Under the Hawthorn Tree (山楂樹之戀)
Between his flashy epics, Zhang Yimou (張藝謀) returns to austere simplicity with Under the Hawthorn Tree (山楂樹之戀), a tale of young love set during China’s Cultural Revolution in the early 1970s. It begins with high school student Jing (Zhou Dongyu, 周冬雨) being sent to the countryside to learn from peasants as part of a re-education campaign. During her stay in the village, Jing falls in love with Sun (Shawn Dou, 竇驍), an educated young man working in a nearby geological unit. After Jing returns to the city, the two are torn between their blossoming romance and the discretion imposed upon them by the conservative and turbulent times. Based on the novel Hawthorn Tree Forever (山楂樹之戀) by Aimi (艾米), the film paints a portrait of innocence with utter sweetness, taming sexual passion with modesty and repression. Though the film hints at the turmoil of the Cultural Revolution, political overtones are mostly subdued by nostalgia for innocence lost and the transience of youth.
Jane Eyre
Yet another adaptation of a classic Victorian novel with quaint costumes and funny mannerisms of speech might sound a little too familiar, but this version of the doomed romance between Jane and Mr Rochester created by the young American Japanese director Cary Joji Fukunaga takes the story by the neck, shakes it out from the clasp of well-mannered British domestic drama, and puts it firmly back on the wild Yorkshire moors where passion and madness run side by side. The two stars, Mia Wasikowska and Michael Fassbender, are much more physically attractive than their characters are described in Charlotte Bronte’s novel, but their performances are strong enough to make up for it.
Get Low
This oddball drama, which mixes fable and fact, is a fine stage on which great character actors including the likes of Robert Duvall, Sissy Spacek and Bill Murray can go through their paces. There is a solid dose of sometimes corny sentiment, and the tale of a backwoods hermit (Duvall) who arranges his own funeral at which various long-hidden secrets are revealed sometimes wanders off track into woolly fantasy. That said, the whole concept is carried off with grace and intelligence. This is decidedly a small movie that relies on the presence of its leads to carry it, and Duvall is so memorable that it is easy to forgive the movie’s many faults.
SP: The Motion Picture
The first of a two-part motion picture based on a hugely successful Japanese television cop drama titled SP, referring to Security Police. SP: The Motion Picture is a big-budget action film with some spectacular car chases and other set pieces, and stars pop idol Okada Junichi as supercop Inoue Kaoru. Kaoru routinely uses his extraordinary abilities to fight crime, but his insubordinate ways get him no love from his superiors. When he gets caught up in a terrorist plot hatched deep within government, even his almost superhuman gifts fail to keep him out of the firing line.
Umizaru 3: The Last Message
A movie about coast guards and workers trapped in a natural gas plant after it has been damaged by a typhoon might be a little close to current events in Japan for comfort. Umizaru 3: The Last Message takes an unabashedly heroic perspective on the work of coast guard rescue divers, and in the preliminary sequences when divers undergo their grueling training, the film has strong echoes of The Guardian with Kevin Costner and Ashton Kutcher. As the gas plant becomes increasingly unstable, the government faces the option of sealing it off, with all those inside. Some pretty heavy-handed melodrama follows.
Taiwan doesn’t have a lot of railways, but its network has plenty of history. The government-owned entity that last year became the Taiwan Railway Corp (TRC) has been operating trains since 1891. During the 1895-1945 period of Japanese rule, the colonial government made huge investments in rail infrastructure. The northern port city of Keelung was connected to Kaohsiung in the south. New lines appeared in Pingtung, Yilan and the Hualien-Taitung region. Railway enthusiasts exploring Taiwan will find plenty to amuse themselves. Taipei will soon gain its second rail-themed museum. Elsewhere there’s a number of endearing branch lines and rolling-stock collections, some
The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), and the country’s other political groups dare not offend religious groups, says Chen Lih-ming (陳立民), founder of the Taiwan Anti-Religion Alliance (台灣反宗教者聯盟). “It’s the same in other democracies, of course, but because political struggles in Taiwan are extraordinarily fierce, you’ll see candidates visiting several temples each day ahead of elections. That adds impetus to religion here,” says the retired college lecturer. In Japan’s most recent election, the Liberal Democratic Party lost many votes because of its ties to the Unification Church (“the Moonies”). Chen contrasts the progress made by anti-religion movements in
Could Taiwan’s democracy be at risk? There is a lot of apocalyptic commentary right now suggesting that this is the case, but it is always a conspiracy by the other guys — our side is firmly on the side of protecting democracy and always has been, unlike them! The situation is nowhere near that bleak — yet. The concern is that the power struggle between the opposition Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and their now effectively pan-blue allies the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) and the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) intensifies to the point where democratic functions start to break down. Both
This was not supposed to be an election year. The local media is billing it as the “2025 great recall era” (2025大罷免時代) or the “2025 great recall wave” (2025大罷免潮), with many now just shortening it to “great recall.” As of this writing the number of campaigns that have submitted the requisite one percent of eligible voters signatures in legislative districts is 51 — 35 targeting Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus lawmakers and 16 targeting Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmakers. The pan-green side has more as they started earlier. Many recall campaigns are billing themselves as “Winter Bluebirds” after the “Bluebird Action”
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