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.
One of the biggest sore spots in Taiwan’s historical friendship with the US came in 1979 when US president Jimmy Carter broke off formal diplomatic relations with Taiwan’s Republic of China (ROC) government so that the US could establish relations with the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Taiwan’s derecognition came purely at China’s insistence, and the US took the deal. Retired American diplomat John Tkacik, who for almost decade surrounding that schism, from 1974 to 1982, worked in embassies in Taipei and Beijing and at the Taiwan Desk in Washington DC, recently argued in the Taipei Times that “President Carter’s derecognition
JUNE 30 to JULY 6 After being routed by the Japanese in the bloody battle of Baguashan (八卦山), Hsu Hsiang (徐驤) and a handful of surviving Hakka fighters sped toward Tainan. There, he would meet with Liu Yung-fu (劉永福), leader of the Black Flag Army who had assumed control of the resisting Republic of Formosa after its president and vice-president fled to China. Hsu, who had been fighting non-stop for over two months from Taoyuan to Changhua, was reportedly injured and exhausted. As the story goes, Liu advised that Hsu take shelter in China to recover and regroup, but Hsu steadfastly
You can tell a lot about a generation from the contents of their cool box: nowadays the barbecue ice bucket is likely to be filled with hard seltzers, non-alcoholic beers and fluorescent BuzzBallz — a particular favorite among Gen Z. Two decades ago, it was WKD, Bacardi Breezers and the odd Smirnoff Ice bobbing in a puddle of melted ice. And while nostalgia may have brought back some alcopops, the new wave of ready-to-drink (RTD) options look and taste noticeably different. It is not just the drinks that have changed, but drinking habits too, driven in part by more health-conscious consumers and
On Sunday, President William Lai (賴清德) delivered a strategically brilliant speech. It was the first of his “Ten Lectures on National Unity,” (團結國家十講) focusing on the topic of “nation.” Though it has been eclipsed — much to the relief of the opposing Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) — by an ill-advised statement in the second speech of the series, the days following Lai’s first speech were illuminating on many fronts, both domestic and internationally, in highlighting the multi-layered success of Lai’s strategic move. “OF COURSE TAIWAN IS A COUNTRY” Never before has a Taiwanese president devoted an entire speech to
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