The Hunger Games
The run-up for The Hunger Games has been massive, and based on various sneak peaks into this violent teen fantasy by best-selling author Suzanne Collins, the 142-minute flick in which a group of teenagers is trained up and released into the wilds to engage in a televised battle to find the last man or woman standing, is ticking all the right boxes. There are strong echoes of the Japanese cult classic Battle Royale (2000), though with a higher dose of sentiment and more time to engage with the young heroes Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) and Peeta Mellark (Josh Hutcherson), best friends who find themselves engaged in a to-the-death battle with 22 others in which, if all goes as planned, only one can survive. Aimed at teens, there is a clever mixture of science fiction, action and romance.
We Need to Talk About Kevin
A big festival favorite, We Need to Talk About Kevin has garnered accolades for its star Tilda Swinton, who plays Eva Khatchadourian, the mother of Kevin, a boy who engages in a killing spree similar to the Columbine High School massacre in 1999. Based on a novel by Lionel Shriver and directed by Lynne Ramsay, the film takes on its own life as a horror story that is nevertheless firmly based in reality. Eva is a mother who sacrifices an ideal life on the altar of parental responsibility, but finds her relationship with her son Kevin destroying her from within. Ultimately he leaves her marooned on an island of culpability for having brought a monster into the world. Strong performances and an unflinching directorial eye make this a film that is not easily forgotten.
Spy Kids: All the Time in the World
The Spy Kids franchise is back with another installment, and whatever one might have thought about the original idea of kids taking on the role of super agents to save their parents, black ops operatives who get themselves caught in a jam, it has carried through three films without bombing out. This fourth iteration stars Jessica Alba and Joel McHale as the parents in question, but they conspicuously lack the sexiness and wit that gave the first three films, with Antonio Banderas and Carla Gugino, the small amount of charm that this rather sub-par children’s adventure series ever had.
The Devil Inside
Demonic possession, handheld camera work, found footage, the Catholic Church, science and religion are all put into this movie and given a good shake. The story involves a woman, Isabella (Fernanda Andrade), who gets involved in the darker side of religious ritual while trying to discover what happened to her mother Maria, who committed three murders while undergoing an exorcism. Obviously things are going to go wrong. The faux documentary style is heavily influenced by the Paranormal Activity franchise, and you either like it or you don’t. This approach is combined with B-movie melodrama and scenes of people having a really bad time. The director is aiming for shocks, but only gets yawns.
The Third Wish (第三個願望)
In much the same vein as last year’s Leaving Gracefully (帶一片風景走), The Third Wish is a sentimental tug-of-love family drama with all the usual tropes of filial bonds, terminal illness and genetic inheritance. With a cast featuring a new generation of local acting talent, the film boasts an attractive look, but does not escape from the predictable rhythms of soap opera tragedy. A father, Rong-guang (played by Chris Wu, 吳慷仁), battles to keep custody of his son after his ex-wife (played by Alice Tzeng, 曾愷玹) returns with suggestions that the boy might actually be the child of her new partner. The battle over custody takes a strange turn when Rong-guang discovers that he has Lou Gehrig’s disease.
All’s Well, Ends Well (八星抱喜)
The seventh film in a series of lightweight entertainments from Hong Kong that packs together a host of big names, puts them together in a ridiculous situation, and works out a fairly predictable plot with plenty of good humor and the occasional easy laugh. This installment brings together Hong Kong’s current favorite leading man, Donnie Yen (甄子丹), with series veterans Raymond Wong (黃百鳴), Sandra Ng (吳君如) and Louis Koo (古天樂). The setup, in which a Web site connects women with men who are willing to help them out in return for a hug, is absurd even for a rom-com, but the quality cast, good humor and established format keep this fluffy concoction buoyed up.
Life Back Then (Antoki no inochi)
A film about the healing power of love from pinku eiga (softcore porn) director Takahisa Zeze, whose move to mainstream romantic drama might have fans longing for a bit of tits and ass titillation. Instead, we have Masaki Okada as a fiercely passionate youth with a severe speech impediment and Nana Eikura as a young girl with a kind, but deeply wounded, heart. They find themselves working in a job cleaning the residences of the newly dead, and it is no surprise that they connect. Of course, their unhappy pasts place huge obstacles to their romance. Unlike the Oscar-winning Departures, also set in a death-related industry, Life Back Then aims for the tear ducts in a blatantly calculated fashion.
The Mill and the Cross
Art house film about a painting that has critics gushing. Many movies have taken a famous painting as their point of departure, notably Girl With a Pearl Earring with Scarlett Johansson. The Mill and the Cross does not particularly aim at venturing into the realm of costume drama, and rather than using the painting, in this case The Way to Calvary by the great 16th-century Flemish artist Pieter Bruegel the Elder, as a point of departure, the film keeps the painting front and center. Director Lech Majewski takes his camera through the picture to depict the lives, often wordlessly, of the people shown. With a tantalizing cast, which includes Rutger Hauer, Charlotte Rampling and Michael York, the film is at once a study of a particular point in history, and also a meditation on the creative process that can capture a moment in time and preserve it for posterity.
Turn Me On, Dammit
A movie about hormones gone crazy in a teen sex comedy from Norwegian director Jannicke Systad Jacobsen. The story centers on 15-year-old Alma, whose sexual fantasies encompass almost everyone she meets. She and her girlfriends are constantly talking about sex, and soon rumors begin to spread, rather in the manner of Easy A, but with characters and situations more firmly rooted in actual teen experience. Teenage girls resorting to masturbation and porn to get off are not something that Hollywood is comfortable with, giving this Nordic feature an edgy quality, even though Turn Me On, Dammit remains primarily in the genre of the teen comedy romance.
You Won’t Get to Live Life Twice (Zindagi na milegi dobara)
Three guys get together to escape the routines of their existence and prepare to face commitment and marriage. They embark on an adventure full of juvenile pranks and perils, from the romantic to the life threatening. Obviously, given that this is a comedy, the end result is life affirming, they exorcise the ghosts of their past, rediscover the true meaning of friendship and the purpose of life, and realize the importance of love. You’ve heard it all before, but in You Won’t Get to Live Life Twice its in Hindi, has plenty of musical numbers, and is set against a colorful, tourist-brochure Spain. Starring a Bollywood A-list trio of Hrithik Roshan, Abhay Deol and Farhan Akhtar.
Wunderkinder
Germany’s nomination for the Oscars, Wunderkinder is a lavish drama set against the background of World War II and the powerful and often conflicting forces of anti-Semitism that were ignited in Germany and the Soviet Union. Gedeon Burkhard and Natalia Avelon play Boris and Rachel Brodsky, two prodigiously talented young musicians who become pawns in a vicious game of cultural politics.
Dec. 9 to Dec. 15 When architect Lee Chung-yao (李重耀) heard that the Xinbeitou Train Station was to be demolished in 1988 for the MRT’s Tamsui line, he immediately reached out to the owner of Taiwan Folk Village (台灣民俗村). Lee had been advising Shih Chin-shan (施金山) on his pet project, a 52-hectare theme park in Changhua County that aimed to showcase traditional Taiwanese architecture, crafts and culture. Shih had wanted to build all the structures from scratch, but Lee convinced him to acquire historic properties and move them to the park grounds. Although the Cultural
The Taipei Times reported last week that housing transactions fell 15.3 percent last month, to under 20,000 units. However, the market boomed for the first eight months of the year, and observers expect it to show growth for the year as a whole. The fall was due to Central Bank intervention. “The negative impact of credit controls grew evident for the third straight month,” said Sinyi Realty Inc (信義房屋) research manager Tseng Ching-ter (曾敬德), according to the report. Central Bank Governor Yang Chin-long (楊金龍) in October said that the Central Bank implemented selective credit controls in September to cool the housing
Bitcoin topped US$100,000 for the first time this week as a massive rally in the world’s most popular cryptocurrency, largely accelerated by the election of Donald Trump, rolls on. The cryptocurrency officially rose six figures Wednesday night, just hours after the president-elect said he intends to nominate cryptocurrency advocate Paul Atkins to be the next chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission. Bitcoin has soared since Trump won the US presidential election on Nov. 5. The asset climbed from US$69,374 on Election Day, hitting as high as US$103,713 Wednesday, according to CoinDesk. And the latest all-time high arrives just two years after
About half of working women reported feeling stressed “a lot of the day,” compared to about 4 in 10 men, according to a Gallup report published this week. The report suggests that competing demands of work and home comprise part of the problem: working women who are parents or guardians are more likely than men who are parents to say they have declined or delayed a promotion at work because of personal or family obligations, and mothers are more likely than fathers to “strongly agree” that they are the default responders for unexpected child care issues. And 17 percent of women overall
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