Alien Abduction
Found footage has run its course. It was a great teaser, but a tease by its very nature is not something that has much longevity and it’s been nearly 15 years since The Blair Witch Project. Alien Abduction bills itself as being based on real events that took place in the Brown Mountains of North Carolina in which the Morris family is supposedly abducted, leaving behind a video record of events that is subsequently recovered by the US military. First time director Matty Beckerman manages to repackage this shopworn material in a sufficiently modern way that makes it slightly more than the sum of its very second-hand parts. Characters come from a well-used stock of types but Beckerman utilizes them in a skillful enough manner to generate some emotional response. This super-low budget feature that was originally released to the video-on-demand market is effective but really does not have a place on the big screen.
Pecoross’ Mother And Her Days
At age 85, Director Azuma Morisaki is now the oldest active film director in Japan, and the theme of this movie is clearly something close to his heart. Based on a manga by Yuichi Okano, Pecoross’ Mother And Her Days tells the autobiographical story of Okano, a baby boomer born and raised in Nagasaki. His Mother, Mitsue has dementia that began soon after her husband’s death 10 years before. The film depicts their daily life that is full of humor and sweet sorrow, and deals with the difficult topics of nursing care and dementia, both major social issues in contemporary Japan. The intimate settings and gentle humor manage a mix of laughter and tears, and also follows Okano as he creates the manga that is the basis of this story. Perhaps more suited to television, Pecoross’ Mother And Her Days shows Morisaki’s ample experience as a director and tells a real and affecting story that is more than happy to have its audience reaching for a tissue.
Khumba
If you liked the Madagascar franchise, then you might find something to enjoy in Khumba, which has some stylistic associations. Sadly, the borrowings do not end here and often they are just a little bit too obvious. The story itself comes straight from the Lion King movie crib book, and is a formulaic recounting of Khumba’s adventures as a strange half-striped zebra who is ostracized from the herd and embarks on an adventure in which he meets new friends, is rescued from an opportunistic wild dog by a quirky duo — a wildebeest and an ostrich — and eventually finds his true worth and saves the day. Everyone is special. We know that. But Khumba isn’t quite special enough to stand out on an overcrowded stage of excellent animal-centered animations. Even the talented voice cast that includes Steve Buscemi, Laurence Fishburne, Richard E. Grant and Liam Neeson are not enough to breathe life into the film. As with so many of these films, there is clearly the expectation among the filmmakers that the 3D format will make up for a multitude of other failings, but as is everywhere evident, 3D can sometimes give added dimension to a good film, but it has yet to make a mediocre film better than it really is.
The Railway Man
A stirring drama of a man coping with the demons of war, or a dull-as-ditchwater account of unpleasant events that never engages. The critics are polarized by The Railway Man, based on the autobiography of Eric Lomax, a railway enthusiast from Edinburgh unfortunate enough to be captured in 1942 during the fall of Singapore and subjected to horrific abuse after owning up to having built a radio at his camp. Years later, Lomax (Colin Firth), in the midst of a late-life romance with divorcee Patti (Nicole Kidman), discovers that his tormenter in the prison is still alive and apparently well, working as a guide to the prison facility where he once worked as a guard. This is a marvelously assured work by director Jonathan Teplitzky, but its restraint is seen by some as a dilution of powerful emotions that are not always realized on screen. For all that, this film takes an unusual perspective on the horrors of war and what it does to its participants, and although it does not dish out any exciting surprises, it is an honest and competent attempt to deal with the complex emotional situations of its characters.
Sacro GRA
Documentary filmmaker Gianfranco Rosi has tackled many unusual subjects including the India of Varanasi’s boatmen, the American desert of the dropouts and the Mexico of the narco-assassin. With Sacro GRA he seems at first to have taken a detour into the mundane. A documentary whose core subject is the Grande Raccordo Anulare (GRA), the highway that runs a loop around Rome near its outskirts. Rome probably more than any other city is associated, in cinema anyway, with the glamor of La Dolce Vita and this year particularly with Paolo Sorrentino’s The Great Beauty, odds-on favorite for Best Foreign Language Film Oscar. Rosi has created the complete antidote, telling the partial stories of the periphery, the strange twilight world of a ring-road always filled with people on the move. That Rosi manages to discover something profound in this most unexciting of material is reflected in the fact that Sacro GRA is the first documentary ever to win the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival. This is a complex film with many different layers and great potential for interpretation.
To the consternation of its biological father — China — the young nation of Taiwan seems to prefer its step-dad, Japan. When the latter was forced out, a semi-modernized iteration of the former returned. And just as some people thrive as adults, despite an unstable childhood, Taiwan has become a democratic success. Unfortunately, the island’s biological father behaves like a parent who is no use, yet who continues to meddle. A combination of rose-tinted retrospection and growing mutual respect has given many Taiwanese a highly positive attitude toward Japan. Physical reminders of the 1895-1945 period of Japanese rule are treasured,
Last month China lashed out at Taiwanese agricultural exports again, banning grouper imports. This event marked the ignominious end of what was once the star agricultural product of the ill-starred Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA). Local media quoted the Fisheries Agency as saying it was a turning point in Taiwan’s grouper history. Spurred by the signing of ECFA, by the spring of 2011 grouper had become the leading agricultural export, driving profits for middlemen and food price inflation. Grouper exports were among the few products whose market grew, enabling then-president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) to
A year before Britain handed Hong Kong to China, then-president Jiang Zemin (江澤民) hailed the “one country, two systems” plan for the city as a model for the country to one day unify with Taiwan. Taiwan would get “a high degree of autonomy” — the same pledge China used for Hong Kong — while keeping legislative and independent judicial power, and its own armed forces, according to Jiang’s speech, copies of which were distributed at Hong Kong’s handover center in 1997. For Taiwan though, the proposal has never been an option. Even the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) — a vestige of
How does Hong Kong look to people born in the year of the handover — for whom the city has always been under Chinese sovereignty? Some feel their fate is tied to Hong Kong’s, while others feel like bystanders as Beijing tightens its grip. Many plan to leave sooner or later. We spoke to six 24 and 25-year-olds about the Hong Kong they grew up in, and the one they expect to exist in another 25 years. THE RETURNING PROFESSIONAL “I feel helpless witnessing the changes that Hong Kong has been through,” said Keanne Lee. “At the same time, I want to keep
RSS