Final Destination 5
Nobody should be expecting high quality from a film with a five at the end of the title, but Final Destination 5, while far from being an original or even particularly clever horror flick, manages some truly ghastly death scenes and handles 3D with a full awareness of how it is going to make you push back into your seat in fright. For sheer visceral revulsion, Final Destination 5 delivers the goods. Directed by Steven Quale, a second unit director on Titanic and Avatar, the film is technically slick, and with effects by Ariel Velasco Shaw (who crafted the mayhem on 300 and Freddy vs Jason), death comes in some highly imaginative ways.
Buddha: The Great Departure
Based on a hugely successful manga by Osamu Tezuka, the creator of such immortal works as Astro Boy and Kimba the White Lion. The manga was released from 1972 to 1983 and the complete story runs for eight volumes with a wealth of incidents showing how a young prince named Siddhartha Gautama responds to the many injustices in the world around him and eventually finds enlightenment. Gautama is portrayed as a very human character, and the story does not forgo gritty or even sexual elements. It also distinguishes itself from preachy Buddhist hagiographies by having a theme song composed by influential metal band X Japan. Buddha: The Great Departure is the first of a trilogy.
Just Between Us (Neka ostane medju nama)
Described by Variety magazine as a “low-budget Croatian take on It’s Complicated,” Just Between Us offers up plenty of sexual shenanigans, but not much else. The two main male characters, wealthy horndog Nikola and his brother Braco, have no qualms about sleeping with each other’s wives, or with any other amenable sweet young thing. The vulgarity of the leads, who come over more as lecherous losers than lovable scamps, deprives the women of much dignity when it comes to forgiving their exploits.
Le Quattro Volte
Le Quattro Volte is named after the Pythagorean idea that each of us has four lives within — the mineral, the vegetable, the animal and the human. Michelangelo Frammartino gives no precedence to the human realm in his gorgeously shot meditation set in the beautiful but impoverished southern Italian region of Calabria. Critic Philip French describes the film as “an essay, a cinematic poem, a spiritual exploration of time and space, and it’s designed to make us think and feel about the world around us and our place in it.” There is little dialogue, the director content to sit back and watch his non-professional cast, headed by an aging shepherd, a dog, some goats and a charcoal burner, engage in their daily routines, largely without explanation. Thoughtful and provocative, Le Quattro Volte takes 88 minutes to plumb the depths of the human condition.
Pokemon 14 Movie: Victini and the White Hero
Another in the series of feature anime based on a children’s TV series that has gone on to international success. For small children and fans only.
Silence and Screams: 2011 Festival of Iranian Cinema
This opportunity to see some of the excellent films that have emerged from Iran in recent years comes courtesy of the POP Cinema (國民戲院) program at Spot — Taipei Film House (光點—台北之家). The current mini-festival is composed of a huge range of films from established directors including Jafar Panahi, Mohammad Rasoulof, Asghar Farhadi, Tahmineh Milani and Rakhshan Bani-Etemad, as well as a number of emerging talents. The festival, which opens today and runs until Sept. 9, is at Spot, 18, Zhongshan N Rd Sec 2, Taipei City (台北市中山北路二段18號). Tickets are NT$200, with discounts for Spot members. Detailed listings of the films and their screening times can be found at www.spot.org.tw.
Amazon Forever (this film has been rescheduled numerous times)
A film written and directed by Jean-Pierre Dutilleux that was released in 2004 and which has avoided virtually any mainstream interest. It is the story of a French filmmaker who goes into the Amazon forest, falls in love with the daughter of a local chief, films the destruction of the forest by Portuguese loggers and tries to raise awareness about the plight of the rain forest and the people who live there. The film is notable for its portrayal of authentic daily life among the Indians in the forest, with many roles taken by local tribes people.
Boat
A Japanese-South Korean co-production, also released under the title No Boys, No Cry, about a couple of smugglers, one Japanese and one Korean, who strike up an unlikely friendship. Their lives are complicated by a female kidnap victim they are holding for a gang boss. Despite the focus on two guys, and the kidnap aspect of the film, Boat never really becomes either a buddy movie or a thriller, focusing rather on the character of the two men and the hard choices they have to make. Award-winning director Kim Young Nam (Don’t Look Back) works well with a veteran cast that includes Ha Jung-Woo and Tsumabuki Satoshi as the two leads.
Nine Taiwanese nervously stand on an observation platform at Tokyo’s Haneda International Airport. It’s 9:20am on March 27, 1968, and they are awaiting the arrival of Liu Wen-ching (柳文卿), who is about to be deported back to Taiwan where he faces possible execution for his independence activities. As he is removed from a minibus, a tenth activist, Dai Tian-chao (戴天昭), jumps out of his hiding place and attacks the immigration officials — the nine other activists in tow — while urging Liu to make a run for it. But he’s pinned to the ground. Amid the commotion, Liu tries to
A dozen excited 10-year-olds are bouncing in their chairs. The small classroom’s walls are lined with racks of wetsuits and water equipment, and decorated with posters of turtles. But the students’ eyes are trained on their teacher, Tseng Ching-ming, describing the currents and sea conditions at nearby Banana Bay, where they’ll soon be going. “Today you have one mission: to take off your equipment and float in the water,” he says. Some of the kids grin, nervously. They don’t know it, but the students from Kenting-Eluan elementary school on Taiwan’s southernmost point, are rare among their peers and predecessors. Despite most of
A pig’s head sits atop a shelf, tufts of blonde hair sprouting from its taut scalp. Opposite, its chalky, wrinkled heart glows red in a bubbling vat of liquid, locks of thick dark hair and teeth scattered below. A giant screen shows the pig draped in a hospital gown. Is it dead? A surgeon inserts human teeth implants, then hair implants — beautifying the horrifyingly human-like animal. Chang Chen-shen (張辰申) calls Incarnation Project: Deviation Lovers “a satirical self-criticism, a critique on the fact that throughout our lives we’ve been instilled with ideas and things that don’t belong to us.” Chang
The resignation of Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) co-founder Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) as party chair on Jan. 1 has led to an interesting battle between two leading party figures, Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) and Tsai Pi-ru (蔡壁如). For years the party has been a one-man show, but with Ko being held incommunicado while on trial for corruption, the new chair’s leadership could be make or break for the young party. Not only are the two very different in style, their backgrounds are very different. Tsai is a co-founder of the TPP and has been with Ko from the very beginning. Huang has