16 發光的城市 A R O U N D T O W N FRIDAY, JUNE 4, 2010 • TAIPEI TIMES

FILM REVIEW OTHER RELEASES Compiled BY IAn Bartholomew Photo courtesy of iFilm

One Day (有一天) A new Hou Hsiao-hsien (侯孝賢) production, One Day, written and directed by Hou Chi-ran (侯季然), is described as “a visual love poem of magical realism” on the International Movie Database, and the trailer suggests that it is replete with all the excesses of Taiwanese art house aspirations. A great deal of labored emoting takes place between Nikki Hsieh (謝欣穎) and Bryan Chang (張書豪), both emerging but still minor talents in Chinese-language cinema. Although the film is being endorsed by Hou Andrea Arnold’s second movie is Hsiao-hsien, to get a real taste of Taiwanese cinema, it might be best to prime yourself for the 12-day Hou Hsiao-hsien Retrospective titled a tour de force of social realism The Best of Times (最好的時光 — 侯孝賢電影經典重現), which is scheduled to open on Monday (see below). By A. O. SCOTT NY Times News Service, New York Hou Hsiao-hsien Retrospective The Best of Times (最好的時光—侯孝賢電影經典重現) The mini-festival presents 11 works by Taiwan’s preeminent cinematic auteur, to be screened at the Wonderful Theater (真善 美戲院, formerly the Majestic) and the auditorium of the National Taiwan University of the Arts (國立台灣藝術大 學). The lineup ranges from 1983’s Green, Green Grass of Home (在那河畔青草青) through to Hou’s most recent major release, Flight of the Red Balloon (紅氣球, 2007) and includes all his major works. The festival runs from Monday until June 18. All screenings are free. For more details visit the festival’s Web site at www.ntua.edu. tw/~film/houhsiao-hsien.html.

Director’s A-List Film Festival (2010國民戲院 — 大導演的獨家片單) Part of the POP Cinema series hosted by HowHow dodo youyou solvesolve aa problemproblem likelike 光點台北電 Mia?Mia? SPOT — Taipei Film House ( 影院), the festival opens today and takes place at SPOT, Universal Cinema City (全球 影城) in Taichung and the Kaohsiung Film ia, the 15-year- and force. Though Mia is poor, boyfriend. Mom, slightly less her film’s setting — the graffiti have thrown the film off balance. Archive (高雄市電影圖書館). The festival focuses on the early works of old protagonist unruly and obviously, in social- miserable and abusive when in the corridors, the litter on (It may have helped that Arnold a number of directors, and is a must for anyone interested in visiting of Fish Tank, work parlance, “at risk” — her drunk — and therefore, perhaps the sidewalks, the trash on gave the script to her cast one renowned directors in their first flush of success. Films include Orson Andrea Arnold’s mother (Kierston Wareing) and luckily for Mia, rarely sober television — and her harsh brand scene at a time, so that they did Welles’ Citizen Kane and Truffaut’s The Four Hundred Blows, Kevin tough and younger sister, with whom she — has brought home a bit of of realism is no less a style than not know what was coming next.) Smith’s Clerks and Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs. Detailed schedule times Mbrilliant second feature, moves lives, are equally volatile, or decency as well as fun. Or so Scherfig’s wry worldliness. We And Wareing, who appeared in for Taipei can be found at www.twfilm.org/a_list. The festival runs with such speed and fury that even more so — Fish Tank is it appears. Connor is friendly, find ourselves, in Fish Tank, in Loach’s It’s a Free World, keeps from today until June 18 in Taipei, June 18 to June 24 in Taichung and she seems to be trying to flee not not drawn from the case files, generous and easy in the a world made familiar by the her woebegone character just this June 29 to July 4 in Kaohsiung. Tickets are NT$200 in Taipei and can only from her bleak surroundings and does not solicit pity. Rather, company of Mia and Sophie, her films of Ken Loach, Mike Leigh side of caricature. be obtained online at www.artsticket.com.tw or at the venue. but also from the movie itself. thanks to Arnold’s fine-grained prickly, foulmouthed little sister. and other socially conscious But the movie is Mia’s, whose The narrow, nearly square frame realism and the astonishing He takes the family fishing anatomists of British misery. life is too much for her to handle boxes Mia in, and Arnold’s on- performance of Katie Jarvis, — his car is among his many It’s a place I’m usually but who must learn to manage Good Man Film Festival (好人影展) the-run hand-held tracking shots the nonprofessional actress attractive assets — and lends (perhaps perversely) happy it anyway. Whether she will Film distributor Serenity Entertainment increase the sense of panicky who plays Mia, it is a diamond- Mia his video camera so she to visit, and to locate Arnold’s succeed is a big question, of International delved into its catalog of claustrophobia. Living in a hard reflection on the peril and can record a dance routine for work in a recognizable tradition course, but Jarvis’ triumph, and international art house films to put on this cramped apartment in a British progress of a fragile soul in a an audition. More unsettling is not to slight her particular Arnold’s, are hardly in doubt. mini film festival. The title is self-explanatory housing project that stands like a bad situation. implications gather slowly, and and considerable strengths as in a vague sort of way. The program includes cluster of megaliths in the middle A trained actor might have arise partly out of the welter a filmmaker. Her first feature, Away We Go, directed by Sam Mendes from of nowhere, Mia is at once taken care to sort out and of Mia’s feelings about Connor. Red Road, was a tour de force a screenplay by David Eggers, the Coen Brothers’ A Serious Man and trapped and adrift, unable to communicate Mia’s emotions, She sees him as a big brother, a of psychological insight slightly Jessica Yu’s Ping Pong Playa. Screenings are at the Wonderful Theater contain or to express the feelings giving the audience a clear father figure and an easy-going undermined by a script that relied and the Ambassador Changchun Cinema (國賓長春影城). seething beneath the blank, perspective on the girl’s pal, but she also has a crush on a bit too much on late reversals sullen mien she usually presents inner life. Instead, Jarvis’ him. As it intensifies, so does our and surprises. Fish Tank goes a Fish Tank to the world. tentative, sometimes opaque unease about Connor’s response. little astray toward the end, in a Earth In the first scenes she self-presentation registers the Like Mia, the audience trusts him scene of breathless pursuit across A feature-length compilation from the comes across a group of girls crucial fact about Mia, which is at first because we have no other a marshy seaside wasteland. (To television series Planet Earth made by the DIRECTED BY: practicing hip-hop dance moves her confusion. She is a puzzle to choice, but we come to suspect say more would give too much BBC and Discovery Channel, the transition Andrea Arnold on a patch of asphalt. She taunts herself, unable to understand, a predatory, deceiving side to his away.) The sequence is powerful to big screen makes the most of high- and provokes these apparent much less control, her fury, character long before she does. and skillfully filmed, but the dread STARRING: definition images, producing a power and rivals, pushing the confrontation her desire or her fear. When How could she? She’s 15. and horror it injects into the story intimacy not possible in the living room. toward violence and delivering a she dances alone in an empty Fish Tank, insofar as it seem superfluously melodramatic. Katie Jarvis (Mia), Michael Fassbender (Connor), Kierston Startlingly beautiful shots show animals in the fullness of their strength, nose-breaking head butt to one apartment, she is not exactly at concerns the relationship between Otherwise, Fish Tank is nearly Wareing (Joanne), Rebecca hunting, swimming and migrating. While Earth focuses mostly on the of them. A few minutes later peace, but at least in a state of a restless teenage girl and an flawless. Fassbender, who was Griffiths (Tyler) and Harry awesomeness of nature, the tragedy of animals trying to cope with Mia is in a fenced-in vacant lot cease-fire in her ongoing war unreliable older man, bears some the Irish militant Bobby Sands Treadaway (Billy) changes resulting from global warming is also present. Identities and trying to free a horse tethered to with herself and everything else. resemblance to An Education, in Steve McQueen’s Hunger and narratives have been given to many of Earth’s stars, making this ideal a concrete block. She swerves Although she prefers to be Lone Scherfig’s much-praised the suave British film critic in RUNNING TIME: material for younger audiences. from rage to tenderness, and may alone, Mia craves connection. She recent movie. That film wraps Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious 122 MINUTES not even know which is which. develops a tentative friendship its sexual queasiness in period Basterds, is quickly establishing What does Mia want? To be with one of the young men who glamour, fetishizing early-1960s himself as an actor of impressive TAIWAN RELEASE: Sex and the City 2 free, to be safe, to be left alone, keep that poor half-metaphorical clothes, cigarettes and cultural range and skill. The slightest TODAY The sequel to the film of the long-running to be loved. The contradictions horse, and a far more complicated references as ardently as its imprecision in his portrayal television series has by general consensus of adolescence have rarely been relationship with Connor (Michael young heroine. Arnold is no of Connor — too much overt driven the franchise definitively into conveyed with such authenticity Fassbender), her mother’s new less absorbed in the details of menace, or too little — would the ground. Critics have been scathing about most aspects of the film, from its cynical product placement, its squirm- FILM REVIEW inducing attempts to be sexy, the characters’ emptiness and script’s tedium. It has been described by one female critic as “essentially a home video of gay men playing with giant Barbie dolls,” and verges on the pornographic in its objectification of women — its stars, no less — as little more than, in the words of the Lily Allen song, “weapons of Unlocking Pandora’s box massive consumption.” Be warned.

A teenager prodigy and hacker do battle in ‘Summer Wars,’ a cautionary tale about overreliance on the Net I Just Didn’t Do It (Soredemo Boku Wa Yattenai) Veteran director Masayuki Suo’s film about By Ian Bartholomew the tragic absurdities of the Japanese Staff Reporter justice system was first released in 2006 With Japanese manga film adaptations, it and won numerous awards in Japan for its is not always easy to separate the gems biting social commentary and attention to from the dross, and a great deal of dross Summer Wars detail. The story of a young man charged with molesting a 15-year-old is screened on Taiwanese screens simply girl on a crowded train plunges the protagonist into a system that is to feed an appetite for all things Japanese. (Sama Wozu) all about upholding the moral authority of the police. At 143 minutes, With Summer Wars (Sama Wazu), we have I Just Didn’t Do It, which follows the characters through the tortuous most definitely got a gem. This is the sort of legal proceedings, drags at times, but as an introduction to how the DIRECTED BY: movie that rivals, and for the technologically courts operate, the film is superlative. oriented perhaps even surpasses, the work Mamoru Hosoda of Hayao Miyazaki, who created such classic animations as Spirited Away (2001) and My Ex (Fan Kao) Voiced by: Howl’s Moving Castle (2004). Ryunosuke Kamiki (Kenji Koiso), Yet another film from the Thai horror The story is about Kenji, an 11th grade Nanami Sakuraba (Natsuki factory, My Ex milks the Fatal Attraction computer whiz kid who is invited to stay Shinohara), Sumiko Fuji (Sakae theme for all it is worth. Not content at the family home of Natsuki, a girl he Jinnouchi), Mitsuki Tanimura with retribution in this life, My Ex takes has a crush on. He is asked to pose as her (Kazuma Ikezawa), Ayumu Saito vengeance into the next. In this film, we boyfriend in the hope that this will mollify Mamoru Hosoda’s manga adaptation gives the work of Hayao Miyazaki a run for its money. photo courtesy of Mighty Media (Wabisuke Jinnouchi) have playboy Ken swanning around with Natsuki’s grandmother, who is not long for a bevy of lovelies, but who soon discovers that discarded lovers can this world. This sort of scenario is not new, but The family supports Kenji as he tries RUNNING TIME: come back to haunt him. A moralistic tone, repetitious use of scare Uncomfortable with this role, he spends Hosoda’s film brings it to life as a piece of to put things right. Much action takes 114 MINUTES tactics and a contempt for internal logic make My Ex second rate fare. a sleepless night working on a puzzle that is fun family entertainment that proposes an place within the virtual world of Oz, where sent to his cellphone. He solves the puzzle. all too possible result of our dependence King Kazuma and Kenji try to contain the Language: What he doesn’t realize, until it is too late, on and casual acceptance of the Internet. chaos as the malignant force goes viral. Japanese with Chinese subtitles Higanjima is that he has just cracked the security code There are a bunch of appealing characters, The conflict, in all its graphic art glory, is Japanese vampire flick by South Korean for Oz, a virtual world that has become from Natsuki’s grandmother, the aging utterly unreal, and also curiously exciting. TAIWAN RELEASE: director Kim Tae-gyun that puts a bunch indispensable to the real world. Oz is matriarch of an ancient samurai family, And the spillover into the daily lives of the TODAY of young people on an island inhabited where people do their banking, meet their an uncle who recounts in tedious detail characters is very believable, largely as it is by fearsome vampires who relish torture, friends, monitor their health and calibrate the not altogether glorious history of the so closely linked with things most of us do murder and general mayhem, all of their GPS. His solution to the puzzle has family and its retainers in various historical every day — namely communicate and act which is inflicted at a breakneck pace provided root accesses to a malign force conflicts, and the sullen teenager whose through various online systems. thoughtful and fun. This may be simple flat to a thrash metal score. There are some clever ideas in the film, but operating within Oz. Millions of user real life is lived as King Kazuma (a rabbit Summer Wars does a splendid job in animation that harks back to technologies this manga remake (based on the best-seller by Koji Matsumoto) has accounts are compromised and then used with martial arts skills) and who spends his representing one of the hottest topics of many decades old, but in terms of quality, the story-telling subtlety of an arcade game. For action fans, there’s to create chaos in the real world. Total time fighting his way through the highest the modern world — computer security it leaves many recent 3D animations plenty to like, but Twilight fans will be disappointed. social meltdown is imminent. level of Oz’s combat championships. — and presenting it in a way that is both trailing in its dust.