The film consists of three stories: One about a 5-year-old girl, one about a teenager, and still another about a 30 something woman involved in an affair with a married man. Without providing a definite answer whether the three leading actresses are playing the same person in different stages of life, the movie instead hovers on several consistent themes that keep on emerging in all the stories. For example, the image of drops of blood on the clothes, in the shape of maroon flowers.
The story of a family embroiled in the "White Terror," the Kuomintang government's anti-communist political repression that was wrought on the Taiwanese people from 1947-1987.
Each member of a family in Taipei asks hard questions about life's meaning as they live through everyday quandaries. NJ is morose: his brother owes him money, his mother is in a coma, his wife suffers a spiritual crisis when she finds her life a blank and his business partners make bad decisions.
In 1987, as martial law ends in Taiwan, Jia-han and Birdy fall in love amid family pressure, homophobia and social stigma.
Retired and widowed Chinese master chef Chu lives in modern day Taipei, with his three attractive daughters, all of whom are unattached. Soon, each daughter encounters a new man in their lives. When these new relationships blossom, stereotypes are broken and the living situation within the family changes.
A simple Chinese immigrant wages a perilous war against one of the most powerful criminal organizations on the planet.
Someone in a prison run by a corrupt warden fakes the deaths of convicts to later use them as expendable assassins. A police officer is sent into the prison to gather evidence of the corruption.
In 2011, Vicky looks back on her life a decade earlier, recalling her turbulent relationship with her controlling boyfriend Hao Hao and her growing connection to a compassionate gangster amid the neon haze of Taipei's nightlife.
A former Judo champion is given the chance to redeem himself after he befriends a competitor and an aspiring singer.
Two loser high school students meet a wandering old man with unparalleled martial arts skills. Together, they not only strive to restore justice to their city but also unravel the mystery of the old man's identity.
On a dark, wet night in Taipei City, a cavernous old picture palace is about to close its doors forever. A meager audience, the remaining few staff, and perhaps even a ghost or two, watch King Hu’s wuxia classic "Dragon Inn", each haunted by memories and desires evoked by cinema itself.
Determined to pass down his art, the Final Master of Wing Chun is caught in a power struggle with malicious local officials and ultimately must choose between personal honor and his master’s dying wish.
A street vendor with a grim home-life forges a connection with a young woman on her way to Paris.
Hsiao-Kang, a Taiwanese film director, travels to the Louvre in Paris, France, to shoot a film that explores the Salomé myth.
In the 1960s, two classmates go looking for their missing friends and teachers, all of whom took part in an illegal book club, only to come face to face with ghosts and deformed monsters that have taken over their school.
Three lonely young denizens of Taipei unknowingly share an apartment: May, a real estate agent who uses it for her sexual affairs; Ah-jung, her current lover; and Hsiao-kang, who's stolen the key and uses the apartment as a retreat.
This story is a description of how modern people search for their happiness and self-worth in Taipei City. In order to make a living, a man and a woman applied for a job as Call Man and Call Girl in the same day coincidentally, and they also sat out with the same taxi in that day. More spontaneously, due to various factors, both of them always fail to get clients which produced a lot of funny accidents. Finally, these pitiful and ridiculous "chicken and duck" have an opportunity to break the shackles on their body toward the well-being reality. The film's unique humor in trying to approach the interpretation of the most true humanity.
A Taiwanese drug mule has his foolproof smuggling method thrown out of whack when he catches a ride with the wrong cab driver.
In Taipei, four youths face alienation, loneliness, and moments of existential crisis amidst a series of minor crimes.
An attractive and successful doctor places a personal ad in a newspaper to try to meet (and eventually marry) Mr. Right. A succession of blind dates ensues, featuring men who are lonely, desperate, dangerous and perverted.
A young man develops severe neck pain after swimming in a polluted river for a movie shoot, but nobody can provide him any relief.
After a devastating artillery attack on the island of Kinmen, commander Chi Liang-chen and his battery prepare a counter-attack.
On a rusting cargo ship in the South China Sea, it's the young Polish captain's first command. His mutinous Chinese crew suspect him and his unscrupulous Boss of planning to scuttle the ship for an insurance scam. When the crew abandon ship, the young captain is left alone on board, helpless, anchored in a bay. That night while waiting anxiously on deck, he finds a naked body floating in the sea below, tangled up in the ship's rope ladder. Pulling the ladder, the captain discovers a Chinese woman in distress. She climbs on board, saying only "Hide me". Dawn comes a few hours later and so does a search party, looking for a murderer.....
Ashin has spent his enitre life training for the national team in gymnastics. His mother believes his work will amount to nothing and asks his high school coach to take him off the team. Ashin then quits the sport entirely. He quickly falls in with wrong crowd and finds himself in a lot of trouble. Ashin leaves his small hometown of Yilan. Will he ever get back to the sport that he loves?
Hsin-He, a high school sophomore who can get along just fine on her own, lives with her father. At school, the days pass slowly by, until one day, she is assigned to be the student teacher. Since she loaths math, her teacher orders Ke-Lei, student teacher from another class, to tutor her.
Da Yu, a 15-year-old boy, wanders aimlessly in the lonely city.
'Such a Life' is quite a sad film. It is set in the sixties, in a village on the west coast of Taiwan, where many are succumbing to 'black foot', a disease caused by drinking contaminated well water. The only 'cure' is to amputate the afflicted limb, and to avoid drinking the contaminated water. Many in the village were already sick, and few could afford to have tap-water installed. At the center of the story is Ah Chung, who lives with his grandfather, who has already lost one leg to 'black foot'. In the same village also live an opera family, who are finding things increasingly difficult there, an oyster farmer, who complains that his oysters are being poisoned by a nearby pharmaceutical plant, and an assortment of children who enjoy swimming in the sea, and who bully Ah Chung. A significant portion of the action also takes place in the village school, where Ah Chung is having trouble keeping up with the fees.
A woman falls in love with two different girls, both singers - one in Shanghai during the late 1940s, the other in Taiwan during the late 1950s.
A street vendor with a grim home-life forges a connection with a young woman on her way to Paris.
Shares a lead actor · Viewers also picked
Three lonely young denizens of Taipei unknowingly share an apartment: May, a real estate agent who uses it for her sexual affairs; Ah-jung, her current lover; and Hsiao-kang, who's stolen the key and uses the apartment as a retreat.
Shares a lead actor · Viewers also picked
Each member of a family in Taipei asks hard questions about life's meaning as they live through everyday quandaries. NJ is morose: his brother owes him money, his mother is in a coma, his wife suffers a spiritual crisis when she finds her life a blank and his business partners make bad decisions.
Shares 2 cast members
A poor, struggling South Carolinian mother and daughter face painful choices with their resolve and pride. Bone, the eldest daughter, and Anney her tired mother, grow both closer and farther apart: Anney sees Glen as her last chance.
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In a suburban landscape, the lives of several families interlace with loss, despair and personal crisis. Esther Gold has lost focus on all but caring for her comatose son, Paul, and neglects her daughter and husband. Lawyer Jim Train is devoted to his career, not his family. Helen Christianson wants to find a new spark in life, while Annette Jennings tries to rebuild hers.
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The story of a young writer's transformation when her past invades her present.
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On a dark, wet night in Taipei City, a cavernous old picture palace is about to close its doors forever. A meager audience, the remaining few staff, and perhaps even a ghost or two, watch King Hu’s wuxia classic "Dragon Inn", each haunted by memories and desires evoked by cinema itself.
Shares a lead actor
In 2011, Vicky looks back on her life a decade earlier, recalling her turbulent relationship with her controlling boyfriend Hao Hao and her growing connection to a compassionate gangster amid the neon haze of Taipei's nightlife.
Shares a lead actor
In order to be reinstated to the bar and recover custody of her daughter, a hotshot lawyer, now in recovery and on probation, must take on the appeal of a woman wrongfully convicted of murder.
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Based on the true story of a black girl who was born to two white Afrikaner parents in South Africa during the apartheid era.
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In New York, racist Capt. Stanley White becomes obsessed with destroying a Chinese-American drug ring run by Joey Tai, an up-and-coming young gangster as ambitious as he is ruthless. While pursuing an unauthorized investigation, White grows increasingly willing to violate police protocol, resorting to progressively violent measures -- even as his concerned wife, Connie, and his superiors beg him to consider the consequences of his actions.
9th century China. Ten year old general’s daughter Nie Yinniang is abducted by a nun who initiates her into the martial arts, transforming her into an exceptional assassin charged with eliminating cruel and corrupt local governors. One day, having failed in a task, she is sent back by her mistress to the land of her birth, with orders to kill the man to whom she was promised – a cousin who now leads the largest military region in North China. After 13 years of exile, the young woman must confront her parents, her memories and her long-repressed feelings.
Set in ancient China, Zeng Jing is a skilled assassin who finds herself in possession of a mystical Buddhist monk's remains. She begins a quest to return the remains to its rightful resting place, and thus places herself in mortal danger because a team of assassins is in a deadly pursuit to possess the remains which holds an ancient power-wielding secret.
Michael and his right-hand man Scorpion, who find themselves embroiled in their father Ko's turf war against rival gangs in Taipei, setting off a conflict between old and new generations of gangsters. The film is the latest installment in the Gatao franchise, following the narrative of a young successor trying to expand his power while navigating the volatile underworld.
The Hong Kong police is hunting a counterfeiting gang led by a mastermind code-named "Painter" . The gang possesses exceptional counterfeiting skills which makes it difficult to distinguish the authenticity of its counterfeit currency. The scope of their criminal activities extends globally and greatly attracts the attention of the police. In order to crack the true identity of "Painter", the police recruits a painter named Lee Man to assist in solving the case.
Two notorious murderers ignite a violent massacre, leading a determined police force on pursuit to bring them to justice.
Wu Qing Qing, the young master of the Wolong Gang, has been betrayed after her family's massacre. From prey to hunter, she transforms into a hunter. Hidden in the shadows, behind every smile may lie a deadly dagger. A Japanese trading company infiltrates her inner circle, a mole is hidden among her closest relatives, and a web of intrigue unfolds. Trust is a luxury; every step is a precipice! How will she tear off those masks of hypocrisy? Is the traitor a member of the gang, an invading enemy, or even her own husband? The storm has arrived; "eliminating the traitor" becomes the only creed…
Michael and his right-hand man Scorpion, who find themselves embroiled in their father Ko's turf war against rival gangs in Taipei, setting off a conflict between old and new generations of gangsters. The film is the latest installment in the Gatao franchise, following the narrative of a young successor trying to expand his power while navigating the volatile underworld.
An FBI Agent pairs with a troubled Taiwan cop to hunt for a serial killer who's embedding a mysterious fungus in the brains of victims.
A policeman, who is fearless to death, can do anything for just one truth, while a gangster, who fears death the most, has drew life threats from his risky action all for love. One policeman and one gangster can be great partners that you have never imagined. Somehow, rescue of the world now is entirely relying on the partners. Within 36 hours, they must resolve the crisis that could destroy the Harbor City...
A scientist uses his invention - the "Menger Sponge" - to capture the energy of a dead child's spirit in an old building. In trying to determine why the energy of the ghost does not dissipate, the team discovers the identity and the dramatic story of the boy.
In a stormy harbor city, the orphan Dayou grows up learning dark rituals from his master. Years later, he faces eerie hauntings, vengeful ghosts, and reckless youths who stir the spirits. As desires and curses intertwine, no one can tell angel from demon in the shadows.
Set in 1977 Zhongli, Taiwan, amidst election turmoil, photographer Hsien-ying forms deep connections with Korean Taekwondo coach Chin Hao-hsi and childhood friend Hung-kuo. Encouraged to chase her dreams, Hsien-ying faces hesitation and tragedy as political chaos and personal loss reshape her life and perspective.
Burned by the desire to avenge her dead boyfriend, a Japanese woman learns to shoot a gun, and goes after the local Mafia in Taiwan. Mizuno Miki excels in her role as the grieving and estranged, then vengeful and cold-blooded foreigner.
Due to a combination of bad writing, unnecessary and distracting directorial gimmicks (split screens, black & white, slow motion, etc.) and very inept subtitling, "West Down Girls" is almost completely impossible to follow, but I think it has something to do with the rivalry between two girls who are members of opposing street gangs, and the arrival on the scene of a third girl who is the childhood friend of one of them and the sister of the other. The (very few) action scenes are a complete mess. The film is basically an over-the-top melodrama and makes very little sense. I was too frustrated to even enjoy the beauty of Cheryl Yang and Annie Wu.
