Post-war China is recovering, Communism is gaining traction and Chinese films made a lot of political statements at the time. Spring in a Small Town is the exception as it doesn't focus on politics although it does show China's need to recover. This lack of political side saw thi... Read More »
Between the opening scenes of Louis Koo’s character Choi Tin-ming swerving his car in the streets and reeling and vomiting on himself at the wheel, the effects of an explosion at his cocaine factory, and the concluding scenes of Choi on an operating table being executed by inject... Read More »
Kekexili: Mountain Patrol (2004) is a fascinating film that was based on a true story from 1996. Ga Yu (Liang Qi) is a reporter from Beijing sent to do a story on the death of a man who was a volunteer patrolman on the Kekexili Mountain in Tibet. These patrolmen were founded by... Read More »
Chen Kaige’s Yellow Earth borrows elements of the American Western as a stranger walks into an unknown land, turning heads and catching the attention of the townsfolk (or members of a tribal agrarian collective). This stranger isn’t the usual mysterious prototypical western prot... Read More »
Propaganda films must be tricky to make. On one hand, you have a clear statement you wish to make on behalf of the government, and on the other you want to entertain your audience. If one of those elements are missing, the film fails because you are either not educating or not ... Read More »
Kaige Chen’s 1993 film Farewell, My Concubine is a masterpiece. It is a film of rare beauty that does not shy away from the pain and brutality that beauty comes from. The story is that of two men, Douzi (Zhi Yin as a teenager,Leslie Cheung as the adult) and Shitou (Yang Fei as ... Read More »
It’s 2010 in the scattershot urbanized landscapes of an overcrowded Taiwan. Old and new architecture and technology clash together against the disappearing skyline, though the world seems to move a bit slower today because of some untold tragic event. Taiwan has lost some of its ... Read More »
Snubbed in mainland China as being too westernised, widely praised in the Western world as it’s more attainable in terms of narrative content, easily fluid compared with traditional wuxia films from the 1920’s mainland Chinese cinema. Largely defined as a period film and a marti... Read More »
Jia Zhangke’s close attention to the subjective and socioeconomic aspects of architecture, geography, and disappearances of spaces both natural and man-made as a way to structure and elaborate his narratives in an ever transforming China finds its most chilling depiction thus far... Read More »
What do A Touch of Sin and Django Unchained have in common? Both are about the downtrodden, explore fantasies of revenge, and both are made by directors who know how to shoot violence. Finally, both are twenty minutes too long. Read More »
Set in ancient China before the rule of the first emperor, where the six nations hold strong on their freedom, Hero follows the tale of one man. The man who became the hero to unify China as the great empire history books tell of. It’s hard for most to imagine mainland China as... Read More »
Back to 1942 is a film that explores the ravages of famine and the responsibilities of a government to the governed It is a large scale humanist epic that attempts to tell a story too big for a single vantage. It follows several groups during the Henan famine (1942-1944) and atte... Read More »
