Chinese Films to Watch on Netflix Tonight

In the first installment of an occasional feature, CFI looks at Chinese films that a Netflix subscriber can watch. 

Netflix has created a new time of film viewing, with an almost on-demand experience available for the movie watcher, without the need to go to the cinema or video store (the what?).

For the Chinese film fan — or for the film industry professional trying to bone up on the best of the recent oeuvre — Netflix is a good resource, but it’s not a great one. While our list below has some great titles that can be watched immediately, there are also some glaring holes in Netflix’s programming choices. Acclaimed directors including Chen Kaige (Farewell My Concubine), Tian Zhuangzhuang (The Blue Kite), and Jiang Wen (Let The Bullets Fly) aren’t represented at all (Let The Bullets Fly is available on DVD but not streaming). Jia Zhangke has one film, but offerings also include a documentary about him. You’ll see some of Stephen Chow’s work, but not the record-setting The Mermaid. Martial arts master Tsui Hark? No, no.

In any case, here’s a bit of a starter kit of what’s available and what we think is missing from their collection.

Zhang Yimou

Whether you loved 2016’s The Great Wall or didn’t, Zhang Yimou remains one of the most prominent and durable names in Chinese film in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Two of his films — the Oscar-nominated Hero and the Christian Bale-vehicle The Flowers of War are both available on Netflix, but how sad that none of his earlier — dare we say, best? — films are not. Red Sorghum and Raise The Red Lantern — sorry, we drifted off there just thinking about them, which is all we can do because Netflix doesn’t offer them at the moment. Start with those two and hope for more, and better, to come.

Fan Bingbing

The selection of films featuring China’s richest film figure Fan Bingbing is…interesting. Three titles are available: 2016’s Skiptrace, which teamed Fan up with Jackie Chan and Johnny Knoxville, in a movie that did well commercially in China but was savaged critically. You can also see her turn in the propaganda film The Beginning of the Great Revival. Then again, don’t. Finally, there’s White Haired Witch, in which Fan plays, yep, the titular white-haired witch. Whither Lost in Beijing? Of course you can also watch her as Storm in X-Men: Days of Future Past. But that doesn’t really count and it isn’t available to stream anyway (DVD only).

Xu Zheng

Recently re-signed to Creative Artists Agency in China, comic actor and director Xu Zheng can be found on Netflix, but like his colleagues above, he isn’t represented by his best work. Xu’s break-out movie Lost in Thailand is still lost, but its sequel, Lost in Hong Kong, can be streamed. Some good comedy work comes through in Ning Hao’s Breakup Buddies. Also are available are two forgettable movies featuring Xu, The Great Hypnotist and Meet The In-Laws! Never trust a film with an exclamation point in the title.