Chinese

Journalist-turned-filmmaker Chai Chunya was born in a village in Gansu, the Chinese province adjoining Tibet, and he returned there to shoot this remarkable debut feature. The story he tells is poetic, even fanciful: Ga Gui, a young woman who left to find education and work in the big city, visits her home village because she’s had a premonition that her elderly father is dying. She finds him preparing for death by sleeping in a makeshift coffin but also convinced that he has a mission to revive the community before the exodus of its young turns the place into a ghost town. Chai boldly goes beyond realism in his quest for the Buddhist essence of rural life in Gansu. The ’four ways to die’ are those associated with the elements: the windy air, the red-clay earth, fire, water. The film is chaptered around them as it moves from drama to meditation.Read More »

At her 70th birthday celebration, the aged mother of the Gu family suffers from a stroke, which precipitates her decline into dementia. Who will take care of her? The four brothers face crucial changes in their relationships to one another, as they deal with their own family problems.Read More »

At her 70th birthday celebration, the aged mother of the Gu family suffers from a stroke, which precipitates her decline into dementia. Who will take care of her? The four brothers face crucial changes in their relationships to one another, as they deal with their own family problems.Read More »

Chronicles the love life of a man, Zhenbao. He has a steamy fling with the wife of a friend, the saucy and exciting Red Rose. Even though he feels happy with her, he knows he will not end up with her. To maintain his reputation, he marries an antiseptic, frigid but classy lady of a prim and proper background (White rose). Dissonance abound when he finds his bride irritating.Read More »

Quote:
A Chinese girl named Xingxi travels alone to Alor Setar, a town in Northern Malaysia. As the result of a blown tire, she experiences three variant adventures. She introduces herself to people as different identities with mysterious secrets. Brooke claims herself a traveler in the first adventure, but an anthropologist in the second adventure. In the third adventure, Brooke is a disheartened woman who comes across French writer Pierre. Two lonely travelers become intimate friends. They share their respective insights into life, death, and love. As the enigmatic story of Alor Setar begins to unfold, Brooke tells Pierre the true reason why she has come. Nature divulges her sought for love with the magical Blue Tears.Read More »

Synopsis:
In a future century, after the apocalypse, Gui Dao dynasty controls continental Asia. Zhuai and his younger brother Mian are captured and sent to “Prosperity Camp” for reeducation. They soon discover that the camp’s aim is to brainwash people with propaganda. Five years later, there’s a change in government and they are free again. Zhuai falls in love for the beautiful Xuelan and together they take her to an old industrial city, now deserted. They get themselves a place to live in an abandoned apartment and try to rediscover the little pleasures of life.Read More »

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Miss Hua, a 1960s high-end call girl is visited by a shy dressmaker’s assistant Zhang, to take her measure. He hears the sounds of sex, as he waits in her living room. He is drawn towards her but there is no meeting ground between the two individuals from completely different classes. She summons him when her client leaves. She tells him, she will supply him with an aid to his memory. He will think about her while designing her clothes, she says.Read More »

In the far mountains of Ningxia province, the old Ma Zishan and his son start mourning his wife. Loved by everyone in the village and the family, the son wants to sacrifice their only bull for her 40 days disappearance ceremony. Zishan isn’t against it, but his sorrow and his love for the old animal make him wonder. Even his prayers and the Imam don’t seem to erase his doubts. Until one morning the old bull stops eating and drinking. Has he seen the knife in the clear water?Read More »

Nearly two decades after scripting the Infernal Affairs trilogy which has been liberally remade and borrowed from, Felix Chong’s new crime thriller does some pilfering and copying of its own. Spotting Project Gutenberg’s high-profile, largely Hollywood influences isn’t difficult, but derivation is rarely as entertaining as this slick Hong Kong effort about a high-stakes counterfeiting operation — and rarely comes with such compelling and engaging performances from the starry likes of Chow Yun-Fat and Aaron Kwok.Read More »