The Expendables 3
The first two were not much to look at, but managed to be marginally entertaining due to their gung-ho R-rated violence and occasional sense of their own ridiculousness. The third iteration is clearly reaching out for a younger demographic and has toned down the brutality to a PG-13 level, more or less ripping the guts out of the movie. Somehow to make up for this, the cast of meatheads from the 1990s has been padded out with other aging celebs such as Mel Gibson, Harrison Ford, and perhaps as a draw for the Hispanic market, Antonio Banderas as an over-eager assassin who attempts to provide comic relief. Cynical is not the word for it. Apart from the geriatrics stars, there is now a second team of younger Expendables, which includes one woman, the mixed-martial arts sensation Ronda Rousey, but the youngsters are not given much to do either. Characters are definitely secondary to explosions, and there are plenty of those. The action sequences are exciting enough, but are little more than exercises in stunt mechanics. The only real acting is done by Gibson, who is mildly amusing as the villain of the piece.
Deliver Us From Evil
A reasonably effective mashup of a police procedural and a horror flick from emerging horror-meister Scott Derrickson (Sinister, The Exorcism of Emily Rose), Deliver Us From Evil packs in plenty of above-average scares amid the silly demonic possession mumbo jumbo. Derrickson evokes a mood of menace with rainy streets, gloomy interiors, and the transformation of comforting everyday objects into something horrible. Eric Bana is perfectly fine as a tough New York cop faced with horrors that tear through the city and eventually threaten his family. He joins forces with an unconventional priest (Edgar Ramirez), schooled in the rites of exorcism, who does his best with some pretty inept dialogue. Some critics have found redeeming features, seeing in the film new twists to genre conventions, but for the most part, this is nothing more than slightly upmarket horror that has packaged together the usual tricks of the trade into a reasonably attractive bundle.
Lost on a Red Minibus to Taipo (那夜凌晨，我坐上了旺角開往大埔的紅van)
Also released under the more manageable title of The Midnight After, Red Minibus is a long awaited feature release by Hong Kong director Fruit Chan (陳果). The movie is a wildly inventive ride that pushes the comedy-horror-fantasy genre in new directions, while also being a touching adieu to present-day Hong Kong. The source material is a Web novel by 25-year-old Hong Kong writer “Pizza”, which was released as a book in 2012. The story is simple enough: a late-night minibus takes 16 passengers from downtown Kowloon to Tai Po, a New Territories suburb. Along the way, they go through a time-warp, and end up in an alternative Hong Kong that is undergoing some sort of apocalypse. The overall plot does not actually make a lot of sense, but the focus of the film is on the characters caught up in this ordeal, as they panic, argue, cooperate and turn on each other. Some of the fission comes from knowing the cast, which features veteran actors and musicians, but Chan manages to handle his chaotic story with style, and is constantly pushing at the limits of conventional post-apocalyptic horror.
Planes: Fire and Rescue
The Hollywood studios have produced a slew of flicks with endearing automotive characters. Planes: Fire and Rescue is a serviceable release that provides nothing new either in animation artistry, which is surprisingly flat, or character development. The first film, Planes, last year, told the story of Dusty, a cropdusting plane with a fear of heights that lives his dream of competing in a famous around-the-world aerial race. In this second installment, Dusty learns that his engine is damaged and he may never race again, so he joins a forest fire and rescue unit to be trained as a firefighter. The messages of good fellowship and overcoming challenges are all there, and the host of characters, which includes planes, and various pieces of forest clearing equipment, are cute, voiced by a great cast, with occasional good lines, but all too much played by the numbers. Many critics have noted that it is a marked improvement on the first film, with some great rescue scenes that are certainly worthy of the big screen, but for all its qualities, Planes: Fire and Rescue fails to lift itself above the herd of films like Cars and Turbo.
What If
What If so wants to be something more than a regular Friday night romantic comedy. It is one of those incessantly talky movies in which characters explore the nature of their relationship with each other in clever banter that hides deeper themes. Except with What If, the cute, fluffy surface doesn’t hide anything at all. This is not to say there are not some perfectly fine performances, notably by Daniel Radcliffe and Zoe Kazan, who play Wallace, a man burned out from a string of failed relationships, and Chantry, with whom he forms an instant bond, but who lives with her longtime boyfriend. They spend long days and nights wondering around bars and cafes in Toronto, having dinner with friends and talking about why men and women can’t just be friends. There is a nice indie vibe to the Irish-Canadian co-production, but the screenplay just isn’t up to the film’s ambitions, and the whole thing was done so much better in When Harry Met Sally.
When nature calls, Masana Izawa has followed the same routine for more than 50 years: heading out to the woods in Japan, dropping his pants and doing as bears do. “We survive by eating other living things. But you can give faeces back to nature so that organisms in the soil can decompose them,” the 74-year-old said. “This means you are giving life back. What could be a more sublime act?” “Fundo-shi” (“poop-soil master”) Izawa is something of a celebrity in Japan, publishing books, delivering lectures and appearing in a documentary. People flock to his “Poopland” and centuries-old wooden “Fundo-an” (“poop-soil house”) in
Jan 13 to Jan 19 Yang Jen-huang (楊仁煌) recalls being slapped by his father when he asked about their Sakizaya heritage, telling him to never mention it otherwise they’ll be killed. “Only then did I start learning about the Karewan Incident,” he tells Mayaw Kilang in “The social culture and ethnic identification of the Sakizaya” (撒奇萊雅族的社會文化與民族認定). “Many of our elders are reluctant to call themselves Sakizaya, and are accustomed to living in Amis (Pangcah) society. Therefore, it’s up to the younger generation to push for official recognition, because there’s still a taboo with the older people.” Although the Sakizaya became Taiwan’s 13th
Earlier this month, a Hong Kong ship, Shunxin-39, was identified as the ship that had cut telecom cables on the seabed north of Keelung. The ship, owned out of Hong Kong and variously described as registered in Cameroon (as Shunxin-39) and Tanzania (as Xinshun-39), was originally People’s Republic of China (PRC)-flagged, but changed registries in 2024, according to Maritime Executive magazine. The Financial Times published tracking data for the ship showing it crossing a number of undersea cables off northern Taiwan over the course of several days. The intent was clear. Shunxin-39, which according to the Taiwan Coast Guard was crewed
China’s military launched a record number of warplane incursions around Taiwan last year as it builds its ability to launch full-scale invasion, something a former chief of Taiwan’s armed forces said Beijing could be capable of within a decade. Analysts said China’s relentless harassment had taken a toll on Taiwan’s resources, but had failed to convince them to capitulate, largely because the threat of invasion was still an empty one, for now. Xi Jinping’s (習近平) determination to annex Taiwan under what the president terms “reunification” is no secret. He has publicly and stridently promised to bring it under Communist party (CCP) control,
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