(Shown with Nokia BH-902 headset, which will be reviewed separately.)

The Nokia N95 was one of the first must-have Nokia smartphones.  A sleek slider with a big screen, a 5 megapixel camera, and a host of features, including Wi-Fi, it was, like the iPhone, a status symbol phone in 2007.  Later on, like the iPhone, it became more and more ubiquitous among the middle class until it ceased to be special.

Nokia followed up on the N95 with the N82, which I also bought.  Thanks to a beautiful Xenon flash and swift optics, it featured one of the best cameras ever in a Nokia phone.  Alas, the N82 was a typical candybar, a slightly altered, and, in its original silver body, slightly girlish N73.  It was not a phone you use to show off.

Enter the N96.  With 16GB internal memory and an 8GB memory card slot available plus strong multimedia features, the N96 is essentially Nokia's attempt at an iPhone killer.  I say attempt because the phone's Symbian OS remains remarkably sluggish and will frustrate anyone who's watched the smooth flow of the iPhone's screen.  Likewise, Nokia's multimedia management software is buggy, and I found myself using iTunes to convert all the music I put on the phone.  Photo management is handled through Nokia Photos, and more than once I found myself screaming at how slow the program was.  I could manually copy via Bluetooth much faster than Nokia Photos could copy through a USB cable, suggesting that the program's database format hinders usability.  Sadly, Nokia should be aware of these shortcomings in their multimedia hardware and software, as they've been present in every NSeries since the N73.

Stylistically, the N96 suggests an illicit affair between the N95 and N85.  It has the heart and functions of an N95 but the stylistic cues of the N85. The rounded corners and piano black-and-silver motif won't be to everyone's liking, but I still think it's pleasing to look at. A nice, if gimmicky, feature is the addition of a small kickstand that lets you set the N96 up on a desk for movie watching. If you're watching a movie on a car or plane, however, the kickstand will be of little use.  The multimedia keys around the navi wheel provide music control which is independent from the rest of the phone, while the light around the navi wheel can "breathe" when the phone is in screensaver mode, which has the unexpected benefit of helping you find the phone in the dark as well as letting you know when you have messages waiting for you on the phone.

The camera is a mixed bag.  It's essentially a throwback to the N95's camera, albeit a bit faster, and it lacks the solid optics (and sexy flash) of the N82.  As such, shots will be hit and miss.  Daytime photos can be brilliant, as shown below:

While good night shots are hard to come by:

And indoor shots have frankly ugly color and graininess thanks to the LED flash:

The camera also features video recording with a continuous dual LED flash light, but my friends found the light extremely annoying, so I usually turned it off while filming.  Video quality is adequate but the sound recording leaves a little to be desired, and the poor color quality remains, as we can see in this clip from a Tianjin club:

Software-wise, the N96 is where most other Symbian phones are.  The N96 has a good browser, nice dictionary features, and some games.  It's nothing too special, and like my other phones I find myself using the simple Converter program more than I'd care to admit.  The biggest improvement in this current version of the Symbian OS is the addition of a predictive text dictionary for Chinese pinyin input.  Similar to Google IME or Microsoft IME, the N96 will suggest longer phrases and recognize multiple pinyin words rather than only accept one pinyin word at a time.  This is a remarkable advance over the Chinese writing system used in older Symbian phones, and has tripled (at the very least) my Chinese texting speed.

The GPS has been upgraded and has highly detailed maps for Tianjin and other large Chinese cities, maps which are unfortunately lacking much in the way of searchable locations.  GPS can tag photos (as shown here), and has its typical uses, but in 2009, on-phone GPS is nothing revolutionary.

The N96 Chinese model may have above-average software, but the hardware is sorely lacking. In addition to the lagging caused by a combination of a weak OS and downgraded processor, the N96 has been stripped of Wi-Fi support thanks to Chinese gov't restrictions.  Nokia fans in China have had to deal with this disappointment ever since the first Chinese N93 came out, and while iPhone fans may not have noticed, the phone WiFi ban -- intended to protect phone companies from competition from VOIP -- is one major reason why the iPhone has yet to legally come to China.  Not having Wi-Fi means that a lot of software, especially multimedia uploading and downloading software, is simply too slow over an EDGE connection.  It also takes away from the "cool" factor of the phone, denying it iPhone-killing power, and to add insult to injury, Nokia doesn't lower the crippled phone's price point one iota.

With smartphones it's always good to talk about the battery, and I can say that the N96 has about a one-day battery going for it, meaning that with one day of casual calling, regular Bluetooth use, some Internet, and lots of texting, I can use up 90% of the battery.  I can squeeze two days out of the battery by using the phone sparingly, but when buying an N96 you should always consider getting a spare battery too.  As they say, YMMV.

Bottom line:  With working Wi-Fi, the N96 would be a strong, four-star phone and a worthy successor to the N95, which is to say that I recommend it to anyone outside of China.  For those in China, however, I'd recommend getting another phone or finding a Hong Kong N96 import that has working Wi-Fi.  The Hong Kong model will also receive firmware updates more frequently than the mainland model, something which is a must for any gadget enthusiast.

Rating:  3.5 out of 5 stars.

Note:  This review is based on the China N96's original 11.018 firmware.  I'll update it with notes on the 12.043 firmware if it noticeably changes my user experience.

Warning:  This review contains spoilers.  Watch before you read.

The turnaround of "Lost" in season four was one of the few bright spots of network television in 2007. Season three had been a meandering disappointment until the finale, which turned the dynamic of the show on end by adding the twist of flashforwards into a not-quite-happy future.  Season four utilized this move into future time to up the tempo and the show's sense of purpose by moving the story along parallel tracks -- the escape from the island in the show's time and the quest to return in the show's future.

Though truncated the actor's strike, the fourth season nonetheless worked by expanding upon its core mythology, by positing new villains, and by having us rethink old foes. The best writing of the series concerned the ever-shifting character of Benjamin Linus (played with bug-eyed intensity by Michael Emerson), who transformed from outright villain into a plausible anti-hero, a Stalin fighting against the show's would-be Hitler.  (Ben is still Stalin, however:  he will liquidate his friends as well as his foes.)  The season ended with most of the core cast escaping from the island, though not without the apparent sacrifice of several supporting cast members as well as the mysterious death of John Locke.  And in what became the key quip of the finale, Ben moved the island.

Season five's opener begins with the reappearance of Dr. Marvin Candle in another one of the show's morning musical wakeup montages (the best remains Desmond's from season two). After feeding his wife's baby -- and begging the question of whether said baby was born on the island or not -- Candle turns to the task of recording another instruction film for the island's many research stations before being interrupted by his workers. It seems they're having trouble drilling through rock, and hand Dr. Candle a sonar image that shows the chamber Ben entered to move the island.  The workers suggest blasting through it, but Candle cautions that the site they're working at is home to an energy source that can be utilized to control space and time.  Thus, we are reminded of (or introduced to) a key plot point of season five -- time travel.

We then shift to where season four left off, with Jack signing on to Ben's plan to take everyone back to the island.  These scenes wrap up quickly enough, and then we move to those left behind the island, notably Locke, Kate, Sawyer, and Daniel the freaky scientist guy.  Locke is separated from the others, and it's through his eyes that we first understand that moving the island had the odd side-effect of shifting Locke through time, as he witnesses Eko's brother's plane crash in the jungle before getting shot by a not-dead Ethan. Then, flash, Locke and the other island survivors are shifted to a new time and place on the island. The time shifts move both forwards and backwards without a set rule; I had been expecting them to occur every 108 minutes, but no such luck.

Moving off the island, we follow Kate, Sun, Jack and Ben, and Hurley and Sayyid separately.  With Ben's help, Jack sobers up -- recall he spent most of season four's flashforwards getting drugged out of his skull -- and shaves.  As was the case in season four, Kate seems very content with her post-island life (if only because it means not running anymore), and she seems like the hardest sell to go back to the island, though outside forces may push her to do so.  Sun continues her subplot and her evolution into one of the show's (possible) villains by continuing her Devil's bargain with Charles Widmore to kill Ben Linus. (I truly hope that this is one plot that will be continued to a logical conclusion, and won't be forgotten or argued away easily by Jack.)  And then there's Hurley and Sayyid, whose pairing provides us with both comic relief and the lion's share of the action in episode one.  Hurley winds up driving a tranquilized-by-the-baddies Sayyid straight into an encounter with a "ghost" -- Ana-Lucia, who warns him to stay away from cops and passes on a hello from Libby.  How sweet.

(An aside:  the writers have always argued that the "Lost" universe relies on scientific rather than supernatural phenomena.  If they don't reasonably explain the "ghosts" Hurley encounters as well as Jack's dad and Jacob on the island, they're going to lose a lot of good will.)

Episode two opens with an argument on the island's beach among Kate, Sawyer and the other Flight 815 survivors about whether life has no meaning (or something like that).  One particularly annoying survivor starts bitching about how they can't even make a fire to cook food before taking a flaming arrow to the chest.  I admit it.  I laughed.  The survivors run across the beach away from the arrows in a scene that would be especially tense if we actually recognized any of them besides Sawyer and Julet.  Cut to the off-islanders.

Kate and Sun have a meeting that starts out warm but ends coldly.  Sun makes it known that she blames Kate and the others for Jin's death.  Fair enough, though if she's really out for revenge she'd not play that card so early.  Jumping over to Hurley and almost-corpse Sayyid, Hurley manages to get back to his dad and mom and sends his dad to find Jack to help Sayyid before spilling his guts out to his mom about everything that happened in seasons one through four.  Hurley's retelling of the past is, one supposes, a sly joke from the writers about how absurd the plot of the show really sounds.

Returning to the island, Sawyer and Juliet are nearly murdered by some paramilitary guys who look neither like the DHARMA people nor like the Others or like Widmore's group.  New plot point!  Their savior is Locke, who Rambos one of the guys with his survival knife and stands there looking like a 50-something badass.  Which Terry O'Quinn is.

Back on the mainland, Jack helps to revive Sayyid and Hurley has a meeting with Ben, which Hurley promptly exits on account of not-believing-anything-Ben-says-itis (a disease one can easily contract on the island) and is happily -- happily! -- arrested by the police outside his house.  Ben then goes to a church (or a university?) and has a meeting with Barbara Bush (er, Mrs. Hawking), who warns him of dire consequences if he doesn't retrieve the others in 70 hours.  But will we get a countdown on screen, "24"-style?

Overall, "Lost"'s return presents a new narrative device -- time travel -- without answering many questions.  The writers can now cleverly create flashbacks within flashbacks and flashfowards without flashforwards, or even flashforwards within flashbacks or vice-versa, but they haven't shown us what they intend to do with this power.  The first two episodes lack the punch of the new "Galactica" season opener, but "Lost" has more going for it than battle-worn shows like "24" and "Prison Break," which have long since lost nuance and characterization in favor of almost-constant cliffhangers.

I'll still be watching, but "Lost" will need a bit more coherence to keep the show enjoyable in the long run.

Author's note:  Another poem, this time in Chinese with an English translation.  My Chinese poetry skills are extremely limited, especially when it comes to rhyming poems, so this is a vocabulary exercise of sorts.  Note that the translation omits the AA BB (etc.) rhyme scheme of the Chinese.

河岸晨曦

晨曦走路
远日快出
早鸟愉鸣
不能留听
爷爷清道
不能留聊
已经太晚
想去河岸
前桥无人
渡桥看滨
蓝雾盖水
雾里有谁
只船夫影
过桥下静
头身都倦
也想坐船

Riverbank Dawn

Walking at dawn
The distant sun soon rises
Morning birds sing happily
I cannot stop to listen
The old man sweeps the streets
I cannot stop to chat
It is already too late
I want to go to the riverbank
The bridge ahead has no people
Crossing the bridge I look at the riverbank
A blue fog covers the water
Who is inside the fog?
Just a boatman's shadow
He passes under the bridge quietly
My head and body are both weary
I also want to ride in his boat

Author's note:  Taking a break from reviews for a bit of my own poetry.  Will write more reviews in the near future.

when month and day made seven
a life’s singular joy unraveled
its strongest bonds torn by prejudice
by
her confucian obligation
irreparable
like a mirror falling falling falling
onto unforgiving earth

the reservoir of tears held back
so long
let loose, then
flooded the quiet valley of love
the deluge, a prelude to the temblor
neither emeralds nor pearls seen in its wake
all their shining glories shuttered by the dark waters
nightmares
the swirling blackness
the words unspeakable backwards and forwards

the next day awaking to feel less
if only to not feel pain
and conjuring up a lying smile
a veil over sadness and anger
regrettable sentiment filling up an ordinary day
until the unforgiving earth
seized its moment
the sober quiet here disguised the doom afar
but the quick-moving fog of dread lent
perspective

who shall hear a dying heart amongst the dying of men?

pictures of a shattered landscape
splintered buildings like demonic teeth
the concrete tombs that should not be
the passing of children chokes the throat of the soul
the many nameless dead
as mere witness
so powerless again to stop
the agony
only free to offer some small sacrifice
could hope lost for one be yet given?

yet after the ritual of mercy
mercy remains a stranger
looking at the face of the shoe-bandit
dirtied with no caring hands together to wash him
or seeing her
a thousand echoes of her sweet laugh resound
piercing that ragged organ within the chest

a final night together
the penultimate tears
a goodbye never to say hello to another?

i can only walk
the sadness a wind at my back
i can only walk
until the end of time
i can only walk
across the unforgiving earth
i can only walk

After Fateless was released in 2005, critics praised the film for offering audiences a new look at the Holocaust.  The film indeed offers a different perspective, but its brilliance is short-lived and material too familiar to be a true masterpiece.

Fateless breaks from the usual cinematic Holocaust narrative of Western European Jewry by showing us the world through the eyes of a Jewish Hungarian boy named György (Marcell Nagy), who retains a measure of happiness in spite of all the misery in his life.

Although the protagonist is a bit unusual for a Holocaust film, the imagery of persecution and the camps is quite familiar to people familiar with the Holocaust and/or Holocaust films in general.  To call Fateless resembles a Schindler's List without the intrigue would not be far from the truth.

The film can be praised, however, for the realism in its portrayal of the concentration camp victims.  Unlike the tendency of Spielberg (Schindler's List) and Polanski (The Pianist) to play upon our sentimentality by showing Jews as angelic victims of the Nazi regime, György's fellow prisoners are extremely human in their flaws.  They fight, bicker, and barter in a manner that may prove unsettling to viewers expecting a traditional dichotomy of good and evil in the camps.

Two other things save Fateless from being just another Holocaust film.  The first is György's existential philosophy of happiness, narrated by Nagy and Camus-like in nature, a happiness that comes in the form of rebellion against death and oppression:  we are told that to suffer so much one cannot be hurt anymore brings a kind of happiness.  This is also the philosophy of Camus' Sisyphus, who, like György, is cursed yet still smiling.  Unfortunately, so profound an idea requires a compelling actor to convince us of its truth, and while Nagy physically inhabits his role, his other abilities fall short.

The other aspect of the film that sets it apart -- and is in fact the best part of the film -- is the portrayal of the return of Jews to their homes after the liberation.   Alienated from their humanity by the camps, the victims return to find their homes changed or lost, and people unable to understand their experience.  Consider the scene where a man stops György in the train station and repeatedly asks about the gas chambers.  When György says he didn't see any personally, the man appears strangely satisfied and moves on.  That haunting moment suggests that Holocaust denial may spring from the inability to understand the experience of the Holocaust in addition to old-fashioned anti-Semitism.

In all, these few minutes at the close of the film are emotionally gripping, and I found myself wanting more.  Fateless, alas, was scripted from a novel and the return of the Jews is not the main story we were meant to see.  But it is a story we ought to see.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

Mandarin title:  《苹果》

With its sex scenes and sordid look at Beijing life, Lost in Beijing was banned in China for some pretty obvious reasons, though the biggest reason may be that, unlike Ang Lee, director Li Yu just doesn't have the connections to get a film like Lost in Beijing past the censors, even though she cut the film heavily for the Chinese screens.  As a result, Lost in Beijing was labeled "pornographic" and kept out of the Chinese market for months, though that means nothing to millions of curious Chinese who have already downloaded the film from the Internet or bought it from DVD shops.

Many Western critics have applauded Li Yu for the film, and likened it to Lust, Caution, perhaps because of the "Western" style of the love scenes.  By comparison, the love scenes in other Chinese films resemble Western movies of the 1950s -- a discrete fade to black.  I don't mean this as criticism.  In fact, putting a lot of sex into a film doesn't make it good.  And such is the cause with Lost in Beijing, which has the kernel of an excellent film but is dragged down by a meandering plot and not really helped by the sex scenes.

The basic story centers around Liu Pingguo, a masseuse in an upscale Beijing massage parlor, who is played by Fan Bingbing in what is frankly one of her best performances to date.  One fateful day, a drunken Pingguo is raped by her drunken boss Lin Dong (Tony Leung Ka-fai) and winds up pregnant a few weeks later.  Pingguo's husband An Kun, a window-washer played by Tong Dawei, seizes upon her pregnancy as a chance to extort money out of of Lin Dong, whose business and connections have made him super-rich, albeit trashily so.  Along the way, An Kun also starts an improbable, revenge-based affair with Lin Dong's wife Wang Mei.

Lin Dong, who is childless, agrees to pay the couple money and pass off Pingguo as a surrogate mother for his and Wang Mei's child.  This makes An Kun delighted, though Pingguo is more or less forced into the arrangement.  Things go sour in the end, however, as An Kun becomes increasingly jealous of the parental relationship between Lin Dong and Pingguo and winds up kidnapping the baby.  The ultimate result of the story I won't spoil for interested viewers.

Many parts of the film ring true for urban Chinese life.  The film's depiction of the lifestyle of massage parlors and KTVs is spot on, and Tony Leung Ka-fai's gangsterish, prostitute-soliciting, Mercedes-driving massage parlor boss is a man I've seen or met countless times in Tianjin.  Likewise, the documentary-style snippets of people living and playing in a smoggy Beijing setting are refreshingly realistic, as is the backstory of Pingguo and her husband, who have moved to Beijing to make a living. The movie also gives us a look at the subculture of Chinese bribery several times, such as when An Kun bribes Pingguo's doctor to "determine" the baby's paternity.

However, the film fails on two counts.  The first is a matter of simple aesthetics.  The gorgeous Fan Bingbing takes the Charlize Theron route and de-glamorizes herself for her role, and this I can accept.  But Tong Dawei is simply not believable as a window-washer:  no manual laborers have his fair complexion and nice teeth and none of them would appeal to a fashionable fortysomething Chinese woman like Wang Mei.

The second and more damning point is the way the plot develops after the shocks of the opening act.  Lost in Beijing begins as a grim look at life in Beijing and the stark divisions between the Chinese underclass and the new rich.  If it had stayed that movie, Lost in Beijing could have been one of the great films of 2007.  However, once the extortion plot gets into full swing, the movie transforms into a black comedy.  Lin Dong is no longer a sleaze but instead a happy, sappy father-to-be.  And the relationship between An Kun and Wang Mei is unquestionably there as a humorous subplot.  Even the way the kidnapping is resolved speaks to comedy:  Lin Dong is impossibly gracious to An Kun, whereas a real-life Lin Dong would have savaged him.  By the time Lost in Beijing finally returns to a serious mode in the closing act -- signaled by the death of Pingguo's co-worker -- the detour into humor has already done its damage, leaving audiences with a deeply schizophrenic movie.

Finally, another aspect of Lost in Beijing that may unsettle some viewers is the way Pingguo is horribly mistreated by the people around her.  She is less a heroine than a victim, but her seeming unwillingness to rectify the situation left me cold to her.  I wouldn't say her character distracts from the storyline, exactly, but it adds to the viewer's central dilemma of having no one to root for or identify with in the movie.

In all, the film is worth watching, but one hopes that future Chinese filmmakers look at Lost in Beijing and find themes that need exploring while avoiding the flaws present throughout the plot.

Rating:  3 out of 5 stars

Mandarin title:  《色戒》

When I asked my students in 2007 who the greatest Chinese director is, nearly half of them said Ang Lee.  This despite the fact that most of them had never seen an Ang Lee film, and also despite the fact that the first Ang Lee film to become famous in China and the rest of the world, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, was mocked relentlessly by Chinese on the mainland.  This newfound love and respect for Lee just goes to show what the Oscar will do for you.

Thankfully, the Oscar-winning Lee continues to be innovate rather than rest on his laurels.  (Zhang Yimou, take note.)  His latest effort, 2007's controversial Lust, Caution, builds on Lee's previous themes while giving audience a richly textured portrayal of wartime Shanghai.

Like his Hong Kong contemporary Wong Kar-wai, Lee seems fascinated by the subject of love and torment.  In Crouching Tiger... it was the unspoken love between Chow Yun-fat and Michelle Yeoh's characters; in The Incredible Hulk, the subject wasn't love so much as the anger that can flow from love denied; and in Brokeback Mountain the main characters are famously troubled by gay love at a time when being gay was socially unacceptable.  In Lust, Caution, Lee continues this theme with a Hitchcockian tale of a Chinese traitor and a Nationalist agent out to seduce him, and who, in turn, is seduced by him.

As the female lead Wong Chia Chi, who poses as a wealthy socialite named Mrs. Mak, Tang Wei offers a startlingly powerful performance in her portrayal of a young Chinese girl who is manipulated by forces on both sides of the Sino-Japanese War as she sets a trap for the collaborator Mr. Yee.  She begins as an idealistic actress performing in nationalistic plays with the theme of "China must not die," and is soon compelled by members of her theater troupe to put that motto into action.  The film's comic moments come early on, as the troupe decides to stop acting on stage and start acting in reality.

Tang Wei's Miss Wong/Mrs. Mak outshines Tony Leung in his performance as Mr. Yee, arguably because Leung's character will seem quite familiar to anyone who's seen 2046 -- his glowering, malevolent Mr. Yee is the darker side of the already dark coin Leung showed to us as the spiritually hollow Mr. Chow in 2046.  This is not to say that Leung isn't menacing as he tortures and murders his way through the anti-Japanese resistance, it's just that his performance is not as novel as Tang's.

Lust, Caution is infamous for the sadomasochistic and quite explicit love scenes between Mrs. Mak and Mr. Yee, and the film suffered a number of cuts before release in mainland China.  Having seen both the Chinese version and the international version of the film, I was struck how the cuts leave us with a film that is watchable yet puzzling.

The Chinese version is compelling enough that I could call Lust, Caution a good film even without the sex.  And yet, we never really see how Mr. Yee could establish such a strong hold over Mrs. Mak, or how, in turn, she could make him fall in love.  This is because Ang Lee uses the sex scenes to accomplish what dialogue does not, and the Chinese version would be better had Lee shot some additional footage to fill in the noticeable story holes.

For most Western audiences, the love scenes will seem a bit startling, though probably not offensive.  The bigger mark against Lust, Caution will be that it is too long.  Yet, students of Chinese history might find the time well spent.  I enjoyed the depiction of Shanghai, right down to the Shanghai branch of Tianjin's Kiessling's bakery where Tang Wei waits in the opening and close of the film.  Also, as noted elsewhere, Lee is presenting his mostly-mainland Chinese audience with a daringly different narrative of the war:  the Nationalists, far from being cowards, also fought the Japanese.  While more acceptable in these years of CCP-KMT reconciliation, it goes against decades of Chinese political messages, though few Westerners will really appreciate it.

Overall, in both its cut and uncut versions, Lust, Caution is a good but not great film that is rich in atmosphere and buoyed by a strong performance from Tang Wei.

Rating:  4 out of 5 stars

Korean director Park Chan-wook may be best known for directly ultrabloody revenge fantasies like Oldboy, though he proves he has a softer side in I'm a Cyborg, but That's Okay, a weird-but-whimsical drama-romance that recalls the work of Tim Burton.

The storyline follows Young-goon (Lim Su-jeong), a twentysomething girl who suffers a psychotic episode and nearly kills herself in the opening reel.  (Trust me, it's more watchable than it sounds.)  Afterwards, Young-goon is admitted to a psychiatric hospital, where she is treated for her delusional belief that she is a cyborg.

This is not One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.  The people in the hospital are more endearing than threatening, and the environs the patients live in are warm and calming rather than cold and clinical.  Naturally, we are introduced to a large cast of characters, including K-Pop star Rain as Park Il-sun, a patient who believes he can steal people's characteristics.  Rain sports a variety of silly hairdos (note the photo above) and some cool handmade masks but doesn't demonstrate a lot of acting depth.

Young-goon, for her part, mostly meanders through the picture in a daze.  This is appropriate for her character, since, as a self-professed cyborg, she has stopped eating food.  Her  most active movements are CGI enhanced, when she imagines she is using her cyborg powers to kill the hospital staff.  (The gore that follows is also the most "Park Chan-wook"-ish part of the movie.)  Eventually, her behavior reaches a crisis point, but her life is saved by Il-sun in one of the film's most touching moments.  At the close of the movie the two develop a kind of proto-romance.

While the acting and storyline are a bit on the shallow side, the visuals are, as always for a Park Chan-wook film, amazing.  The special effects sequences smoothly integrate into the rest of the film, while the color palette is otherworldly, as if every scene has been handpainted.

I can't say I liked I'm a Cyborg... a great deal, but it does prove that Park can successfully helm a film that doesn't involve brooding anti-heroes or torture.

Rating:  2.5 out of 5 stars

It's striders, striders everywhere in the latest iteration of the Half-Life franchise, Valve's much-delayed Episode Two.

Part of the Orange Box mega-collection, I'd wager that most players will get around to Episode Two after playing their hearts out in Portal and Team Fortress 2.  And it wouldn't be surprising, either, since the other additions to the Orange Box represent significant new play opportunities while Episode Two is a solid game built with an aging game engine.

I was surprised to learn that I was one of the few people who liked Episode One better than Episode Two.  Both games have shortcomings, the most obvious of which is that it's a bit ridiculous to wait a full development cycle to play a game that lasts a handful of hours.  But while Episode Two is slightly longer than the first episode, it tends to drag on in points and in general feels more "videogamey" than the rest of the Half-Life 2 franchise, adding, among other things, an Achievements system inspired no doubt by XBox games.  Moreover, it doesn't significantly advance gameplay like Episode One's co-op modes.

Driving sequences, which I disliked in the original Half-Life 2, abound in this game.  At their best, such as in the final Strider battle, the car adds to the frantic pace of the mission.  But in other parts of the game it just seems an excuse to show off the Central European vistas painstakingly crafted by the level designers.  Unfortunately, while nice, the outdoor environments can't compare with the scale of Crytek's Far Cry and Crysis offerings.

The supposed "new weapons" are in fact a little boring.  The so-called "strider buster," which the player tosses through the air with his trusty gravity gun, seems cool on paper, but Valve undercuts the idea by having the player use another weapon in exactly the same way earlier in the game.  To add insult to injury, the enemies in these two sequences are invulnerable to damage coming from the rest of Gordon Freeman's weapons, despite the fact they could be destroyed easily with RPGs and the like in the rest of the franchise.

The strongest part of the game may be the storyline, which moves the series towards the ultimate conclusion in Episode Three.  We learn more about the Combine's activities on earth as well as see what becomes of the portal opened at the close of Half-Life 2.  Along the way, the slug-like Combine advisors make an appearance, as do the "mini-striders"--the deadly hunters.

The game is good while it lasts, but Valve probably made a good decision by bundling Episode Two in the Orange Box.  If a hardcore gamer was given the choice between playing Episode Two and the likes of Bioshock, Halo 3, or even Gears of War on the 360, I'm afraid Gordon Freeman would be in the loser's column.

Rating:  3 out of 5 stars

Mandarin title: 《重庆森林》

I had been in love with Faye Wong's cover of the Cranberries song "Dreams" for a long time, but I was curious about when the song first went into circulation. After watching Wong Kar Wai's Chungking Express (Mandarin title: 重庆森林 ), I finally had an answer.

Being a WKW film, it's not surprising that his familiar themes of love and lost opportunities are central to the narrative of Chungking Express. For a little while it seemed like Wong was going to weave myriad storylines together, but instead he settled on just two.

The first storyline involves a lovesick, pineapple-eating police officer (Takeshi Kaneshiro) in pursuit of a femme fatale (Brigitte Lin), while the second follows another police officer (Tony Leung), his air hostess girlfriend, and the waitress (Faye Wong) who secretly loves him.

Without giving too much away I think he could have axed the entire first storyline entirely and treated the audience to just the quirky Faye Wong-Tony Leung romance, which involves a case of too-cute-to-be-stalking stalking on Faye's part. Also, since it's impossible to walk half a kilometer in any Chinese city without running into Faye's picture, so the movie is a pleasant reminder that ten years before she was strange-but-beautiful, she was strange-but-button-cute. (And in this film she can actually act!)

A word about the title: the English title is the name of the restaurant, Chungking Express, where the various storylines intersect, and tends to give Western audiences the impression that this is a love story at a restaurant. But the Chinese title, Chongqing Forest, reflects the deeper, maze-like quality of the storyline. 

Besides the usual WKW motifs, there are some fun conceits in this film, as well as some innovative camera angles, and on the whole it's the most upbeat Wong Kar Wai film I have in my collection.  Highly recommended.

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Every once in awhile a film comes along that makes you change your mind about the direction of movies. Daring, innovative, it grabs you, assaults your senses and makes you reconsider everything you know about motion pictures. Kinji Fukasaku's Battle Royale has pretenses of being just such a movie, or perhaps its accurate to say that its fans have pretenses of Battle Royale (henceforth, BR) being just such a movie. They're wrong, though it definitely is one the most interesting films thus far this decade.

Like many Japanese films (and anime), BR is a symphony of violence which begins with the most threadbare of plots. We are told, by way of that Japan's economy has worsened in the new millennium, and with the economic decline students have turned against their parents and teachers, boycotted school, and in general become malcontents. (This theme is familiar, of course, to anyone who has seen A Clockwork Orange.) In response, the government passes the "BR Act," which requires a high school class to be sent yearly to a deserted island to fight to the death in a battle royale. The students must kill each other within three days or they will all die thanks to explosive necklaces that each must wear.

Does it make sense? Absolutely not. Is it easy to overlook the absurd initial premises and still enjoy the film? Yes.

Some will look at the movie and see in it some vague warnings about the extremes of government. "Look at the creeping fascism inherent in the BR concept!" But if there is any fascistic impulse being parodied here, it's the love of reality TV. The core of fascism and all forms of totalitarianism has always been the (often spontaneous) hatred of the masses for an "other." The desire to see the other suffer is a great animating force for mass movements, and though we conventionally think of violence against the other perpetrated in Auschwitz and the Gulag, it seems equally plausible that the other could be made to suffer through reality TV. This is what BR essentially achieves in its presentation of a kind of fascistic "Survivor."

Or, to cut through all this highfalutin' crap I've written, this movie is Quentin Tarantino meets Lord of the Flies.

So long as we don't take it too seriously as social commentary -- yes, it tells us that reality TV is ultimately dehumanizing, but there's more to the film than that -- BR works on a darkly comic level. The choice of Beat Takeshi (twitch and all) to play the role of the children's school teacher was nearly perfect, as no other Japanese actor working today comes close to his level of "just-about-to-go-postal"-ness. (He manages to simmer beneath the surface without being campy ala Pacino.)

Most of the other actors are effective in their roles -- which are basically horror movie victims when you get right down to it -- yet I was disappointed to not see more of Chiaki Kuriyama (Go Go Yubari from Kill Bill). As Chigusa, her role is decidedly minor, which is a shame given her intensity. As she wields her knife, we see mere flashes of Go Go. Ironically, however, another character, Mitsuko, feels much closer to Go Go than Chigusa, and she winds up being one of the film's most intense characters.

What follows during two hours after the gaudy opening credits (cue the block letters!) is a lot of killing, albeit much less than you would see in a film like Kill Bill or Zatoichi. Not all of the deaths are comic. Some are grisly and brutal and shocking -- or just plain stupid. (We have a car. An uzi-toting maniac is chasing us. Do we drive away or let him gun us down?) Still, more than a few scenes left me almost laughing at the impending doom of the characters, sort of like my reaction to the first Scream. (One scene in particular involves an inevitable mass killing that begins with a misunderstanding. We can see it coming from a mile away, but we're still drawn to watch the bloody spectacle.)

The film also draws upon videogames and anime as much as reality TV, and one main villain of the piece (note that despite the premise, only a few of the characters actually go the Hobbesian route) resembles Sephiroth from the game Final Fantasy VII, right down to his walking through fire and seeming indestructibility. What's more, the characters get pulled into oddly philosophical dream sequences, and that, coupled with the orchestral music, gives the film a bit of an Evangelion vibe.

Assuming you can stand the carnage, then you too might agree that the director hits a wrong note with the ending. In the extended special edition of BR I have, the denouement is so separated from the frantic pace of the rest of the picture as to feel alien. It's not bad enough to spoil the movie, but I wish things had been different.

Though not earth-shattering, BR is a good film, and makes for interesting dinner party conversation next time you feel the need to talk about how nutty Japanese movies can be. (Yes, I've had that conversation.)

Rating:  3 out of 5 stars

Korea's Paris Baguette is new to Tianjin but already an established chain around the world.  Sporting Western bakery goods wrapped in a French package with a touch of Korean style, the cafe and bakery is sure to appeal to many foreigners living in Tianjin.

Paris Baguette offers a variety of baked goods, most of which would seem perfectly at home in any Western shop.  A few selections -- breads baked with pork floss, for example -- seem designed with Asian patrons in mind, but for the most part, the taste and consistency is authentic, though not exactly French.  Most of the food I've tried has been delicious, from their fumigate chicken mini-sub, to Berliner doughnuts, to kiwi fruit cups.

Prices are on the moderate side of the scale, with cakes slightly more expensive than mass-market chain Holiland and special delicacies sold at a premium price.  Both hot and cold sandwiches can be had for reasonable prices (8-20RMB), though, in keeping with French tradition, most of them feature small portions.  Drinks are pricey, however, and you might want to bring your own water if you're planning to dine-in.

The atmosphere is open and relaxed, and if there's anything to complain about, it's that the monitors loop the same Korean commercials for Paris Baguette again and again.

Paris Baguette is currently at two locations in Tianjin:  at the Magnetic Plaza shopping mall in Nankai, which draws a heavy Korean clientele, and the food court level of the new Robbins Department Store on Binjiang Road, which is more convenient for most Tianjiners.

Rating:  4 out of 5 stars

Rollins Toasted Subs is one of the latest restaurants aimed at correct Tianjin's massive sandwich deficit.  (Damn you and your Subways, Beijing!)

In brief, Rollins is a Chinese clone of Subway but with the added attraction of a Schlotsky's-style sandwich toaster.  It offers both subs and small pizzas to customers, and seems designed to cater to Koreans and Westerners in Tianjin.

The subs are traditional meat subs on a soft sesame baguette.  During my visits I tried the Classic Italian and Classic Pizza sub.  The Italian sub was good and comparable to a Subway sandwich but the Pizza had an unusual, salsa-like sauce and no vegetables to speak of.

The main attraction of Rollins may be the price.  Unlike Subway and other Western restaurants, Rollins sells sandwiches that Chinese people can afford.  An average of 15RMB can get you a nine inch sub.  Throw in a cola or a bag of chips or cookie and the total comes to around 25RMB, a pretty reasonable lunch.  If you're a Westerner and so inclined, you might want to splurge on a bottle of Snapple, but it may cost you more than the sandwich itself.

The primary menu is Chinese but a printed English menu is available, and most of the wait staff can speak English.

Rollins (Chinese name:  罗林士) is located in the Magnetic Plaza shopping center in Nankai, next to the KFC, and within walking distance from the Olympic football stadium.

Rating:  3 out of 5 stars

You've got your zombie movie in my Iraq metaphor!

You've got your Iraq metaphor in my zombie movie!

Though horror purists may criticize the film 28 Days Later for departing from the zombie canon with its fast-moving Ebola-powered non-undead zombie hordes, it emerged on the scene in 2002 as a brooding, innovative tale of post-apocalyptic horror which revisited the "sole-survivor after a holocaust" plot of I Am Legend.  It was thrilling, thought-provoking, and in spite of the multiple endings, complete.  It didn't need a sequel, but Hollywood decided 28 Days Later needed one anyway.

Though the desolate London setting -- and the zombies -- come back, none of the original characters return in 28 Weeks Later.  Instead of a small core cast, the movie opens with number of stock characters.  We learn that half a year after the zombies from the first infestation died off, the US and NATO have established a "Green Zone" in London and begun resettlement of British subjects -- even though the threat of contamination remains.  This is an unfortunately ludicrous start to the film, necessitated by the filmmaker's desire for an Iraq parallel.

Naturally, the zombie infection returns, this time in the form of a woman who survived the original outbreak of the "rage virus" (as it was called in the first film), yet remained a carrier of the disease.  The Green Zone unsurprisingly succumbs to a zombie onslaught, but not before the protagonists -- two children, an army doctor, and a sniper -- can escape the carnage and the napalm strikes that follow.

The remainder of the film is built around whether this quartet can dodge both the zombies and the army long enough to make it to safety.  Note that "and the army" isn't a typo -- the filmmakers decided to make the military villains once more.  But whereas the first film showed a group of soldiers who became sick and twisted (and arguably more horrible than the zombies themselves), 28 Weeks Later asks us to despise a military which is doing something extremely sensible -- namely, annihilating every living them to prevent the rage virus from spreading.  This heavy-handedness is as unwelcome as the opening conceit of quick resettlement was mind-numbing.

While the original movie made us care deeply about the handful of survivors left after the outbreak, the sequel takes few steps in this direction.  Perhaps it's because the film succumbs to the Hollywood horror cliche of making kids run away from the monsters, but more likely it's because this film seems more "populated" than the first.

Not everything about 28 Weeks Later is grim.  The music is moody and spectacular, with John Murphy's "In a House, in a Heartbeat" theme returning to add drama in several key "zombie attack" sequences.  The special effects are also top-notch, and are at times too good for their own good.  The campy flesh-devouring fun of classic zombies, which was parodied brilliantly in Shaun of the Dead, gives way in 28 Weeks Later to serious gore, which leads me to advise the squeamish to keep well away.

With the zombies descending on Paris at the close of 28 Weeks Later -- one imagines them shouting, "branes not baguettes!" -- another sequel is almost guaranteed.  A pity, then, because it will only further cannibalize the brilliance of the first film.

Rating:  2 out of 5 stars

Mandarin title: 《无间道》

Many moviewatchers will come to Andrew Lau's Infernal Affairs after seeing Martin Scorcese's remake The Departed, and though doing so will essentially spoil the key plot of the earlier film, the style and texture of both films is distinct, with Scorcese's film the gritty and crude Boston cousin of Lau's slick and moody Kowloon masterpiece.

Telling the story of a dueling moles in a crime syndicate and the police department, respectively, Infernal Affairs treats the audience to a thrilling game of cat and mouse as the two moles -- played by Tony Leung and Andy Lau -- try to stay alive long enough to discover the other's identity.

Leung plays Yan, an undercover officer infiltrating the gang of Kowloon kingpin Boss Sam (Eric Tsang).  Tsang isn't given the chance to chew scenery like his counterpart Jack Nicholson in the American film, but as Boss Sam he credibly menaces his men and the police alike.

Faced with extreme stress after working undercover for ten years, Yan is asked to see a psychiatrist, Dr. Lee (played by Kelly Chen).  While this provides Yan with an opportunity for a love interest, Lee's character is flat and the interaction between Chen and Cheung barely suggests romantic attraction.

Yan's opposite in the story is Inspector Lau, played by Andy Lau, who was also planted ten years prior by Sam, and rises high in the ranks of the police department.  Though he tries to discover Yan's identity, Yan reports only to Inspector Wong (Anthony Wong), leaving Lau in the dark.  Lau is also given a love interest in the movie, and their relationship seems more plausible, despite the fact that we are introduced to them as a couple in medias res.

After our hero and anti-hero are established, the film follows the police as they struggle to bring Sam to justice and Sam as he escapes trap after trap with Lau's help.  The film has an excellent way of ratcheting up the tension as the viewers try to guess which of the moles will be caught.  Eventually, however, Boss Sam "rises above his station" -- which in Chinese philosophy always leads to one's downfall -- and comes to a bloody end.

Compared to The Departed, Infernal Affairs feels a little fast, a little incomplete.  Scorcese offers lengthy exposition for scenes that Infernal Affairs breezes through.  To be fair, Scorcese's film borrows material from Infernal Affairs II and runs 50 minutes longer than the Hong Kong original.  What's more, Lau manages to accomplish in 101 minutes what many Hong Kong gangster films cannot -- provide us with a taut, plausible thriller that pulls us into the dangerous lives of cops and criminals.

Rating:  4 out of 5 stars

Ricky Gervais' "The Office" helped to spawn a whole new generation of squirm-comedy, a satirical subgenre which invites us to laugh at the delusions and absurdities of others.  The NBC adaptation of "The Office" may be the most high-profile entry in this family of comedy, but certainly the new HBO series "Flight of the Conchords" deserves a mention.

The brainchild of New Zealanders Bret McKenzie and Jemaine Clement, "Conchords" stars McKenzie and Clement as their fictional selves, a folk musical duo trying to break into the big time in New York City, only to fall short of success.  In real life, the two stars are a comedy music duo, they put their talents to work in the series by offering up a number of hysterical parody songs that reflect the characters' inner thoughts.

The core conceit of "Conchords" is that Bret, Jemaine, and most of their friends are living in a prolonged adolescence that leaves them with a deficit of common sense.  For example, when one of the duo wants to have a date with a girl, the other insists on tagging along as a third wheel, oblivious to the inappropriateness of the situation.  The writers apparently loved this subplot so much that viewers have already seen it twice in the "Conchords"' brief series run.  Likewise, their Ricky Gervais-like manager Murray and their number one fan and stalker Mel demonstrate a similar level of disconnect from reality.

Humor abounds in "Conchords," but, as already noted, some of the gags repeat too often.  To balance things out the writers throw in absurd side jokes about the New Zealand-Australian rivalry (which is real), the discrimination felt by New Zealanders in the US (there's almost none, and that's the whole point of the joke), and girlfriend troubles.  These are good, but the show never degenerates into a sitcom-style string of unrelated jokes.  In the end, everything comes back to the friendship between man-boys Bret and Jemaine.

Overall, "Conchords" isn't as funny as "The Office," but it's a short and sweet summer diversion.  I'll keep watching and hoping the jokes don't overstay their welcome.

Sometimes, the hype is real.

Gears of War has been heralded as the greatest game available for the X-Box 360, if not one of the best games of all time.  Of the games I've played on the 360, only Gears of War fully pushes the console to its potential and leaves me coming back for more.

While on its face Gears is yet another first-person shooter pitting the player against a monstrous alien menace (ala Quake II & IV), the game adds a welcome strategic dimension in its use of cover.  To play through the game one absolutely must hide behind walls, barricades, and other battlefield obstructions.  Coupled with fierce AI, Gears' gameplay mechanics add an intensity to the firefights few games can match.

Aside from the use of cover, Gears is not a terribly original game, and instead borrows the best design elements of several other first person shooters.  Like other recent games (e.g. Rainbow Six:  Vegas), the characters in Gears lack a life meter but instead can endure a certain amount of damage before dying.  However, if the player can get into cover after taking heavy fire, he heals quickly.  In co-op mode, moreover, a player becomes stunned after passing a certain damage threshold, and must wait for an ally to come and revive him.

Another touch familiar to most shooter fans is a Halo-style restriction on the number of weapons each "Gear" (as the soldiers in the game are called) may carry.  Like the use of cover, this encourages strategic thinking.  Thankfully, when ammo is low or enemies are too close, one of the weapons doubles as a "combat chainsaw" -- complete with gory special effects.

Visually, Gears is amazing, and accomplishes in real-time what a prior generation of games could only show in pre-rendered cut-scenes.  Character design and the environments are equally excellent, and give Gear a feel that is equal parts war movie, horror movie, and sci-fi action movie.  The Unreal Engine has always been excellent, but it's never looked better than this.  If there's any complaint to be made, it's that the game is far too dark, and many players will turn up the brightness just to navigate their surroundings.

For all its gaming glory, Gears falls short from perfect in a couple respects.  First, it is over far too quickly, even on higher difficulty settings.  A dedicated pair of players in co-op mode can tear through the game in a single day, while casual gamers will see the game completed in a single week or less.  Second, the storyline and character development are next to nonexistent.  Most gamers have come to expect this, but it's a pity that despite huge advances in sight and sound, the story in first person shooters remains stuck in the past.

Play through the campaign just once and you will see why Gears of War has rightly earned its place as the king of the 360 for the past eight months.  Gamers will have to wait until September to see if Halo 3 can dethrone Gears, but with news of a sequel, it's same to assume that the Gears franchise will be a force to be reckoned with.

Rating:  4.5 out of 5 stars

As a child of the 1980s, it is hard to approach a movie like Michael Bay's Transformers without the nostalgia -- colloquially derided as "fanboyism" -- overriding my critical judgements.  My first instinct is to either hate everything about the movie or embrace everything about the movie, but setting this instinct aside, I can say that Bay manages to craft a competent human-oriented story that doesn't quite live up to its fantastic potential.

The basic plot concerns a race of alien robots who have come to Earth to do battle for the "Allspark," a kind of cybernetic Holy Grail, that can create robotic life and revive the robots' home planet, Cybertron.  While on the planet, the robots morph to adopt the guise of Earth vehicles, complete with hologram pilots to fool unsuspecting humans.

The central role of the movie should belong to Optimus Prime, leader of the Autobots -- aka the "good" giant robots -- but director Bay (perhaps with prodding from producer Spielberg) decided to make the movie revolve around Sam (Shia Lebouf), the unlikely inheritor of a secret that the Decepticons -- aka the "bad" giant robots -- will kill for.  This recalls Spielberg's ET, which as much about Eliot as it was about his alien friend.

The Autobots learn of Sam's identity and location early on, and dispatch Bumblebee -- a Camaro, sadly, not a VW Beetle -- to protect him, and for what seems like an endless half-hour, "protecting" Sam means helping him score with the movie's love interest Mikaela (Megan Fox).  This subplot helps to drag down the movie in the first half, leaving most of the audience hungry for some giant robot action -- and thankfully, after the slow start, Bay delivers.

After the Autobots arrive on Earth in what might well be the most expensive GM commercial ever, the fight with the Decepticons can begin in earnest.  The CGI is extremely believable, and the physical models (several of the movie robots were built to scale) blend seamlessly with the computer versions.  Transformers is quite honestly a movie that could not have been made without modern filmmaking technology.

Unfortunately, just as things get going, Bay throws in another subplot, this time involving Sector 7, a government agency that comes off as a bad retread of Men in Black.  As the head of Sector 7, John Turturro provides a few weak stabs at comic relief in the second half of the film, but these jokes -- and indeed the entire subplot -- deserved to be left on the cutting room floor.

That said, most of the human characters are likable, and at least one of the subplots -- involving a group of soldiers deployed to the Gulf -- was interesting.  Their quest to kill one of the Decepticons that destroyed their base was arguably more compelling than Sam and Optimus' quest for the Allspark.

Though we learn to like many of the human characters, the same cannot be said for the robots themselves.  The film offers only a brief glimpse at the Autobots' personalities and motivation; instead, the fans are left to fill in the blanks with what they know of the characters.

The Decepticons are even worse off; from Frenzy, the smallest Decepticon, to their leader, Megatron, all of the Decepticons are depicted as monstrous, as if they took a detour to Mordor on their way to Earth from Cybertron.  The lack of nuance spills over into their dialogue -- the Decepticon in-fighting, strategy, and plotting from the series is utterly missing in the movie.

Transformers ends with the promise of a sequel, and the next film can surpass the first if it retains the same quality of special effects while shifting the focus to the robots themselves.  After all, the story is supposed to be about the Transformers, not the "friends of the Transformers."  Optimus Prime shouldn't be a guest star in his own movie.

Rating:  3.5 out of 5 stars

Mandarin title: 《不能说的秘密》

Secret is the first film directed by Jay Chou, a newcomer to the film world who is more famous for his innovative approach to Chinese pop music.  Unfortunately, Chou's penchant for innovation isn't really reflected in Secret, which takes most of its cues from Korean and Hong Kong romantic dramas.

In fact, as far as imitations go, Secret is a skillfully made, albeit flawed copy.  First two-thirds of the film is a plausible, sweet, and subtle story of school love between music students Jay (Chou is not only directing but also playing a character named Jay) and Rain (played by Taiwanese actress Gwai Lun-mei).  People familiar with the work of Wong Kar-wai will instantly recognize the theme of "restrained" love between the two characters.

Fans of music will also appreciate the piano work throughout the movie, and the David Fincher-esque zooming into the machinery of the piano during a "piano duel" helps transform an almost absurd scene into something cool.

Secret is first and foremost a movie about love, though the love story never drags and is buoyed by frequent comic relief.  In addition to the gags provided by a pair of school rugby hooligans, accomplished Hong Kong star Anthony Wong gives a memorable turn as Jay's father, adding both humor and style to the story.

Things are going too well for Jay and Rain through the first half, which leaves viewers waiting for the dramatic twists that will threaten to tear the lovers apart.  Leaving aside a poorly developed asthma subplot, the first real twist comes from the usual quarters -- the "other woman."  In fact, she's not much in the way of competition for Rain, and would be easily dispensed with were it not for the second dramatic twist, which is of a supernatural nature.

Without spoiling the plot, the audience learns in a very abrupt and confusing way that Jay and Rain are not exactly from the same world.  This revelation comes gift-wrapped with a long flashback, but the sudden shift will leave some viewers dissatisfied with the "secret" of the movie.

This brings us to the other flaws in the presentation.  Chou unwisely decides to shift from a cinematic style to a music video style during the "big reveal," which saps the drama of the moment.  He makes the same mistake at the climax of the film, which again feels like a music video.  Moreover, during the denouement, the movie arguably breaks its own rules and leaves an essential paradox untouched and unconsidered.

Caveats aside, Chou's acting has improved since Curse of the Golden Flower, and his directorial skills show promise.  Secret isn't perfect, but it is a good date movie, and the dramatic twist, while a bit silly, is thankfully never as heavy-handed as some of the Korean films Secret resembles.

Rating:  3 out of 5 stars