What was the last Chinese film you watched?

[Lu]

The International Film Festival Rotterdam, so I'm afraid that's not much use to you... DVD sellers don't have it? That's surprising.

[ouyangjun]

Saw a great movie tonight.  《无人区》"No Man's Land".  From what I understand the movie was banned in China for years, and then in 2013 it finally got released to be allowed in China.  Really good movie, similarities to a Cohen Brother's film.  Disregard the last 2 minutes, from what I read it was required to be added as part of being allowed in China.

[opsidd]

thx for the recommendation, ouyangjun, watched it and liked it pretty much! thx also for the tip to skip the last 2 minutes!

[ouyangjun]

Another good Chinese movie tonight. It's called 《天注定》 or in English "A Touch of Sin". A really good movie. It is currently banned (or at least not able to be released) in China. It has a few different stories within the movie. As I kept watching the movie I realized it followed a theme of real issues in China revolving around money, work conditions, etc. It wasn't until a particular scene when I said to my wife, "just like the Foxconn incidents over the past few years". My wife really liked the movie, and she went online and did some more research. Turns out all of the stories within the movie are based on real stories that happened in China over the past years. I won't ruin for anyone by saying anymore.

 

Also, there are two interesting plays within the movie that relate to what is happening in the movie (and what happened in real life). The first play takes place during the story that is played by 姜武 Jiang Wu (姜文 Jiang Wen's brother). The first play is called 《林冲》, which is similar to the situation of Jiang Wen's character is facing, except the play is from The Song Dynasty time about a corrupt official. The final play is one called 《苏三》 about a young girl with limited choices in life... At the end of the day I would've had no idea about these plays signifying anything relating to the story... luckily I was watching it with my wife who filled me in on the details.

[Lu]

The first play is called 《林冲》, which is similar to the situation of Jiang Wen's character is facing, except the play is from The Song Dynasty time about a corrupt official. The final play is one called 《苏三》 about a young girl with limited choices in life...

I saw the movie but mised this information, thanks, makes it even better.

Another film festival this week, today I saw a collection of Chinese animated shorts, not worthwhile unfortunately. The stories were allright-ish, but most of the animation was not that good, or not my taste. But earlier this week I saw a Taiwanese movie, The Rice Bomber 白米炸彈客 which was very good and also felt very timely, what with the current protests in Taipei.

[renzhe]

The first play is called 《林冲》, which is similar to the situation of Jiang Wen's character is facing, except the play is from The Song Dynasty time about a corrupt official.

Is that the story of 林冲 from Water Margin?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lin_Chong

[ouyangjun]

 

Is that the story of 林冲 from Water Margin?

https://en.wikipedia.../wiki/Lin_Chong

 

@renzhe, yes, I believe it is.

[Pingfa]

周星驰/Stephen Chow's 西游 降魔篇. I really enjoyed it. One of the best movies I've seen in a while. It's a very unconventional take on Journey to the West, that's for sure.

 

Glad you mentioned that little tidbit about 无人区, Ouyangjun, I hated that ending. It was so out of place. Other than that, it was a good watch.

[icebear]

Saw 天注定 last night, overall it was quite good. Highly recommended, so long as you can handle a gloomy story.

[skylee]

I plan to see 天注定 when I visit Taipei during Easter holidays.

[icebear]

It's possible to find  天注定  on YouTube (in whole) - have to search in Chinese. Not sure about quality there, I saw a BluRay version.

 

Watching well produced movies like this one make me realize one reason I instinctively dislike a lot of Chinese TV is the very poor production quality (image and sound). Movies tend to be far better, although in some cases there is still a large gap with what Western audiences would consider a bare minimum. In the last 5-6 years I feel that some Chinese TV has come a long way - hope it keeps pushing forward quickly, as watching high-quality Chinese media really is a pleasure.

[skylee]

No problem. I enjoy seeing films in Taipei. The YouTube version does not look very good on my cell phone.

[ouyangjun]

《澳门风云》"The Man from Macau"... not my type of movie.  Would not recommend.  

 

Coming up on my movie list are handful of ones I'm looking forward to watching.  《白日烟火》，《有话好好说》，《一九四二》 and a handful of others that I can't recall at the moment.  Hopefully they're better than the one I just watched. 

[skylee]

I went to see Kano today, fully expecting that it was a Chinese film. But I was wrong. It is a Japanese film, though most of the story takes place in Taiwan under Japanese rule and the director and producers are from Taiwan. 99% of the dialogues is in Japanese. I find the story acceptable as I understand what it would be like when a place is colonised. A friend, however, describes it as 不可思議 and 當局者迷. I think it is much nicer than 海角七號, which I very much disliked.

Actually what is 不可思議 is the length of the film. I have no problem with long films. But the story of Kano is just too thin for 180+ minutes.

[character]

私人訂製 (Personal Tailor) - I quite enjoyed this dry comedy. 

[skylee]

I won't be able to watch 天注定 in Taipei as its last show is tonight and I will be there tomorrow.  Too bad.

[character]

天注定 (A Touch of Sin): I found it an OK timepass, but nowhere near as good as the director's 世界 (The World).

[Lu]

Watched 致我们终将逝去的青春 (So Young) the other day. I thought the first half was really good, and then the second half was really boring. It's about a group of university students: they're from different backgrounds, different goals in life, and one of them, a rather annoying girl, falls for a guy and we mostly follow their story. I liked how the first half explores the different challenges that the students face, and their different expectations. But the second half, after they graduate, is mostly about Love and what it Means, it's full of people making stupid choices for stupid reasons and in my opinion it drags on too long. The interesting bits (poor girl ends up marrying rich older guy but then has to deal with his two little sons; campus poet ends up struggling with hardly any career but tries to look rich in front of his old friends) get snowed under by the annoying girl getting back to her old boyfriend, breaking up with him again, and getting back with another former boyfriend, or maybe not, etc etc. All in all somewhat worthwhile but not very.

Also watched the little CIA movie about Glenn Shriver, the student-turned-not-quite-spy. Bit cheesy. And everyone who is supposed to speak Chinese has a horrible accent.

[Melanie1989]

Happy Times! I watched this on youtube http://youtu.be/S3vekWOXMGg and loved it so much that i actually paid for the download, hehe. That doesn't happen often... It's a low-budget independent film, from the looks of it, but i really liked it. Funny and very good i think for brushing up on listening skills. I didn't actually need the subtitles for most of it. 

 

I also watched New Perfect Two http://youtu.be/X4VlxhKP6KM and that's also pretty easy to understand. But while it is quite funny, it's also a little unoriginal (think of Big Daddy with Adam Sandler, but with a mushier love story) with the romantic side letting it down a bit. But it's worth a watch, i think.

[mouse]

 

致我们终将逝去的青春 (So Young)

 

This was an adaptation of a novel, so I think a lot of the problems of pacing came from being too faithful to the source material. They could (and probably should) have cut a load of it out. Saying that, while the movie definitely dragged near the end, I enjoyed it overall.