Only the River Flows [河边的错误] (2023)

One of the best Chinese films of 2023. Set in a small town in central China in the early 1990s, the movie begins with the brutal murder of an old woman. Detective Ma Zhe [an excellent Zhu Yilong] is charged with tracking down the killer. He has few clues other than a tape found in…

Ripe Town [繁城之下] (2023)

An interesting and innovative 12 episode historical drama which gets an exceptional 8.5 on Douiban. Though set in the Ming dynasty, Ripe Town (Beneath the Prosperous City in Chinese) is much darker (and indeed more contemporary) than most dramas. The series opens as police Captain Leng's [Wang Ce] body is found hoist on a pole…

Heart’s Motive [最后的真相] (2023)

In contrast to Dust to Dust, this crime cum courtroom drama gets almost everything wrong. And, for once, we can't even blame the censors since most of the flaws seem to come form the filmmakers themselves. The premise looks promising. A former high-flying lawyer Ding Yifeng [Huang Xiaoming] has had his career ruined when he…

Dust to Dust [第八个嫌疑人] (2023)

This is a very good character-driven crime drama and has been a surprise box office hit. The story (though told in flashback) begins chronologically in the mid 1990s in Guangdong when a motely group of men get together to rob a savings bank (based on an actual crime which was the largest robbery in the…

Everything is Unknown [意外人生] (2023)

The latest movie from director Peter Zuo (who also wrote the screenplay), it marks a further change from his debut low budget crime drama Out of Crimes and his recent 'lost in the desert' drama Where Nothing Grows. It has an interesting cast with Hong Kong star Francis Ng, Ren Suxi (who also starred in…