Resident Evil: Retribution
Female action heroes are in pretty short supply, and if you except megastar Angelina Jolie, then the queen of this small category is indubitably Milla Jovovich, who seems to have been genetically engineered for the express purpose of killing people in exotic ways while wearing a spandex bodysuit. Retribution is the 5th in the Resident Evil franchise, and inevitably with such movies, the setting is now international (tag line: “Evil goes global”), and the villains more numerous and have bigger killing machines. And, it goes without saying, it will be in 3D.
Detachment
Another in a series of feature films with a revelatory agenda (eg: Larry Clark’s 1995 film Kids), in this case to expose the failure of America’s school system. Directed by Tony Kaye (who also directed American History X), Detachment provides a magnificent vehicle for its star Adrien Brody, whose performance as dedicated substitute teacher Henry Barthes is seen by some critics as his best work since The Pianist. The hectoring tone, stylistic gimmicks (deliberately crude animation sequences, direct address to camera) and tabloid sensationalism of the film have annoyed many critics, who nevertheless acknowledge that the film has visceral power.
Lucky
Director/writer Avie Luthra is both a filmmaker and a practicing psychiatrist, and although the dramatic development of his story of a Zulu AIDS orphan and a short-tempered Indian woman who comes to his rescue (initially for no more than financial gain) is predictable, the quality of the script and the acting make Lucky both warmhearted and real. The central character, Lucky (Sihle Dlamini), is anything but, and moreover, he is far from being a loveable youth. He is bitter and violent, and his savior, played by celebrated Indian stage actress Jayashree Basavaraj, is rapacious and mean. But people change, and Luthra handles these transformations with great sensitivity and insight.
The Prey (La Proie)
Action-packed French film from director Eric Valette and starring veteran tough guy Albert Dupontel. There are plenty of twists and turns in a tale of imprisoned armed robber Franck Adrien, who is a little too forthcoming to a cellmate. After this cellmate’s release, Adrien discovers that his revelations have put his family at risk. He escapes, and a many-tiered manhunt begins. The story is not original, and some of the action sequences a bit too obviously copied from Hollywood, but direction is taut and the cast of veterans provides efficient character portraits.
Vulgaria (低俗喜劇)
Publicity material proudly states that this film, directed by Edmond Pang (彭浩翔) was shot in just 12 days, and Vulgaria has all the qualities of a hastily cobbled together variety show comedy. Pang, whose career as a novelist, show host and filmmaker amply prove that he has his hand on the pulse of Chinese pop culture, may yet strike gold with this off-beat comedy about a unsuccessful film director who gets drawn into a film project in backwoods China financed by Mafia money and aimed at fulfilling various libidinous impulses of the film’s main backer.
From censoring “poisonous books” to banning “poisonous languages,” the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) tried hard to stamp out anything that might conflict with its agenda during its almost 40 years of martial law. To mark 228 Peace Memorial Day, which commemorates the anti-government uprising in 1947, which was violently suppressed, I visited two exhibitions detailing censorship in Taiwan: “Silenced Pages” (禁書時代) at the National 228 Memorial Museum and “Mandarin Monopoly?!” (請說國語) at the National Human Rights Museum. In both cases, the authorities framed their targets as “evils that would threaten social mores, national stability and their anti-communist cause, justifying their actions
Taiwanese chip-making giant Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) plans to invest a whopping US$100 billion in the US, after US President Donald Trump threatened to slap tariffs on overseas-made chips. TSMC is the world’s biggest maker of the critical technology that has become the lifeblood of the global economy. This week’s announcement takes the total amount TSMC has pledged to invest in the US to US$165 billion, which the company says is the “largest single foreign direct investment in US history.” It follows Trump’s accusations that Taiwan stole the US chip industry and his threats to impose tariffs of up to 100 percent
In the run-up to World War II, Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, head of Abwehr, Nazi Germany’s military intelligence service, began to fear that Hitler would launch a war Germany could not win. Deeply disappointed by the sell-out of the Munich Agreement in 1938, Canaris conducted several clandestine operations that were aimed at getting the UK to wake up, invest in defense and actively support the nations Hitler planned to invade. For example, the “Dutch war scare” of January 1939 saw fake intelligence leaked to the British that suggested that Germany was planning to invade the Netherlands in February and acquire airfields
The launch of DeepSeek-R1 AI by Hangzhou-based High-Flyer and subsequent impact reveals a lot about the state of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) today, both good and bad. It touches on the state of Chinese technology, innovation, intellectual property theft, sanctions busting smuggling, propaganda, geopolitics and as with everything in China, the power politics of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). PLEASING XI JINPING DeepSeek’s creation is almost certainly no accident. In 2015 CCP Secretary General Xi Jinping (習近平) launched his Made in China 2025 program intended to move China away from low-end manufacturing into an innovative technological powerhouse, with Artificial Intelligence
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