Across the River [河对岸是山] (2017)

Across the River (aka The Yellow River) is an interesting small film set on the banks of the Yellow River in Gansu province.  Its written and directed by Zhang Yueling who has made a number of films but none which have achieved great success to date. The ageing Lao Wei's [Li Bin] main source of…

Wild Rose [野玫瑰] (1932)

An early Sun Yu film with a lively seventeen year-old Wang Renmei in the type of role which Li Lili would make her own. The film opens in a small rural village where Xiaofeng  [Wang, below in a publicity shot] is looking after her father Hu Jin [Zhang Zhizhi, the evil gangster in The Goddess],…

Song of the Fishermen [渔光曲] (1934)

Song of the Fishermen, directed by Cai Chusheng is a much more political take on life in China than his earlier movies, such as Pink Dream. Fisherman Fulin and his wife Aunt Xu have twins, a boy and a girl. The farther dies at sea  and Xu has to go to work for the local…

Waves Washing the Sand [浪淘沙] (1936)

Waves Washing the Sand [aka The Desert Island] Wu Yonggang's later film, a year after Goddess, is much less well known but equally interesting. In contrast to the earlier film it is with sound. The film opens with a long shot of the waves washing the beach (set to ominous classical music) and cuts to…

Don’t Change Your Husband [情海重吻] (1929)

An early Chinese romantic comedy. The film opens as a rich couple return from a night out in their car, casually knocking down a peasant woman on her way to the market as they go. But this is the last explicit social criticism in this movie which is primarily a comedy of manners as with…

Cock and Bull [追凶者也] (2016)

Cock and Bull by director Cao Baoping is the first in a recent line of Chinese crime absurdist comedies - generally more absurd than funny. Set in a rural area in Yunnan province, the film opens with the discovery of a dead body. Mechanic Song [Liu Ye] is questioned about the death because he once…

Ever Since We Love [万物生长] (2015)

The most mainstream but also the least successful of Li Yu's films as director. This is another college film, somewhat in the style of So Young (2013), and based on a novel (Everything Grows, the Chinese title of the film which makes more sense than the English version) by Feng Tang. Qiu Shui [Han Geng]…

Go Away Mr Tumour [滚蛋吧！肿瘤君] (2015)

Bai Baihe shines in this unlikely tragicomedy as she (yet again) dies of an incurable disease. Bai's characters must be about the most unlucky on the planet and she has died of more incurable diseases than most actresses. In this film late-20s cartoonist Xiong Dun [Bai] is having a terrible birthday. She gets sacked from…

The Stolen Years [被偷走的那五年] (2013)

Another vehicle for Bai Baihe but even her skills can't do much for this movie. He Mann [Bai] awakes in hospital after a collision. She only remembers her wedding to Xie Yu [Taiwanese Joseph Cheng] and honeymoon but quickly learns that she has forgotten the subsequent five years and is now divorced. In not the…

Beijing Bicycle [十七岁的单车] (2001)

Beijing Bicycle [A Seventeen Year Old's Bicycle in Chinese] is Wang Xiaoshui's first really commercial film, if not his first official release (the gritty So Close to Paradise).  It has been quite well received both in China (7.8 on Douban)  and outside and is perhaps his most widely seen film outside China (more votes on IMDB…