luliy

Hi all. I’m from china. I want to know the appraisal of you guys about chinese films.

Anyone watching this movie - LUST CAUTION (SE Jie)? In china, most of people do not like that film. however, it owned a lot of awards internationally.

Please lay out your favourate chinese films.

Favourate chinese directors and actors/actresses.

Your Evaluation of chinese films.

Thanks

B5Erik

The only one I've seen is Warriors of Heaven and Earth, which was directed by He Ping (or Ping, He - if you prefer).

GREAT movie. It's got good character development, great settings/scenery, and some fantastic action sequences. It's really well rounded (it isn't just a good action movie, it's a good drama as well).

It gets a little supernatural in spots and the ending isn't too far removed from the ending of Raiders of the Lost Ark, but that stuff is kept to a minimum, and actually works fairly well.

But that's the extent of my Chinese movie watching.

(Now, JAPANESE movies - I've seen a LOT of them! But Chinese movies? I've just seen the one so far.)

toddly6666

Luliy,
first off - i hate Wong Kar Wai. He is highly respected everywhere, but he's just one of the worst directors period. I'm not crazy about Ang Lee, but he is a good director and makes respectable films.

I think that Yimou Zhang is currently the best director, in which he can mix good story, acting and action. He can consistently make a good action movie and he can make a good non-action film. Many other Chinese action movies lack character or story development, in which the main entertainment is in the first 20 minutes and the last 20 minutes, and the middle of the film is all filler.

Johnny To is another pretty good action director, but I'm not that crazy about him.

Siu-Tung Ching is another action director I love, whether he's directing the film or just fight choreographing it.

Here are the best Chinese actors that I like the most starting with best:

1. Tony Leung
2. Maggie Cheung
3. Anthony Wong
4. Michelle Yeoh (chooses too many poor movies though)
5. Brigitte Lin
6. Andy Lau
7. Louis Koo
8. Gong Li
9. Joan Chen
10. Simon Yam

Then there are the highly entertaining actors of course that may not be good actors but have such good screen presence - Stephen Chow, Jet Li, Jackie Chan, Sammo Hung, Ziyi Zhang, Anita Mui, Chow Yun-Fat, Donnie Yen, Maggie Q (if she counts), Daniel Wu, Josie Ho, Gordon Liu...

Ky-Fi

Welcome luliy,

Well, I have a LOT of Chinese movies in my collection--probably half my collection. I like some of the modern stuff---Zhang Yimou is an amazing filmmaker, and I recently enjoyed The Banquet directed by Feng Xiaogang.

But it's really the older martial arts movies from Hong Kong I enjoy. King Hu (Hu Jinquan? )was a genius, and his film A Touch of Zen is my favorite of his. Most of my collection, though, are the Shaw Brothers films. Favorite directors would be Chang Cheh, Liu Chia-Liang, Chu Yuan, and Sun Chung.

My favorite female stars are Lily Li, Hui Ying Hung, Cheng Pei Pei and Shih Szu, favorite male stars are Fu Sheng, , Ku Feng, Ti Lung, Chen Kuan Tai, Liu Chia-Hui, and David Chiang. Those old Shaw movies were kind of crude, but there's just a lot of character and charm in them---I just love that whole Shaw universe they created. A lot of very talented people worked for that studio.

luliy

yes,"Warriors of Heaven and Earth" is a good movie."Warriors of Heaven and Earth" combines many elements of the classic trek western with the pageantry and mysticism of Asian period sagas. Director He Ping is known as the pioneer of the Chinese western.

Count Dooku

Yimou Zhang's films from the 90s: Ju Dou, Raise the Red Lantern, Shanghai Triad, and especially To Live are all great.

UAIOE

I mostly enjoy the comedy or action movies so my liking Jackie Chan seems rather natural.

I enjoy HK (Chinese) movies from the early 80's to mid 90's.

Some actors I like

Maggie Cheung
Jackie Chan
Sammo Hung
Brigitte Lin
Tony Leung
Jet Li (but only the Fong Sai Yuk movies)

and special mention for Richard Ng.

As for favorite movies:

Police Story movies
Winners & Sinners/Lucky Stars series
Shanghai/Millionaires Express
Fong Sai Yuk 1+2
and City Hunter ( can't get enough of this movie).

luliy

I don't like Wong Kar Wai and Ang Lee either.I have a feeling that they film for awards.

Yimou Zhang's art film is very good indeed,but he is now changing his style to business,I don't like this.
Recently he is busy in directing for Olympic Games in Beijing.

Johnny To is one of director I like.I like his connotative gunfignt movie.

I am glad that Anthony Wong is in your list,and I like him very much also.

luliy

I am glad that you enjoyed Feng Xiaogang,and he is a great comedy director in China. but now he is derecting swordsmen and war film.Assembly (Ji Jie Hao) is his newest production,very good.

DJariya

I really like Corey Yuen's work as an action director/director. He did some solid work in the Transporter movies as well as the HK movie So Close.

I like a bunch of HK/Chinese actors. 2 of my favorites are definitely Tony Leung and Mui Yim Fong (aka Anita Mui) I especially loved her performance in A Better Tomorrow 3 even though it's not a highly regarded movie in that series. One of Anita's most underrated films in the past 10 years was "Dance of a Dream" which was essentially the HK version of "Shall we Dance."

One of my guilty pleasures is watching alot of the Shaw Brothers classics.

RichC2

Lust Caution, I haven't seen, but the general consensus in the US has been: It's not bad but it isn't one of Ang Lee's better movies, it's too slow, meanders and the runtime is ridiculous, the US release has all the explicit sex kept in it. (It's rated NC-17 here (nobody under 18))

I actually haven't seen a lot of Chinese cinema, a lot of the movies that make it to the US are slow and meditative, which is fine but they tend to get slumped together as 'art house' films and never play around me

sundog

Coincidental that the Chinese filmmaker I wanted to mention is also being featured at Northwestern University for a short (4 film) retrospective:

The filmmaker is Zhang Ke Jia, and I have already seen 3 of the 4 being shown. But two of them (Platform & Unknown Pleasures) I wasn't in the proper mindset. But The World was a fantastic work.

His stuff isn't typical... not really using plot or narrative in usual ways. But all 3 did leave some lasting feelings. I may check out these again.

http://www.blockmuseum.northwestern....inema/jia.html

I'm definitely going to see his Pickpocket from 1997 though.

Cosmic Bus

Zhang has become a favorite of mine. I haven't gotten a chance to see Still Life or Pickpocket yet, but I thought his other three readily-available films (the aforementioned Platform, Unknown Pleasures and the World) were quite stunning, particularly the World. His style reminds me somewhat of a starker version of Tran Anh Hung, who also builds very naturalistic, almost non-narrative films.