Reviews of Chinese films
Released: 2017 Viewed: March 2019 As the film begins, Yang Yaoting [Yang Zishan] and her family live and work in southern Shenzhen. However, her father’s ill-health leads to his dismissal and when her mother also loses her job, the family decide to move back to their native Gansu in… Continue reading Walking past the future [路過未來]
Released: 2013 Viewed: March 2019 So Young (based on a novel by Xin Yiwu which provides the Chinese title) is an overlong movie which begins in 1990s university life in a Chinese city. Zheng Wei [Yang Zishan] moves to the city to begin her studies (and to be in the same university as her secret… Continue reading So young [致我们终将逝去的青春]
Released: 2018 Viewed: March 2019 Somewhere Beyond the Mist (Blue Sky, White Clouds in the original Cantonese) is a striking Hong Kong film which avoids all the usual clichés of HK crime/thrillers. The film is set outside central Hong Kong and, although the city glows menacingly in the background, we never see the usual locations… Continue reading Somewhere Beyond the Mist [藍天白雲]
Released: 2018 Viewed: March 2019 This film has been touted as a return to form for veteran director Zhang Yimou. In reality, it is just another Chinese historical drama (set during the Three Kingdoms period) with nothing particular to make it stand out from the many others in the genre. The one noticeable feature… Continue reading Shadow [影]
Released: 2015 Viewed: March 2019 As the title indicates, this is basically a love story set in rural China in the 1980s. A sent-down youth Guan Yubo [Lu Fangshen, much too old for the part but carrying it off anyway] is sent to a remote part of Hubei province in central China. Here he meets… Continue reading Love in the 1980s [1980 nian dai de ai qing]
Released: 2018 Viewed: March 2019 This is the follow up to director Bi Gan’s first film Kaili Blues (2015). That was an interesting, if somewhat obscure, movie set in Kaili. His second film is this wilfully obscure movie set in Kaili. But it is not interesting (not even somewhat). It is a major disappointment after the… Continue reading Long Day’s Journey into Night [地球最后的夜晚] (2018)
Released: 2014 Viewed: 2015 This is the second film on the life of Chinese writer Xiao Hong, after 2012’s Falling Flowers. Xiao Hong [played by Tang Wei] was born in Heilongang in 1911 (as Zhang Naiying) and died at the age of 30 in 1942 in Japanese-occupied Hong Kong. She was one of the most… Continue reading The Golden Era [黄金时代]
Released: 2017 Viewed: March 2019 Don’t be tempted by the Hitchcockian premise or the presence of the beautiful Yang Caiyu, this film is a waste of your time. In fact it is most interesting as an example of the ‘two countries, one system’ approach to film-making which is becoming increasingly popular in greater China. Filmed… Continue reading The Edge of Innocence [Xiàtiān Shíjiǔ Suì De Xiàoxiàng]
Released: 2018 Viewed:March 2019 A portrait of an unharmonious society. ‘Life’s a bitch and then you die' is the general theme of this excellent film from first-time director Hu Bo (who also wrote the script based on his own novel). A four hour film with such a bleak subject matter may sound like rather a… Continue reading An Elephant Sitting Still [Da xiang xi di er zuo]
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