What was the last Chinese film you watched?

[ouyangjun]

I just watched two movies in the past month that were both excellent.

 

The first was 七月与安生 or in English "Soulmates".  A great movie that that won some awards in Asia.  It's a story of two best friends and a novel written that chronicles their friendship and falling apart.

 

The other one I just finished was 罗曼蒂克消亡史 or in English "Wasted Times".  This was awesome.  Starting 葛优 Ge You and 章子怡 Zhang Zi Yi, need I say more?  Cinematography was great, story reminded me of an American Tarantino style with the random jumping around of the plot and excessive murders.  About a crime boss during the the 30's and 40's before and after the war.  One disclaimer is that 80% of the movie is in Shanghainese.  This did not take away from the enjoyment.

[Sharon_Too]

百鸟朝凤, Song of the Phoenix. I absolutely loved it. We don't get to see such authentic movies these days. It got a low box office because it's a far cry from commercial movies. An undervalued 'jade stone' indeed.

In brief, it's the story of a Suona horn master who takes in young apprentices in the village, and passes on his expertise of this musical instrument. No spoilers here, you should watch it if you like old style Chinese movies, rural life, Chinese folk music, old age wisdom, principles, and traditions versus modernism conflicts.

 

I would also like to recommend one of my favourite movies:

幸福会 Joyluck Club (based on Amy Tan's novel). It's actually an old American movie, but it contains so much Chinese elements, values and culture in it, and it does have some parts spoken in Mandarin. It's the stories of four women who fled war-torn China to create a new life in America where they each raise a daughter. It's about Chinese immigrants, life, motherly love, cultural differences, grief, courage and so much more..

 

Both are genuinely moving stories, acted beautifully and will surely give you a whole new perspective on China and Chinese people. Enjoy!

[Publius]

5 hours ago, Sharon_Too said:

幸福会 Joyluck Club (based on Amy Tan's novel)

I think the Chinese name is 喜福會.

[Lu]

I was at the International Film Festival Rotterdam and I saw:

- Re-rupture 重新破裂, artistic Taiwanese short, bringing together a few artistic and political events from 20 years ago. Experimental and fun.

- even more experimental and artistic shorts by Zhou Tao, which brought home the point that a weird artistic short doesn't get any less weird and artistic when it is well-made, with good lighting and sound and everything (which these shorts were).

- Impermanence 云水, several characters, their sin, and how they are punished for it.

- The Widowed Witch 小寡妇成仙记, third-time widow travels from village to cold village looking for a place to stay, while more and more mysterious things happen around her, even if she herself doesn't buy that she's a shaman.

- Father to Son 范保德, Taiwanese man travels to Japan in search of his father, who abandoned him and his mother as a child.

- The Bold, the Corrupt and the Beautiful 血菩萨, mother and two daughters wheel and deal in Taiwanese high society of the 1990s. Bloodshed ensues. I liked this film best.

- An Impossibly Small Object, by a Dutch filmmaker who keeps making movies in Taiwan and China so finally I had to see it for myself. Beautifully filmed. First half was the story of a young girl whose best friend is about to move to the US, to her dismay. That part was like a good children's movie in the tradition of good Dutch children's movies. The second half is about a Dutch photographer, an avatar of the maker, and was a bit less interesting, although the whole thing wraps up nicely.

 

The four Asian feature films had a nice unintended theme running through them: sin and punishment (or redemption), parents and children, how the past comes back to haunt you, or give you a chance to do better, or take revenge.

And in other ways they were nicely balanced:

2 Taiwanese and 2 Chinese films

2 about men, 2 about women: 1 Chinese about women, 1 Chinese about men, same for the Taiwanese ones.

2 about characters which deep down were good, 2 about characters which deep down were evil: 1 Chinese film about a good woman, 1 Taiwanese film about a good man, 1 Taiwanese film about bad women, 1 Chinese film about bad men.

1 (about men) was made by a female director, the others by male directors. That was less nicely balanced.

The two films about women (1 Chinese, 1 Taiwanese) both featured the main character (1 good, 1 bad) being raped (at the beginning and the end respectively). I wish Chinese and Taiwanese films would stop using rape as a plot device.

[zander1]

I recently watched 七月与安生 which I thought was really excellent and quite moving. Will have to see if I can find any other films of a similar vein.

 

I also watched 撒娇女人最好命, which despite being (very) silly I must admit I did quite enjoy. I really like the actress 谢依霖 so this may be part of the reason.

[imron]

On 3/11/2018 at 5:01 PM, zander1 said:

which despite being (very) silly I must admit I did quite enjoy

The rabbit scene was the best.

[zander1]

7 minutes ago, imron said:

rabbit scene was the best 

 

Agreed - I was speaking to someone this morning and said it was impossible to bring up eating rabbit without someone referencing this scene. 

[Lumbering Ox]

I don't know the Chinese, but the rabbit scene, I saw a movie with a rabbit scene where this ditzy girl was freaking out over eating rabbit while out with this guy who had a sensible female friend who was with them. IIRC at some street stand.

 

Is this the movie?

 

 

All I know is that you have to be werry werry quiet when hunting wrabbit.

[achang1980]

The last Chinese film I've watched was 《唐人街探案2》.  It's a detective comedy.  

[imron]

2 hours ago, Lumbering Ox said:

Is this the movie?

That's the one.

[Luxi]

I  watched "I am not Madame Bovary" (我不是潘金莲 ) in Netflix 

https://www.netflix.com/gb/title/80143797  (I think the link is to Britain's Netflix)

 

The film is directed by Feng Xiaogang. I enjoyed it more than I had expected, especially because of the strikingly original cinematography by Luo Pan. He uses colours, perspectives, shot angles, frame shapes derived from painting styles, to match the locations and moods in the story. The film was criticised because of this, but I thought it was fascinating and very original, to me the best part of the film.

 

The story itself is average but it's mildly funny and never falls into melodrama. Comparisons with Zhang Yimou's "The story of Qiu Ju" (1992) are inevitable.  While  Zhang Yimou's film was revolutionary and daring at the time, Madame Bovary is not...and Fan Bingbing is absolutely no match to Gong Li.

 

[Lumbering Ox]

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

 

It was pretty good. The female lead was adorable which is always a bonus for me.

The foodie angle was a bit over the top but I am not a foodie so meh.

[Luxi]

Another Chinese film in Netflix, "God of War" (liberally translated from the not-so-easy-to-translate original title:  荡寇风云, Wiping-out bandits?):

https://www.netflix.com/gb/title/80145625  

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt6083388/  

Directed by the veteran Gordon Chan (Hong Kong). It is about the efforts and, very specially, strategy, of the Ming to repel a massive Japanese army of pirates (among whom hide professional samurai seeking to take over the Chinese eastern coast) in the 16th Century. I enjoyed it,  it took a while to get going, but it is a good action film with decent acting, and, surprisingly, quite fair - even sympathetic,  to some of the Japanese. The final 30 minutes or so are breathtaking - it must have taken the entire yearly production of fireworks in Zhejiang to film it.

The cinematography by Takuro Ishizaka is superb: rich, thick luscious colours with the quality of renaissance oil paintings, and a very clever use of natural illumination (including candle lights) for atmosphere. It is filmed in Zhejiang, I think.

 

 

 

 

[RjMaan]

Jackie Chan is my favorite hero and the last Chinese movie i saw was Rush Hours.

[Lu]

Just watched The Banquet. Very very beautiful, all kinds of gorgeous shots and images and clothes and production values in general. But it felt very slow (I guess perhaps I just wasn't in the mood for a pretty-pretty but slow movie). It's basically Hamlet, with a few small changes ('Hamlet's' mother would have been his wife had his father not married her first; small differences in the ending). Zhang Ziyi shines, although I think comparing her performance here to Gong Li's in Curse of the Golden Flower, Gong Li still wins.

 

And on a totally different note I watched Empty Home, a short documentary about a young woman in Wuhan and the house that she and her family bought and that she considers home, even though neither she nor anyone else is living there. Looking into what 家 means when 老家 is not the same as 家, your family lives all over the country and the place where you actually spend all your time is your shop with a folding couch. More explanation here.

[imron]

5 hours ago, Lu said:

It's basically Hamlet, with a few small changes

It's apparently《雷雨》with a few small changes, though I've not seen the movie so I couldn't say if it's closer to 《雷雨》or closer to Hamlet.  It's also entirely possible that 《雷雨》was influenced by Hamlet, though wikipedia tells me Oedipus was a bigger influence on it, so who knows.

[Lu]

On 12/26/2007 at 2:05 AM, imron said:

Quote

BTW, the movie based on this play is titled "Curse of the Golden Flower", instead of "banquet", which is another movie.

D'oh, I knew it was one of them, and just got them mixed up (I've not seen either of the movies myself)

:-)

 

But thanks for the link, interesting thread. Seems there are some similarities between 雷雨/Curse of the Golden Flower and The Banquet, but The Banquet really is basically Hamlet, with uncle killing father and marrying mother, the Hamlet & Ophelia thing, down to the play-within-a-play where the killing of the former king is acted out. Pretty similar movies really: big lavish family dramas with incest murder and palace intrigues, both from 2006. Funny how such trends happen.

[imron]

History repeats itself ?

[Luxi]

I liked "The Banquet" so much that I bought the DVD! It is visually stunning. I would have stayed with the opening theatre scenes for the rest of the film...

 

14 hours ago, Lu said:

But it felt very slow

 

Yes, slow seems to be my kind of film. I must be the only viewer who gave 10/10 to The Assassin and watched it twice in succession...

[thezipline]

Us and Them, a lovely film.