Reviews

Movies

Frida

Directed by Julie Taymor, starring Salma Hayek, Alfred Molina

The biopic portrays legendary Mexican painter Frida Kahlo, who channels her illness, bisexual appetite and stormy married life into her distinctive art.

Like most artist biopics, Frida is the result of the director's struggle to narrow down the amount of material on the extraordinary painter. Fortunately, she chooses right. Frida's indulgence in art to overcome the pains of an injured back, her tempestuous marriage with the equally brilliant Diego Rivera and her affair with Leon Trotsky are all given a full play.

Watching the film is like standing in a gallery of the painter's solo exhibition. The canvases are filled with eccentric images in heavy colors, which could have clashed with each other but finally strike a beautiful balance. The anecdotes of her life, each eerie and colorful, make for a gorgeous picture. Liu Wei

The Motorcycle Diaries

Directed by Walter Salles, starring Gael Garca Bernal, Rodrigo De la Serna

In 1952, Che Guevara was still Ernesto Guevara de la Serna, a medical student. He started an 8,000-mile trip from Argentina to Peru with his friend Alberto Granado, a biochemist. The trek on motorbike, truck, raft and foot later resulted in Guevara's political conversion and the birth of a youth idol.

A large part of the film is about how the two help the poor sick people on the way, aiming to explain why the young man becomes the heroic Guevara later. Yet the stories between the two and the poor are far from touching enough to convince the viewers that the journey plays a key part in driving Guevara to make revolution his life cause.

Besides, the chemistry between the two travel companions is hardly seen. It is hard to believe that Granado would, as the ending titles say, follow Guevara's step as his most loyal partner, and set up a medical school and clinic in Cuba. LW

Batman Begins

Directed by Christopher Nolan, starring Christian Bale, Liam Neeson

It was handy for Liam Neeson that, before this Batman revival, he had already starred as the ponderous Qui-Gon Jinn in Star Wars: the Phantom Menace. Here he plays Henri Ducard, a one-time tutor of Bruce Wayne who has a falling out with the man behind the Batsuit over the future of Gotham. Ducard is basically Qui-Gon Jinn gone bad: an oh-so-zen chap that speaks in earnest snippets of pop psychology. Sure, his philosophizing is a touch more right-wing than a Jedi Knight, but Ducard is cut from pretty much the same cloth.

And it's really a difference of opinion that sees Batman land in Ducard's bad books. You see, both want to end corruption in Gotham, but Ducard's way of fixing things is to kill everyone in town and raze the city. Thinking this a wee bit drastic, Batman sees he's got a fight on his hands with his ex-mentor and other bad guys such as Dr Jonathon Crane (Cillian Murphy), a psychologist armed with mind-altering gas.

Far more brooding than either Tim Burton's or Joel Schumacher's additions to the franchise, director Christopher Nolan takes us back to the big bat's past, exploring the reasons why Bruce Wayne launched a single-handed war on crime. Christian Bale is the best Batman yet: cocky, dark and even self-deprecating. The action sequences are terrific and Nolan's direction is assured. But Neeson's militant Buddhist-schtick get a touch too much at times.

Ben Davey

(China Daily 07/25/2007 page20)