Are there any Chinese movies with good acting?

[Alex_Hart]

I thought 《我不是药神》 was pretty good. Like abcd's suggestion, not an art-house film, but it still made me slightly teary eyed. 

[markhavemann]

Doesn't look like anybody's mentioned Ocean Heaven 海洋天堂. It's got Jet Li (but no kung-fu) and a few slightly strange scenes but I thought it was pretty good overall. 

 

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1498858/

https://zh.wikipedia.org/zh/海洋天堂

[roddy]

On 1/30/2019 at 4:10 PM, abcdefg said:

Operation Red Sea 红海行动 is a pretty good action movie, made last year (2018.) Plot, direction, acting are all solidly OK for such a flick. (This isn't something made for the art-house crowd; it was intended to have mass appeal.) 

Watching this now - it's on Netflix (UK, at least). Not bad at all, for what it is. No Chinese subs, only English, and the language isn't that easy to follow - lots of barked orders and military language. Worth a watch though, the action sequences are well done, the eye-roll inducing propaganda isn't too frequent, and there's the odd laugh. 完毕！  

 

Edit: Oh boy, this is not for the squeamish.... here a limb, there a limb...

[abcdefg]

I watched it in a Mainland edition on the big screen. Had Chinese subs but no English. Still not difficult to follow. 

[Dawei3]

On 2/9/2016 at 11:14 AM, Yorin said:

I suppose I can also list Taiwanese Movies, since it's Mandarin too:

I would have listed many of the same movies listed by Yorin's.  Under the hawthorne tree is particularly good.  

 

I like Aftershock as well, but note that it uses a Tangshan dialect.  It's similar to Mandarin, but not the same (but it's still a very enjoyable movie).

[TheBigZaboon]

I'm going to nominate Kung Fu Yoga, a Jackie Chan flick. It's a Chinese, Indian, where ever, co-production, obviously made with lots of Gulf States-Emirates financing. So it seems to have been made in modules that can be added or subtracted based on where the film is being shown. It has mafia and bad guys from all the major countries that are used as locations (China, India, Dubai, etc.). It seems then to be edited for the audience on hand. It has a small amount of yoga, camels (yes ?骆驼?), lions, stunningly beautiful Indian and Chinese actresses that I've never heard of, car chases, and lots of old fashioned Jackie Chan slapstick kungfu.

 

I saw it in Japan, and the editing of the various modules was so incompetent that the plot became totally irrelevant. I don't even remember what the motivator for the plot actually was. I was well on the way to nominating it as  the worst movie ever made. My wife and most of the audience were laughing and making jokes out loud, a major taboo in Japan.

 

Then came the last ten minutes, and the world turned upside down. I won't say anything else, to avoid spoilers, but it's enough to say that a totally hostile audience left the movie theater with broad smiles on their faces, laughing and joking, completely won over, all recent producer-director-actor sins forgiven.

 

I can't say there was any competent acting involved, and there was barely enough Chinese dialogue to call it a Chinese movie, but I'm hoping the presence of 陈龙 gives me the right to crash this thread.

 

Anyway, better than binge watching Stevie Seagal movies...

 

Try it and see...

 

TBZ

[roddy]

I need to follow up on Operation Red Sea - absolutely loved it. Completely crazy, at one point was honestly thinking "wow, that was a hell of a ride, guess it's over now" and expecting ten minutes of reflection and mourning for fallen comrades when...

Spoiler

... next thing I know they're jumping out of helicopters in WINGSUITS to go bring down a yellowcake smuggling operation. 

 

Other highlights include:

1) Oh, they're doing the old throw a grenade back at enemy trick AGAIN, that's like the fifth tim.... OH MY GOD HIS ARM!!!!!

2) That whole tank battle & The Little Drone That Could. 

3) The rest of the movie.

 

If you're gore-tolerant and like a well-done action flick, do check this out on Netflix. It's daft, but it knows it's daft and it does it well. 

[laurenth]

I loved 洗澡 (Wikipedia),   我的父亲母亲 (Wikipedia), 马背上的法庭 (imdb).

 

天下无贼 (imdb) is good but nowhere near as good as the story it is based on.

 

贾樟柯 's movies can also be splendid:  check 小武 (wikipedia) , 站台 (wikipedia), 任逍遥 (wikipedia), 三峡好人 (wikipedia).