What was the last Chinese film you watched?

[BeijingDaniel2011]

There's a good one about the Japanese occupation called 鬼子来了 (gui zi lai le). I'm not sure what the English name is. Its a little surreal but really well filmed.

[skylee]

I watched 槍王之王 (Triple Tap) on a plane. The film has a good start but as the story develops it gets worse. And I think the ending is a bit absurd. (I also managed to watch a British film "Never let me go" and an Italian film "Marriage and other disasters" during the journey.)

[Lu]

I generally don't watch good movies on planes because the sound quality is often so bad that I can't understand a thing, and there are often no subtitles. Will take my first business class flight soon, see if things are better there :-)

I recently watched 'When love comes', a Taiwanese movie, mostly Taiwanese-spoken, I liked that. I didn't like the main character though, a whiney dumb 15-year-old girl who acted like a 5-year-old.

[jbradfor]

Just saw 风声 (The Message) on DVD. Wasn't a copy in any of the public libraries in MN, so asked our local library to buy it. Since they did, I felt obliged to watch it.

Interesting movie, if a bit brutal in parts. Given the context (Japan-occupied Nanjing), the anti-Japanese and anti-KMT propaganda was surprisingly subdued, and in fact at times one almost forgot who the "bad guys" were. I did guess part of the story, but by no means not all, and the part that I didn't guess didn't fell at all contrived.

[mike39]

Great topic! The last Chinese film I saw was Chunking Express. Great film and I loved the symbolism focusing on the changing of control from the British to the Mainland government.

[aristotle1990]

I noticed that a Chinese documentary, Warriors of Qiugang (仇岗卫士), was nominated for an Oscar, so I went and watched it. Wow. Great movie. Really interesting to see how Chinese villages operate, how environmental protection works (and doesn't work) in China, and how officials and businessmen work together to cover up deadly pollution (as usual, it's for the economy, "stability," etc.).

You can see the whole thing online here.

[Chinadoog]

Definitely going to check that one out, Aristotle

[fanglu]

The last Chinese film I saw was Chunking Express. Great film and I loved the symbolism focusing on the changing of control from the British to the Mainland government.

What symbolism? The film came out in 1994 and the handover happened in 1997.

[paike]

I watched a few movies recently that were all pretty good.

One I really liked was 喜宴。 Its a Ang Li film and its really moving. The only bad thing about it is, the characters are so obviously not gay in real life. Super touching, chinese pretty easy to follow.

Another great film was 阳光灿烂的日子。 Kids running around getting into trouble during the 70's in China, then the main character meets a girl.

My favorite movie in China is probably 洗澡。 Son comes back to Northern China and leaves his life in the big city to help out his father and his brother. Again, touching.

那山那狗那人 is an interesting movie and one I would recommend. Rural China. Again, touching. Really any good Chinese film will be touching, its the one emotion that directors can communicate well in China. The rest, not so much. But so many bad things happen in China, they get this feeling.

非诚勿扰 is a classic and I love Ge You. I'm a bald shumck myself. =)

[skylee]

I saw 單身男女 this afternoon. I think it is an OK film, quite entertaining. Danial Wu in particular was delightful. Gao Yuanyuan was relatively weak, especially in the beginning of the film.

This is the second filim I've seen featuring both Danial Wu (吳彥祖）and Louis Koo （古天樂). Somehow I think Wu is better than Koo, who is very weak in speaking any languages other than Cantonese.

The strangest thing about this film it that it makes it seem like that Hong Kong and Suzhou are next to each other and one can go from one place to the other in say an hour. :rolleyes:

Trailer on youtube -

Trailer on youku - http://v.youku.com/v...Q5NzI0NTI4.html

[Glenn]

Just finished 舊情照片館, a Taiwanese movie centering around the lives of three sisters. I thought it was alright. It's not really the kind of thing I go for. Pretty slow-paced, heavy on the realism, somewhat artsy. If you're into that stuff it's probably worth watching if you haven't already seen it.

[skylee]

小津安二郎 type of film?

[Glenn]

From what I read of the plot of 東京物語, it appears that they have a fair amount of similarities. I had to look him up, though. I must say, I like the title 大学は出たけれど (I Graduated from College, But..., or 我畢業了，但…… (just saw there was a Chinese page on it)). From what I read about that one, it's probably pretty applicable to today.

[DespikableMi]

让子弹飞一会 Let the Bullets Fly - iMDb 7.9/10

Yeah... saw this movie recently but it's kinda random. Nevertheless it's not a bad film, I liked it.

[Lu]

Watched 山楂树之恋 yesterday. As usual when I read the book first, I think the book was better. I try to judge the movie in its own right, but am still not crazy about it. The love between Jing Qiu en Laosan doesn't seem to have any basis, they hardly have any conversations at all that are not about the fact that they love each other & care about each other (or, actually, that he loves her & cares about her). What do they actually like about each other? And then the age difference: he must be at least in his early twenties while she looks about twelve years old, at most, which makes their relationship seem creepy.

In the book one of the main background points (to me) was how difficult life was for a girl in a politically suspect family, and how utterly and completely ignorant she was about sex. Most of the first point got lost in the movie, at least I didn't feel it as much as in the book. The second point kind of remained. In the book they eventually slept together and it was convincing and served the story. In the movie they don't and I found that a bit weak, don't know why ZYM made that choice.

Yah. If only short stories became movies and books became tv series, all would be much better.

[skylee]

I think it is almost always better to see the film before reading the book. That way you can probably enjoy both of them.

[Lu]

I absolutely agree. It was just that the book came my way before the film was out and I still wanted to see the film.

[jaded samurai]

Blind Mountain (盲山), it's about a woman who gets sold into marriage to a farmer. It's supposed to be a somewhat accurate depiction of life in rural life, on top of showing a very real practice that still happens.

It's a little slow, but it still managed to hold my interest all the way through. Definitely one of the top films I've seen that come from China.

[Glenn]

I watched 神奇伴侶 the other night. It was entertaining enough, depicting the lives of a couple who retired from their lives as superheroes. There was plenty of CGI martial arts action, but not quite to the extent of 龍虎門 (which was much more focused on the fighting). 神奇伴侶 also had its comedic elements/moments, something pretty much completely lacking from 龍虎門.

There was somewhat of an issue with the subtitles, though, where there was text on the screen that was nowhere near what was actually said. I'm chalking that up to it originally being in Cantonese, and the Mandarin being a dub. I've seen it happen with English dubs/subs too, where the subs were different than the dubs in places. I'm not entirely sure that was the reason, though, as it seems they could have used the dialog in the subs and still matched the mouth movements fairly easily. Anyway, I also watched a few minutes of the Cantonese version too, and the subtitles did seem to be the same as in the Mandarin dub, but I didn't do a strict comparison.

[blackmeow]

the latest one for me was 让子弹飞 （let the bullet fly）

it is a good movie, but maybe a bit hard to understand for a fresh chinese language learner. In my opinion the 川话版(movie with Sichuan accent) is even better.