Weekend in Taipei. Little does Joey's young son, Raymond (Wyatt Yang), know that John is actually his father. Of course, there's a MacGuffin: a ledger that incriminates Raymond. Writer/director George Huang and co-writer Luc Besson have made a wildly entertaining, slick and exhilarating action thriller. Sure, the villain is cartoonish and underwritten while the plot has very little plausibility and barely any surprises. Those are systematic flaws; not systemic flaws. Who goes to an action thriller expecting logic, anyway? As Hitchcock once observed, logic is dull.
      Fortunately, the action sequences are fun to watch because they're well-choreographed and that's when the film embraces its dark humor and zaniness. Case in point: an action set piece takes place inside a restaurant's kitchen that's almost as hilarious as the iconic kitchen fight scene in Jean-Claude Van Damme's Sudden Death. If only it were to go full throttle with those comedic elements. Expositional scenes are handled quite well without any clunkiness, i.e. when John, Joey and Randolph sit and eat together while John and Joey recall their own memories of how they met. Note to other filmmakers: the best way to incorporate exposition is to have the characters do something else during the expository dialogue. The aforementioned scene is a great example of that. The pace moves briskly enough, the violence is bloody without being gratuitous, and brief running time helps the audience to avoid becoming exhausted. This is the kind of film that Jean-Claude Van Damme would enjoy doing back in the 80s and 90s. At an ideal running time of 1 hour and 41 minutes Weekend in Taipei opens in theaters nationwide via Ketchup Entertainment.
Number of times I checked my watch: 2
      Youth (Homecoming) is, thankfully, the last part of the Youth trilogy about young textile workers in Zhili, a province in China. Director Wang Bing focuses on the workers' preparing to go on a break for the 2016 Chinese New Year. Two couples end up getting married while the audience is there to witness their joyous festivities. For the most part, Youth (Homecoming) is mildly engaging without being profound, provocative or very moving. Like the previous films, it tests the audience's patience because of the lengthy running time and the occasionally sluggish pace. There's also nothing exceptional about the cinematography, editing or anything else that would've added style and/or made the film more cinematic. At 2 hours and 32 minutes, Youth (Homecoming) opens at Metrograph via Icarus Films.
Number of times I checked my watch: 3