Sabotage
If you are desperate to see Arnold Schwarzenegger in another aging tough cop role, then Sabotage isn’t such a bad bet. Don’t get me wrong, it is in every way a truly terrible film, but like the best Arnie flicks, there is just enough tongue-in-cheek to keep you watching. The film is violent, sadistic, misogynistic, gratuitously nasty, and often stupid and confusing, but then you aren’t going to pay money to see Sabotage if you expected finely crafted drama. Sabotage moves forward with all the subtlety of a Hummer, ignoring gaping plot holes as it moves on to its next violent encounter between an elite DEA unit and a drug cartel out for revenge. Director David Ayer has had a mixed track record, but hit pay dirt with the outstanding cop buddy drama End of Watch in 2012 and also wrote the screenplay for another outstanding cop drama Training Day. Sabotage aspires to the same kind of ambiguity about the fine line between crime and law enforcement, but fails to find the same level of emotional involvement in the characters or thoughtfulness about its themes, and is content to make lots of noise and spill lots of blood.
Divergent
Another teen fantasy about being different and discovering who you really are. Divergent is at best mildly entertaining, but one-dimensional characters and the dominance of style over content pull the plug on the film’s appeal. Set in a dystopian future, there are echoes of Harry Potter and The Hunger Games, and ultimately a debt to Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. Sadly, it doesn’t have the entertainment value or depth of the above mentioned, and relies on the usual tropes of teenage rebelliousness seeing through the hypocrisies of adult society to do most of its work. In a society divided into factions based on innate physical and mental qualities, Tris (Shailene Woodley) learns she is a Divergent, a person who cannot be categorized within the system. Divergents are regarded as a danger to society and when Tris discovers a plot to destroy all Divergents, she joins with others in a race against time to find out what really sets her apart. There is plenty of room for sententious platitudes about conquering your fear and being true to who you are, and director Neil Burger fails to show restraint, making Divergent a disappointing comedown from films such as The Lucky Ones and Limitless.
The Way, Way Back
A charming film. Even an enjoyable film. It is heartfelt and warm. It is also trite and utterly predictable from beginning to end. And that does not really matter too much. It is a coming of age story in which 14-year-old Duncan (Liam James) goes on a summer vacation with his mother, Pam (Toni Collette), her overbearing boyfriend, Trent (Steve Carell) and his daughter, Steph (Zoe Levin). He has trouble fitting in until he finds an unexpected friend in gregarious Owen (Sam Rockwell), the manager of a water park. He starts to blossom as a thoughtful, sensitive and adventurous teen. The cast does excellent work throughout, and James and Rockwell build up a real chemistry that keeps the film afloat even though we know everything about it before we are halfway through. It has the same kind of oddball aspirations of Little Miss Sunshine and Juno, but without the edgy humor and anarchic sensibility of these films, it manages to be no more than a craftsmanlike piece of filmmaking that entertains but is not particularly memorable. You could do worse.
Oculus
A mirror possessed by evil that has brought death and desolation to families over a number of centuries. It all sounds a bit too familiar. And, for sure it, Oculus does follow the well-worn horror template, but director Mike Flanagan has taken something that sounds familiar and, by focusing on performance and the small details, created something that elevates the formula. The lives of teenage siblings Tim (Brenton Thwaites) and Kaylie (Karen Gillan) are forever changed when Tim is convicted of the brutal murder of their parents. Ten years later, Kaylie finds the mirror that she believes was the real murderer, and seeks to exonerate her brother, but soon realizes that the brutal nightmare of their childhood has begun again as her grip on reality begins to slip under the mirror’s malign influence. Flanagan swirls the viewer up in his dexterous reshuffling of horror conventions to create a deep sense of unease broken by occasional jolts of the unexpected.
A Tale Of Samurai Cooking – A True Love Story
The latest in a line of a stream of Japanese films looking at the lives of samurai beyond the common caricatures of stoic, sword-wielding superheroes, A Tale Of Samurai Cooking — A True Love Story tells the story of a careerist samurai relegated to the kitchens of a powerful lord. Initially angry and unresponsive, he eventually finds a purpose and achievement with the help of his culinarily gifted wife. The film has echoes of Yoji Yamada’s Love and Honor, which also had a background in the kitchens of a feudal lord, and while director Yuzo Asahara goes for a more conventionally romantic tone, focusing on the difficult relationship between husband and wife that gradually grows into love and respect, he stays away from the usual comic antics in films involving cooking contests and culinary connoisseurs. A background of feudal politics provides a sense of context without blurring the more intimate focus on the relationship between the protagonists.
The Taipei Times last week reported that the rising share of seniors in the population is reshaping the nation’s housing markets. According to data from the Ministry of the Interior, about 850,000 residences were occupied by elderly people in the first quarter, including 655,000 that housed only one resident. H&B Realty chief researcher Jessica Hsu (徐佳馨), quoted in the article, said that there is rising demand for elderly-friendly housing, including units with elevators, barrier-free layouts and proximity to healthcare services. Hsu and others cited in the article highlighted the changing family residential dynamics, as children no longer live with parents,
It is jarring how differently Taiwan’s politics is portrayed in the international press compared to the local Chinese-language press. Viewed from abroad, Taiwan is seen as a geopolitical hotspot, or “The Most Dangerous Place on Earth,” as the Economist once blazoned across their cover. Meanwhile, tasked with facing down those existential threats, Taiwan’s leaders are dying their hair pink. These include former president Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), Vice President Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) and Kaohsiung Mayor Chen Chi-mai (陳其邁), among others. They are demonstrating what big fans they are of South Korean K-pop sensations Blackpink ahead of their concerts this weekend in Kaohsiung.
Taiwan is one of the world’s greatest per-capita consumers of seafood. Whereas the average human is thought to eat around 20kg of seafood per year, each Taiwanese gets through 27kg to 35kg of ocean delicacies annually, depending on which source you find most credible. Given the ubiquity of dishes like oyster omelet (蚵仔煎) and milkfish soup (虱目魚湯), the higher estimate may well be correct. By global standards, let alone local consumption patterns, I’m not much of a seafood fan. It’s not just a matter of taste, although that’s part of it. What I’ve read about the environmental impact of the
Oct 20 to Oct 26 After a day of fighting, the Japanese Army’s Second Division was resting when a curious delegation of two Scotsmen and 19 Taiwanese approached their camp. It was Oct. 20, 1895, and the troops had reached Taiye Village (太爺庄) in today’s Hunei District (湖內), Kaohsiung, just 10km away from their final target of Tainan. Led by Presbyterian missionaries Thomas Barclay and Duncan Ferguson, the group informed the Japanese that resistance leader Liu Yung-fu (劉永福) had fled to China the previous night, leaving his Black Flag Army fighters behind and the city in chaos. On behalf of the
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