional real scares is similar to the Singapore movie Where Got Ghosts? (嚇到笑), which was released here late last year.
Heartbeats (Les amours imaginaires)
Quebecois director Xavier Dolan, aged just 21, picked up the special youth prize at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival for his debut feature I Killed My Mother. In this, his second film, Dolan shows he has talent to spare in what can be seen as an homage to cinematic idols Wong Kar-wai (王家衛), Jean-Luc Godard, Francois Truffaut, Bernardo Bertolucci and Pedro Almodovar. Heartbeats is an utterly over-the-top film about a love triangle between three amazingly good-looking people exploring their sexuality and the limits of love. Everything is utterly gorgeous, the emotions utterly superficial, and an undercurrent of sorrow and tragedy runs beneath the surface.
Something Borrowed
Soft fluffy rom-com starring Ginnifer Goodwin as Rachel and Kate Hudson as Darcy, two best friends who become involved with the same guy, Dex — played by Colin Egglesfield. He is about to marry Darcy, while Rachel has a long-time crush that is only getting worse as the impending nuptials approach. There is a lot of running about, often in the rain, and some rather ham-handed slapstick as Rachel dithers over whether she can hurt her best friend by coveting the man she loves. What the audience will be wondering is how the gorgeous Rachel could have any feelings at all for the self-satisfied and smarmy Dex.
We Are What We Are (Somos lo que hay)
Life can be hard for cannibals in Mexico City, with the daily grind of picking up a member of the general public for dinner. A debut feature by Jorge Michel Grau, this is an urban fable that revels in urban decay, and its family of people eaters are only the most ghastly of many living on the fringes of subsistence. Technically, this is a more than adequate horror flick, but too much is left unexplained to make it entirely satisfying.
Wooden houses wedged between concrete, crumbling brick facades with roofs gaping to the sky, and tiled art deco buildings down narrow alleyways: Taichung Central District’s (中區) aging architecture reveals both the allure and reality of the old downtown. From Indigenous settlement to capital under Qing Dynasty rule through to Japanese colonization, Taichung’s Central District holds a long and layered history. The bygone beauty of its streets once earned it the nickname “Little Kyoto.” Since the late eighties, however, the shifting of economic and government centers westward signaled a gradual decline in the area’s evolving fortunes. With the regeneration of the once
Even by the standards of Ukraine’s International Legion, which comprises volunteers from over 55 countries, Han has an unusual backstory. Born in Taichung, he grew up in Costa Rica — then one of Taiwan’s diplomatic allies — where a relative worked for the embassy. After attending an American international high school in San Jose, Costa Rica’s capital, Han — who prefers to use only his given name for OPSEC (operations security) reasons — moved to the US in his teens. He attended Penn State University before returning to Taiwan to work in the semiconductor industry in Kaohsiung, where he
On May 2, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫), at a meeting in support of Taipei city councilors at party headquarters, compared President William Lai (賴清德) to Hitler. Chu claimed that unlike any other democracy worldwide in history, no other leader was rooting out opposing parties like Lai and the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). That his statements are wildly inaccurate was not the point. It was a rallying cry, not a history lesson. This was intentional to provoke the international diplomatic community into a response, which was promptly provided. Both the German and Israeli offices issued statements on Facebook
Perched on Thailand’s border with Myanmar, Arunothai is a dusty crossroads town, a nowheresville that could be the setting of some Southeast Asian spaghetti Western. Its main street is the final, dead-end section of the two-lane highway from Chiang Mai, Thailand’s second largest city 120kms south, and the heart of the kingdom’s mountainous north. At the town boundary, a Chinese-style arch capped with dragons also bears Thai script declaring fealty to Bangkok’s royal family: “Long live the King!” Further on, Chinese lanterns line the main street, and on the hillsides, courtyard homes sit among warrens of narrow, winding alleyways and
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