Film Review: A Loner

 /  Reviews  / 
Director Xing Xiao’s "A Loner," a Shanghai Film Festival premiere in June, is a quiet stage upon which the remarkable veteran actress Zhu Xijuan’s powerful performance enumerates the challenges facing China’s rapidly aging population. Read More

Film Review: ‘Battle of Memories’ Puzzles but Isn’t Easily Forgotten

 /  Reviews  / 
Director Leste Chan's "Battle of Memories" is a Chinese puzzle of a sci-fi murder mystery about the human tendencies to try to control destiny and then escape the pain when things don’t turn out as planned. Read More

Film Review: ‘Some Like It Hot’ More like Lukewarm Water

 /  Reviews  / 
A typical, and not unentertaining contemporary Chinese comedy of upwardly-mobile, city-dwelling, professional-class Chinese boy-men, dumbstruck by hot young women who are not their wives, with an unsubtle moral tacked on the end. Read More

Film Review: Jackie Chan Throws Back and Rolls Ahead in ‘Railroad Tigers’

 /  Reviews  / 
Surrounded by a crew played by so-called Little Fresh Meat actors along with his 34-year-old son, Jaycee, Chan winningly reprises the loose-limbed, high-spirited vibe of the Hong Kong "Lucky Stars" comedies of the ‘80s with charm if not a memorably balletic central performance. Read More

Film Review: ‘Old Stone’ is Neorealist Noir

 /  Reviews  / 
"Old Stone" (Lao Shi/老石), the debut feature by Chinese-Canadian director Johnny Ma, makes a kind of hybrid neorealist noir, something akin to the rising, ultra-unreal (chaohuan) sensibility, through the story of a hapless taxi driver, the titular Lao Shi, whose desire to act morally is at every turn thwarted by an inhuman system. Read More