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What was the last Chinese film you watched?


Chinadoog

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  • 2 weeks later...

I just watched 李献计历险记 (Lee's Adventures). It's about time travel, or stopping time, or speeding up time... I'm still not sure. It's a mess, but fun at times. It's based on this

(youtube). The short is better than the movie, but is even more strange.
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  • 2 weeks later...

Has anyone watched any Singaporean movies? On a plane to Indonesia recently the only Mandarin movie was a Singaporean movie telling the story of a popular shopping centre. I couldn't quite bring myself to watch it (maybe I missed out). Watched 算吧啦,老豆 instead in Cantonese, actually didn't like that much either.

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Singapore doesn't seem to have a very large movie industry. The only Singaporean movie I've ever seen is 12 Lotus by Royston Tan. A young singer of Singaporean folk opera (forgive me if I'm getting this wrong, it's a while ago I saw the movie and I didn't know the type of music) is taken advantage of at the beginning of her career and never gets over it. It's a good movie in that it executes its premise very well: the young singer says at the beginning that she would love to play a certain role, upon which a veteran performer of the role tells her that she first needs to suffer to really understand that role; she indeed suffers a lot throughout the rest of the movie and sings various songs from that role at every step. It's over the top and quite funny. But at the same time it's a very, very black movie. The girl is betrayed and raped in a horrible way and she never gets over it. Never. Her life is destroyed.

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Singaporean movies are either mainstream "heartland"-culture comedy-dramas (usually in Mandarin and dialect) or artsy indie flicks (usually in English, sometimes with Mandarin and dialect); there isn't much in between. Jack Neo is the most prolific example of the first type of director, and he tends to have a pretty heavy hand with his scripts and directing; his films are crowd-pleasing melodramas and endlessly recycle the major themes of mundane Singaporean life. Royston Tan in recent years has come to represent the second type of movie - for example, with his rather intense black comedy 15, about teenage gangsters.

I don't know what you folks would make of local Mandarin films, but I suspect you'll find them as good/bad as mediocre-or-worse mainstream films in Taiwan/HK/China.

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  • 2 weeks later...

辛亥革命 (1911) - Pretty bad except for Jackie Chan's performance.

白蛇传说之法海 (The Sorcerer and The White Snake) - Felt like bits of two different movies stuck together, poorly-done youth romance and much more enjoyable monk vs. white snake. Mildly recommended if you like cgi-heavy wuxia.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan - (English/Mandarin) More interesting than entertaining. Jeon Ji-hyun (much as I like her acting) looked out of place. Covers some Chinese history I've not seen in films, so perhaps worth a rental.

大笑江湖 (Just Call Me Nobody) - Some funny bits, but overall the movie seems aimed at children.

午夜照相館 (Open to Midnight) - Very bad, low-budget dramedy revolving around a village full of ghosts.

Rewatched 如果·爱 (Perhaps Love) - Liked it much better this time around.

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  • 2 weeks later...
Not too impressed. The story seemed like an excuse for some 3-D chop-socky.

I saw it last week (龙门飞甲)and sadly must agree. I went with high hopes because of the famous director 徐克 and because I usually like 李連杰 in 武术 films.

It seemed they were relying heavily on cheap 3D tricks wowing the audience except that the tricks were old hat by now and no longer startled anyone, at least in the theater where I saw it. Fight scenes would have thrown lances or daggers apparently coming right at you, but nobody ducked and squealed like they might have 10 years ago.

For some reason I also found the dialogue difficult to understand even though most of the actors spoke clearly enough and I don't think it was a dialect issue. Might be better if I saw it again, but I'm not sure I am willing to do that, especially wearing two pair of glasses (theirs on top of mine.)

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Saw 逆站 last week. It's a Hong Kong product that carries the English name "Viral Factor" and deals with a variant of smallpox that terrorists hope to use to extort payment from frightened governments. They will also eventually sell treatments and preventions for it.

This is definitely an action movie 动作片 and if action is what you want, you will get your money's worth. Lots of righteous fights scenes, shoot outs and high speed chases. Lots of things blow up. Not a "chick flick" or "date movie." The two girls sitting in front of me in the theater were visibly bored and spent most of the time on their mobile phones.

If you want plot subtleties, there may be better films for you out there, though I've got to say the director tried to include at least some background on why the characters turned out the way they did. I saw it on half-price bargain ticket day here in Kunming and have no complaints. Well, actually maybe one: I wanted to see more of the beautiful lady scientist, but she kind of just disappeared after doing her thing.

Here is an (unfavorable) English language review, so I guess the film must have an English language version out as well. The showing I saw was in Chinese.

http://movies.nytime...tor-review.html

Here is a trailer:

http://www.youtube.c...h?v=9ArBdKPiQlw

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  • 2 weeks later...

Saw Wing Chun recently. Yes, the one from 1994.

I didn't know much about it going in, besides the basics of Wing Chun historical figure, and the fact that the movie had Michelle Yeoh kicking butt (which is reason enough to watch it!). Was much better than I expected. Pretty good KungFu movie, was funny in parts, not much wire work, and quite low on the cheese-factor.

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