16 發光的城市 A R O U N D T O W N FRIDAY, JANUARY 2, 2009 • TAIPEI TIMES

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Compiled by Martin Williams

Childhoods From France, this is a series of short films that creates scenes from the childhoods of famed filmmakers. Part of the gimmick is to leave the identification of the director to the end of the piece, which means that audiences can have fun trying to tease out clues on who the child really is. Interestingly, two of the six subjects themselves made classic films about children — unfortunately, however, neither of them is Francois Truffaut, though perhaps everyone balked at reshooting scenes from The 400 Blows. Screening exclusively at the Changchun theater in Taipei.

The Magic Hour Once upon a time, there Koki Mitani is a sometime film director from the Japanese theater who has made a small number of highly successful comedies for the big screen and TV. The Magic was a resentful handyman Hour is his latest, a screwball comedy homage that sees a nightclub boss get caught having an affair with a crime lord’s dame. To save his life, he lies about who agreed to babysit knowing the whereabouts of a mysterious man the gang is looking for, and then has an actor impersonate him. It’s all lunacy and laughs from there. Happily, fans of Mitani and this kind of film will also When ’s far-fetched bedtime stories have the chance to see his previous movie Suite Dreams, come to life, he bests the villains and bags the girls made in 2006, which opens next week in limited release.

By JEANNETTE CATSOULIS Lovely Complex NY Times News Service, new york This Japanese manga adaptation photos: AP explores the outer reaches of cute as tallish freak girl meets shortish geek boy, spending the next 100 Adam Sandler is at that difficult “I don’t believe in happy Fawlty look like a paragon of minutes or so pretending not to age. Now 42, he’s too old to endings,” he tells his incredulous restraint. adore each other. Bright colors, continue with the bungling, charges when story time comes Almost everyone leaves blood music, basketball, larger than life man-child shtick of yore, yet too around. Luckily for the tykes, on the floor, but Bedtime Stories performances, exaggerated facial young to transition to old-fogey their director, , Bedtime stories refuses to be juiced; soured by expressions — just about enough infantilism. In Bedtime Stories the loves them, the happier the better. its enervated star and uninspired to impress kids on their first date pain of this artistic limbo is written (Even as a guest judge on So You Directed by: Adam Shankman writing, the movie offers only movie. This was made three years all over his character, a resentful Think You Can Dance Shankman, tiny moments of joy, like a ago, which suggests local distributors are beginning to hotel handyman named Skeeter. a popular choreographer, Starring: Adam Sandler (Skeeter Bronson), Keri Russell (Jill), hailstorm of gumballs that’s trawl through back catalogs of manga movies for stuff to Astonishingly, his name is not the squirmed mightily to avoid Guy Pearce (Kendall), Russell Brand (Mickey), Richard Griffiths unexpectedly magical. throw at the market. Also known as Love.com. source of his umbrage. delivering a bad critique.) (Barry Nottingham), Jonathan Pryce (Marty Bronson), Clearly, pushing Skeeter’s Skeeter’s pique (though he may Rolling up his sleeves and Courteney Cox (Wendy), Lucy Lawless (Aspen), Laura Ann Kesling broom doesn’t agree with Sandler, (Bobbi), Jonathan Morgan Heit (Patrick), The Librarian: Return to King Solomon’s Mines not know it) is reserved for his piling on the digital effects, (Violet Nottingham), Aisha Tyler (Donna Hynde) who seems impatient with imma- dead father, an inept businessman he labors to whip life into a turity and anxious to grow up. He From tomorrow, the Baixue whose cozy motel once occupied screenplay (by Matt Lopez and Running Time: 98 minutes was much happier selling novelty theater in Ximending hosts another the lot where Skeeter’s current Tim Herlihy) so tired even Bugsy, toilet plungers in Punch-Drunk bunch of tie-in screenings of HiNet employer has erected an upscale the children’s pop-eyed guinea pig, Taiwan release: Currently showing Love, but the director of that hiChannel product, this time an resort. Gone, along with the is moved to tuck himself into bed. movie, Paul Thomas Anderson, rec- Indiana Jones-style TV movie homespun vibe, is Skeeter’s But Shankman is not one to villain and bags the girl. The hope, be brief, including Lucy ognized his star’s natural inner rage sequel from 2006. Noah Wyle plays dream of one day running the give up without a fight. And as adorable Keri Russell, as the Lawless as a brittle desk clerk and how to tap into it, encouraging Flynn Carsen, curator of historical property; so when his divorced the children concoct their own unfortunate target of Skeeter’s and Russell Brand as Skeeter’s a revelatory performance unlike treasures and compulsive sister, Wendy (a frighteningly stories, Skeeter and the rest of passive-aggressive affections, is fuzzily written best friend. anything on his resume. adventurer, who must rush to the taut Courteney Cox), asks him to the cast are dragged through a the movie’s soft center and sole And if there were an Oscar If Sandler hopes to shift title location to stop bad guys from baby-sit for his young niece and variety of threadbare fantasies pleasure: a locus of calm in a sea for miscasting, Guy Pearce’s smoothly into more mature roles gaining a magical book that can nephew (Laura Ann Kesling and — an Old West showdown, a of turmoil. atrocious turn as the hotel’s (as indicated by last year’s Reign grant them power over time and Jonathan Morgan Heit) for a few medieval joust, a chariot race Faring less well are pompous manager would be Over Me), he needs directors who space. Also stars Bob Newhart and Olympia Dukakis. A days, Skeeter is in no mood to in ancient Greece — in which performers whose tenure in a lock. Mugging beneath a understand his uncommon gifts. third in the series, the delicately titled The Librarian: The play scallywag uncle. Skeeter inevitably bests the children’s entertainment will, I horrendous coif, he makes Basil The toilet plungers are optional. Curse of the Judas Chalice, was made this year. Parts 2 and 3 were directed by Jonathan Frakes, better known as Commander Riker in Star Trek: The Next Generation.

oward the end of Clint these actors, taking advantage of to be a chilly foretaste of worse relentless, claustrophobic sadism In 1928, Los Eastwood’s Changeling, the director’s famously efficient, treatment to follow. After a few of Rosemary’s Baby. Unlike Mia Angeles telephone Tin what is perhaps the low-stress approach, were able to months, with great fanfare and Farrow’s histrionically helpless only lighthearted scene in this stretch out in the zone between press coverage, the city’s hatchet- Rosemary, however, Christine has company rigorously somber film, Christine realism and melodrama, to explore faced police chief (Colm Feore) instincts that run more toward supervisor Collins, the heroine, is invited their characters’ raw nerves, tender stages a reunion between Christine fight than flight, and she is aided by some of her phone company spots and psychic calluses. and a boy who is evidently not in her darkest hour by a crusading Christine Collins co-workers, and then by her boss, Jolie, in contrast, hurtles Walter. When Christine points Presbyterian minister (John returned home to go out on the town and listen through Changeling as if it were this out, she is treated first as a Malkovich) and a square-jawed, to the Academy Awards radio the latest installment in the Lara hysterical, traumatized woman patrician lawyer (Geoff Pierson). from work and broadcast. The year is 1935, and It Croft action franchise, sustaining and then as a lunatic and a threat When the focus is on Christine’s discovered that her Happened One Night is Christine’s a pitch of intensity that turns to public order. She is ignored, bureaucratic nightmare, Eastwood, pick for best picture, but it’s hard Christine at once into a vivid icon smeared in the papers and then who composed the film’s nine-year-old son to avoid interpreting this moment of suffering and something of a locked away in a mental hospital. uncharacteristically intrusive score, was missing. Five as a none-too-subtle wink directed blur. The character, as imagined When it works best, Changeling orchestrates a steady crescendo of at present-day moviegoers and in J. Michael Straczynski’s script, is a feverish and bluntly effective dread and indignation, with gothic months later, police Academy voters. Christine begs is as flat as a nickel. Each side is parable of wronged innocence and elements lurking in the shadows announced they off — she just has too much work stamped with the likeness of a unaccountable power. One after of Tom Stern’s cinematography. — and it goes without saying familiar movie archetype — victim another, figures of supposedly Some of the performances had found the boy that on Feb. 22, Angelina Jolie, of circumstance on one, crusader benevolent authority — a police — Donovan’s snappish arrogance, in Illinois and who plays her, will have to make against injustice on the other — captain (Jeffrey Donovan), a O’Hare’s cat-and-mouse sadism similar excuses. She won’t be and Jolie composes her features pediatrician (Peter Gerety), a — seem overstated to the point of returned him watching the Oscars with the likes and adjusts her voice accordingly psychiatrist (Denis O’Hare) — turn caricature, but to the extent that to Collins of us; we’ll be watching her. when it comes time to flip. out to be cruel and self-serving, Changeling is a horror movie, such That seems to be the plan But something essential and there are scenes that recall the exaggeration makes sense. behind Changeling, at any rate, is missing, not only from her But then, near the climax by A. O. SCOTT an ambition telegraphed a shade performance but also from the of Christine’s ordeal, another Ny times news service, new york

photo: Bloom b erg photo: too blatantly in the many close- film as a whole. Announcing itself movie begins to take shape. ups of Jolie’s extraordinary face, at the outset as “a true story” The only decent man in the Los which is by turns tear-streaked, without the usual “based on” or Angeles Police Department, stoical, crestfallen and howling. “inspired by” hedge, Changeling is CHANGELING a detective named Lester To watch her trace Christine’s by turns fascinating and frustrating, Ybarra (the excellent, blessedly harrowing emotional passage — a emphatic and opaque. The truth Directed by: Clint Eastwood understated Michael Kelly) series of flights from anxiety to about the case of Christine Collins begins to unravel the mystery of terror, from grief to rage, pausing is so shocking and dramatic that Starring: Angelina Jolie Walter’s disappearance. And as (Christine Collins), John occasionally at calm defiance or embellishment must have seemed Malkovich (the Reverend Gustav he does, Changeling itself comes tremulous hope — is to witness an pointless, but in sticking so close Briegleb), Jeffrey Donovan unraveled. I don’t want to give too undeniable tour de force of screen to the historical record, Straczynski (Captain Jones), Michael Kelly much away, but the truth is that acting. It insists on being regarded and Eastwood have produced (Detective Lester Ybarra), the film spoils itself. as a great performance and may, a distended, awkward narrative Colm Feore (Chief James Davis), At around the 90-minute mark, indeed, be mistaken for one. whose strongest themes are lost in Jason Butler Harner (Gordon all of the considerable tension and In the past five years Eastwood the murky pomp of period detail. Northcott), Amy Ryan suspense drain away, and if the film has enabled more first-rate, laurel- In March 1928, Christine, a (Carol Dexter), Denis O’Hare ended at that point, you might walk A boy gone, worthy acting than just about any single mother living in , (Dr Jonathan Steele), Frank away shaken and perhaps stunned. other American filmmaker. There returns home from her shift Wood (Ben Harris), Peter Gerety But when you look at your watch, (Dr Earl Tarr), Gattlin Griffith was Ken Watanabe in supervising a busy switchboard you discover that almost an hour Letters From (Walter Collins) a mother scorned Iwo Jima; Ryan Philippe in Flags to find that her young son, Walter remains, during which the film of Our Fathers; Hilary Swank and (Gattlin Griffith), is missing. The Running time: 140 minutes lurches from one stagy set piece Morgan Freeman (and Eastwood initial response of the Los Angeles and from one genre to another, himself) in Million Dollar Baby; Police Department is casual and Taiwan release: currently losing its focus and coherence in everybody in Mystic River. All of condescending, which turns out Showing the process.

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