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.
The canonical shot of an East Asian city is a night skyline studded with towering apartment and office buildings, bright with neon and plastic signage, a landscape of energy and modernity. Another classic image is the same city seen from above, in which identical apartment towers march across the city, spilling out over nearby geography, like stylized soldiers colonizing new territory in a board game. Densely populated dynamic conurbations of money, technological innovation and convenience, it is hard to see the cities of East Asia as what they truly are: necropolises. Why is this? The East Asian development model, with
June 16 to June 22 The following flyer appeared on the streets of Hsinchu on June 12, 1895: “Taipei has already fallen to the Japanese barbarians, who have brought great misery to our land and people. We heard that the Japanese occupiers will tax our gardens, our houses, our bodies, and even our chickens, dogs, cows and pigs. They wear their hair wild, carve their teeth, tattoo their foreheads, wear strange clothes and speak a strange language. How can we be ruled by such people?” Posted by civilian militia leader Wu Tang-hsing (吳湯興), it was a call to arms to retake
This is a deeply unsettling period in Taiwan. Uncertainties are everywhere while everyone waits for a small army of other shoes to drop on nearly every front. During challenging times, interesting political changes can happen, yet all three major political parties are beset with scandals, strife and self-inflicted wounds. As the ruling party, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) is held accountable for not only the challenges to the party, but also the nation. Taiwan is geopolitically and economically under threat. Domestically, the administration is under siege by the opposition-controlled legislature and growing discontent with what opponents characterize as arrogant, autocratic
When Lisa, 20, laces into her ultra-high heels for her shift at a strip club in Ukraine’s Kharkiv, she knows that aside from dancing, she will have to comfort traumatized soldiers. Since Russia’s 2022 invasion, exhausted troops are the main clientele of the Flash Dancers club in the center of the northeastern city, just 20 kilometers from Russian forces. For some customers, it provides an “escape” from the war, said Valerya Zavatska — a 25-year-old law graduate who runs the club with her mother, an ex-dancer. But many are not there just for the show. They “want to talk about what hurts,” she
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