What was the last Chinese film you watched?

[rob07]

No, not really. I was curious to see what Tang Wei was up to.

[imron]

I was curious to see what Tang Wei was up to.

Did you see 武侠?

[skylee]

Part of the reason I went to see the movie was to find out what on earth 西雅图 was.

But you said you've passed HSK6?

I saw the trailer but didn't think I would want to pay for watching that film. Tang Wei was also in the film 月滿軒尼詩. She is also a model of the cosmetics brand SKII (some of her photos are not that flattering IMHO).

[rob07]

Did you see 武侠?

I did, but her role did not really make any impression on me, the movie seemed to really belong to the two male leads. I'd actually forgotten she was in it and the movie itself I didn't find particularly memorable. I didn't see 月滿軒尼詩.

But you said you've passed HSK6?

Once again Skylee teaches me a valuable lesson - do not attempt to joke over the internet without using a smiley face.

[Guest realmayo]

Watched Wong Kar-Wai's 一代宗師The Grandmaster. Well, watched the first half a few days ago and got bored. Watched the next 20 mins of so just now. Not sure I can be bothered to finish it. Looking back a couple of pages here I think I feel the same way about this film as lots of people.

I can't think of a better set of DVDs than the ones I've got of WKW's earlier films. But 2046 was a bit of a disappointment and it's got worse.

Lots of traditional Chinese painting seems (I'm no expert) to get its power from delicate almost abstract touches that somehow fit together to make a picture. Don't need explicit details. Old poems avoid telling you exactly what's going on, meaning the reader has to add the detail and make the connections.

Wonder if you can say that WKW's later films, and Zhang Yimou's stuff from Hero onwards, is trying to do the same, to become "traditional Chinese" film making. A hint there, a beautiful sequence there, leave it for the audience to fill in the details.

It doesn't work for me: either this approach isn't suited to cinema (with an inevitably passive audience), or I'm not suited to this approach (am too Western), or they've just not got it right (yet).

I don't think their earlier films were like that so much.

EDIT: just reading one sentence from the Wikipedia article on the film it's like a parody of WKW:

The film then fast-forwards to the 1952, when Ip Man and Gong Er meet each other for the last time. Gong confesses to Ip that she has romantic feelings for him right from the beginning. She dies shortly after. The cause of death was never clearly stated but it was implied that in the fight with Ma San not only her martial arts was lost, her life shortened, too. The final scenes offer a visual montage as Ip Man's school flourishes. Off screen, it is stated that Ip Man died in 1972.

[gato]

WKW tried to make a kung fu instead of a love story which he is better at. The fight scenes took up at least half of screen time, but they were boring. Why? Aside from the overuse of slow motion, Tony Leung and Zhang Ziyi simply aren't interesting as fighters. The best kung fu movies have great physical fighters, like Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, and Jet Li. People can tell when the fighting is fake and get bored.

If you are going cast Tony Leung, then you can't make a real kung fu movie. His earlier movie "Ashes of Time" wisely kept the fighting to a minimum and was a love story rather than a kung fu movie.

The dialogue made up of formal written Chinese also made it boring. Imagine a English language movie where people talked in legalese, that is what this movie felt like. You can't connect emotionally with the characters.

[amandagmu]

Also saw Shanghai calling/ 纽约客@上海 while sick (with what I swear is the plague) last week. I liked it - not a whole lot to it, but I think I enjoyed the parallels/nostalgia to living as an expat in China (since I now no longer do). Although I was not in the same position as Eliza Coupe's character (also an Amanda, but in the movie she's in her 30s, with a kid, and lives in a lovely place), I certainly could relate to her recurring "issues" ---> such as dealing with the average expat male in big city China, people not thinking she should be able to speak or read Chinese because she's a blonde foreigner, etc. I found it absolutely hysterical when she's on a date with a middle-aged French dude and she finds out he's married, his excuse being that "no, it's ok, my wife said I can have an affair with a Chinese woman, I have needs!" Also funny was the bit where she's trying to talk to a British expat at a party and he keeps throwing cheesy lines at every young Chinese woman in the vicinity. Meanwhile, the English teacher says he only came to China to get laid. Ha!

[icebear]

毒战, or Drug War, which was excellent for a "caper" movie. It focuses on a undercover operation against a big meth syndicate based in Tianjin. Very fun and high production quality.

[roddy]

I rewatched So Close recently. I still maintain it's a massively under-rated film - half action extravaganza, half shampoo commercial, half bits you can probably skip.

[Guest realmayo]

Not under-rated by me! Pretty certain I've got a DVD still kicking around somewhere, perhaps it's time to dig it out again. Have a vague memory the ending seemed designed to set up a sequel, but I guess that never happened?

[cumberbatch]

So Close is sort of a guilty pleasure for me. I never get tired of it.

I watch it subbed or dubbed, whatever my mood is.

[roddy]

Never heard of a sequel, not sure I'd risk watching it unless they resurrected...well, won't spoil it. It's not that much of a set-up for a sequel, anyway, although they could have done one.

Oh, and guilty pleasure? Nothing guilty about it.

[Guest realmayo]

I feel guilty that I haven't watched it for ages....

[skylee]

I saw 盲探 Blind Detective today. I think it is interesting and entertaining. But it is not a film that I will see again (I usually watch the films I like more than once).

PS - people here like films with Andy Lau and Sammi Cheng in the leading roles.

[imron]

The other day I saw an interesting documentary, Seeking Asian Female, which is about a 60 something american guy obsessed with finding a Chinese bride. Despite how it sounds, it was actually quite good.

[character]

北京遇上西雅圖 (Finding Mr. Right) - Surprisingly good for a commercial romcom. Tang Wei's best performance yet.

毒戰 (Drug War) - Very well done crime drama, though some scenes/characters are a bit too broadly-played for my taste. Be aware the ending is extremely violent.

[陳德聰]

Watched 天机·富春山居图 without any prior knowledge of what I was getting myself into. Wouldn't recommend this movie to anyone really. I had a lot of trouble following the storyline, and wasn't very impressed with the generic crazy has-all-kinds-of-weird-fetishes Japanese bad guy, the double/triple agent (side-)plot(?) and wasn't quite sure why the supporting role got the best fight scene at the end and, despite being painted as the incapable of physical combat character the entire movie, magically can just kill everyone with her intense martial arts ability that were never mentioned or even alluded to...

[Shirley_Chen]

致青春 - So Young

[linguaholic]

the last one that I watched was 葉問. That film is really a classic and I can recommend it to all the martial arts fans : ! 叶问 is doing great in this one! really nice performance

[skylee]

I saw two Hong Kong films today. One is 激戰 (Unbeatable) which is about mixed martial arts (MMA) fighting, the other is 狂舞派 ( The Way We Dance) which is about street dancing. The themes are different from most usual commercial films' and the movies themselves were quite enjoyable. And they have a very local feel, with zero or minimum Mainland involvement, which makes them very refreshing.