Jason Bateman's Bad Words (US, 2014) - 7/10 - pitch dark comedy stars and directed by Jason Bateman follows 40 years old man, with dark ulterior motive, who is able to compete on Spelling Bee competition because of loophole on the rule.
Monday, March 31, 2014
Veronica Mars
Rob Thomas's Veronica Mars (US, 2014) - 7/10 - mildly entertaining feature film spin off from a TV series with big cult following follows Veronica Mars tries to save her old flame Logan Echolls who is embroiled in a muder mystery.
Cesar Chavez
Diego Luna's Cesar Chavez (US, 2014) - 7/10 - Michael Pena stars as Cesar Chavez, civil rights activist and labor organizer, in 1970s California in this well made and well acted biographical film.
Sabotage
David Ayer's Sabotage (US, 2014) - 6/10 - Arnold Schwarzenegger stars as the leader of DEA squad team that after a botch mission, it's member start to be hunted and kill one by one by an unknown enemy. A very promising beginning ruins by over the top final act.
Noah
Wednesday, March 26, 2014
Los Bastardos
Amat Escalante's Los Bastardos (Mexico, 2008) - 8/10 - as desperation mounts, 2 Mexican illegal immigrants in LA went through a violence crime spree. The film give a harsh critics on less than human treatment of illegal immigrant in the US.
Tuesday, March 25, 2014
Bends
Flora Lau's Bends (Hong Kong, 2013) - 7/10 - explore the relationship between a rich HK housewife and her mainland chauffeur as each of them going through difficult crossroads of their lives. Beautifully shot by DP Christopher Doyle. 2013CANucr.
Blood Ties
Guillaume Canet's Blood Ties (US, 2013) - 7/10 - Canet's first English language film is all stars ensemble piece about two brother who stand in the opposite side of the law as each of them moved toward their own destiny.
Mainland China Cinema's New Maturity
By Derek Elley
Tue, 25 March 2014, 08:00 AM (HKT)
After a wild ride on the dragon in 2012, Mainland film-making lay back, took stock and began to find a new maturity and self-confidence during 2013.
If 2012 was the year of big-budget productions like White Deer Plain 白鹿原 (2012), Painted Skin: The Resurrection 畫皮Ⅱ (2012), Back to 1942 一九四二 (2012), and Taichi Zero 太極１ 從零開始 (2012) and Taichi Hero 太極２ 英雄崛起 (2012) — with comedy Lost in Thailand 人再囧途之泰囧 (2012) holding up the flag for smaller movies — 2013 will be remembered for less flash-and-dazzle for its own sake and the emergence of several new directors. Hong Kong names were still at the helm of some of the biggest box-office successes (see Going North below) but the Mainland talent pool continued to expand, making China more and more self-sufficient at all levels of production rather than just being a money tree for offshore film-makers to come and shake. In local terms, it was the year of Tiny Times, So Young 致我們終將逝去的青春, Silent Witness 全民目擊 and Personal Tailor 私人訂製, capped by the microblogging furore over action extravaganza Switch 天機 富春山居圖 and the surprise appearance of NING Hao 寧浩's legendary No Man's Land 無人區 after four years of arm-wrestling with SAPPRFT.
China's basic industry statistics tell a story of almost universal growth: total box office up 27% to RMB21.8 billion (US$3.6 billion), local films' share up 10 percentage points to 58.7%, and 5,000 more screens built for a total of 18,200. The only 2013 statistic to show a dip — wisely, after 2012's splurge — is annual production, down to 638 certified features from a staggering 745 the previous year. In practice, about a third actually get some kind of theatrical release — from a few days to a few weeks — in a cut-throat market where cinemas adjust their programming on a daily basis. The other two-thirds swim around in an alternative universe of DVDs, on-line streaming, TV showings, and event screenings that is virtually impossible to track.
Beneath all the boom-boom figures, however, there were more interesting cultural shifts taking place in 2013. An analysis by genre content of the 194 theatrical releases of majority-Mainland productions shows that Drama (including melodrama) continued to lose its traditional market dominance to other, more specific genres. From a high of 58% in 2006, and an average of 35% during 2009-12, Drama made up an all-time low of 29% of theatrical releases last year. Eating away at that lead were Action (up to 18%, from 15%), Rom-Com (up to 11.5%, from 8%), plus small rises in genres like Animation and Crime, both especially durable during the past four years. Other genres, like Horror (11.5%) and Political (3%), remained stable, while Comedy (13%) registered a small fall on the previous year.
The underlying message is that China's film-makers are trying to cater to an audience that is gradually becoming more genre-specific in its tastes — especially Action, Horror and Animation, which provide spectacle and big-screen value for money. The continuing strength of Rom-Com — though down on its 2010 peak — is due more to social reasons: for increasingly young and wealthy urban audiences, glossy rom-coms mirror their own aspirations and also make great date movies.
Though the year produced no rom-com on the level of I Do 我願意 (2012), it was still a good year for the genre, led by the runaway success of GUO Jingming 郭敬明's Tiny Times 1 小時代 and Tiny Times 2 小時代 青木時代 (see below) and the beautifully tooled One Night Surprise 一夜驚喜. Directed by Eva JIN 金依萌 — who made China's first chick-flick,Sophie's Revenge 非常完美 (2009) — Surprise also contained the year's biggest acting surprise — by 32-year-old, self-styled diva FAN Bingbing 范冰冰, who dropped her pose, rolled up her sleeves and revealed herself as a fine physical comedienne. (That's more than can be said for Fan's co-star in Sophie, ZHANG Ziyi 章子怡, who in 2013 again tried her hand at comedy with rom-com/spy romp My Lucky Star 非常幸運 and again proved that laughs are not her true forte.)
Other rom-coms were more variable. Patrick KONG Lingchen 孔令晨's Forever Love ２０１３１４ had good leads in GUO Xiaoran 郭曉然 and Gina JIN 金晨 but an awkward structure, as did QU Jiangtao 曲江涛's Love Deposit 愛情銀行, with XIA Yu 夏雨 and the excellent Jessie ZHOU 周泓. The unpretentious Love Retake 愛情不ＮＧ, set in the film industry, was more goofy com than rom, while TENG Huatao 滕華濤's Nepal-set road movieUp in the Wind 等風來 kept promising to turn into an odd-couple rom-com but never did. After Teng's previous hit, Love Is Not Blind 失戀３３天 (2011), this was one of the year's bigger disappointments, as was the just OK, Seattle-set Finding Mr. Right 北京遇上西雅圖, in which director XUE Xiaolu 薛曉路 (Ocean Heaven 海洋天堂 (2010)) failed to conjure up much chemistry between leads TANG Wei 湯唯 and popular TV actor-singer WU Xiubo 吳秀波.
Horror still remains a popular but not fully realised genre in Mainland cinema. Films like QIU Chuji 邱處機's The Chrysalis 女蛹之人皮嫁衣, ZHANG Jiangnan 張江南's Midnight Train 午夜火車, and ZHAO Xiaoxi 趙小溪 and ZHAO Xiao'ou 趙小鷗's The Deadly Strands 咒・絲were all interesting but unfocused. The genre's weaknesses are often facilely blamed on censorship, which forbids extreme violence and the portrayal of ghosts; but the same faults also dog offshore Chinese horrors. The simple fact is that Chinese horror lacks the psychological rigour and gift for sustained atmosphere found in the best examples from Japan and South Korea. Significantly, one of the year's stronger Mainland horrors, Bunshinsaba II筆仙Ⅱ, came from a Korean director who's now re-based himself from Seoul to Beijing: AN Byung-ki 안병기 | 安兵基 looks like making his franchise a regular summer attraction.
It was a measure of Mainland cinema's rapid evolution that, when Ning's long-shelved Eastern finally hit screens in Dec 2013, it actually looked a bit old hat. GAO Qunshu 高群書's desert-set Wind Blast 西風烈 (2010) had meanwhile nabbed the title of "China's first crime-action-western" — always a useful marketing tool in an industry still obsessed by "firsts". Also, the reputedly extreme violence turned out to be nothing special (and was not SAPPRFT's main problem with the film, anyway) and, as usual with Ning's movies, the script lost focus during the second half. In the meantime, Ning had also made period heist movie Guns and Roses 黃金大劫案 (2012), which showed he could move in other directions with some success.
With international flag-carriers like ZHANG Yimou 張藝謀, JIANG Wen 姜文 and CHEN Kaige 陳凱歌 having no new movies in 2013, FENG Xiaogang 馮小剛 pretty much held the veterans' spot on his own. After the glossy rom-coms If You are the One 非誠勿擾 (2008)and If You Are the One II 非誠勿擾Ⅱ (2010), and a series of big-budget productions that peaked in 2012 with Back to 1942, the Mainland hitmeister successfully returned to his social-satire roots with Personal Tailor. But several popular, middle-generation film-makers also had a good year with actor-driven fare. Writer-director GUAN Hu 管虎 (Cow 鬥牛 (2009),Design of Death 殺生 (2012)) found a balance between exaggeration and artiness in period comedy-drama The Chef The Actor The Scoundrel 廚子戲子痞子, an almost Beijing Opera-like slice of theatrical artifice. ZHANG Yibai 張一白 (Spring Subway 開往春天的地鐵 (2001)) and XIE Dongshen 謝東燊 (aka Xie Dong, One Summer with You 與你同在的夏天 (2004)) had a lot of fun with Better and Better 越來越好之村晚, the first fully-fledged attempt to replicate the star-laden Hong Kong New Year Comedy up north on the Mainland. And after a period of stagnation since Little Red Flowers 看上去很美 (2005), ZHANG Yuan 張元rediscovered some of his original creative ballsiness with Beijing Flickers 有種 (2012), a look at the city's drifting demi-monders two decades after his Beijing Bastards 北京雜種 (1993).
China's industry is a broad and deep enough river to accommodate career ups-and-downs, as well as a wide spread of generations. Aside from the country's huge cultural and geographical diversity, the industry's lack of centralisation and the abundance of fast money currently make it one of the most fertile in the region. The only current limits seem to be film-makers' entrepreneurialism and creativity.
Chinese-language film-makers are renowned for their ability to reinvent themselves, and the Mainland industry saw more proof of this in 2013. After the tough but rewarding Judge 透析(2009) and monotonous Courthouse on Horseback 馬背上的法庭 (2006) and Deep in the Clouds 碧羅雪山 (2010), d.p.-turned-director LIU Jie 劉傑 took a left turn towards the mainstream with the utterly charming Young Style 青春派, a high school-cum-first love movie that made its formulaic characters and situations seem fresh again.
However, the year's biggest leap was by 42-year-old FEI Xing 非行 — pen name of Anhui-born LI Wenbing 李文兵, a onetime folk-music graduate, guitarist and successful TV drama writer-director — who with Silent Witness singlehandedly raised the bar on the crime/courtroom procedural, a genre seen more on TV than on the big screen in China. Fei had made an impressive feature debut with the genre-bending The Man Behind the Courtyard House 守望者：罪惡迷途 (2011), but even that was no preparation for Witness, a superbly acted, taughtly written whodunit that was as much of a game-changer as Infernal Affairs 無間道 (2002) was for Hong Kong crime movies.
Two other films also refreshed standard genres. The Palace 宮 鎖沉香, spun off from two popular TV drama series by writer-producer YU Zheng 于正, breathed fresh life into the costume drama under direction by PAN Anzi 潘安子 (Scheme With Me 雙城計中計 (2012)) and an utterly charming performance by young actress ZHOU Dongyu 周冬雨 (Under the Hawthorn Tree 山楂樹之戀 (2010)). In a similar way, smooth technique by commercials director LI Weiran 李蔚然 (Welcome to Shamatown 決戰剎馬鎮 (2010)) and great lead chemistry by real-life couple William FENG 馮紹峰 (Double Xposure 二次曝光 (2012)) andNI Ni 倪妮 (The Flowers of War 金陵十三釵 (2011)) elevated the sweet-and-sour relationship saga Love Will Tear Us Apart 我想和你好好的 into one of 2013's nicest surprises.
For directing debuts, 2013 was also a stronger year than the preceding one. The list of names to watch included LIU Juan 劉娟, 30, with her engaging, uncynical portrait of high-schoolers in the mid-'90s, Singing When We're Young 初戀未滿; HE Wenchao 何文超, 31, with her offbeat portrait of a teenage lesbian crush, Sweet Eighteen 甜蜜１８歲 (2012); and actressLI Xinman 李欣蔓 with BeLoved 親・愛, her ambitious exploration of the emotional and cultural identity of a young businesswoman.
But the directing debuts that were the real talking points of 2013 — especially in China's opinionated blogosphere — were Switch, the Tiny Times duo, and So Young.
The brain-child of writer-director Jay SUN 孫健君, a producer in his mid-50s who returned from the US almost two decades ago, Switch proved the important point that Mainlanders could now make trashy, Bollywood/Hollywood/Hong Kong-style escapism just as slickly as anyone else. While bloggers and most critics predictably scoffed, the public flocked to see the Greater China cast do impossible things on the big-screen in 3-D.
Cultural tsars were equally appalled by the celebration of brainless consumerism in the Tiny Times movies, directed from his own best-sellers by Shanghai-based celebrity writer Guo Jingming, 30. Centred on four girly Shanghai fashionistas, the trash-glossy rom-coms gave young Mainlanders their own cool-youth banner to march under, and the result was lapped up by its target teenie audience.
So Young was a talking point in a much more positive way. The behind-camera debut of popular actress Vicki ZHAO 趙薇 (pictured on set with actor Mark CHAO 趙又廷), 38, the ensemble college drama was one of the year's most ambitious undertakings, despite a weaker second half that followed the characters after graduation. Zhao showed an assured grasp of a large emotional canvas and a eye for period detail (the mid-'90s) that resonated with local audiences. Here, at last, was a major, considered movie about young people that was made by a Mainlander for Mainlanders.
The hidden story behind all the above is China's rapid development of a talent base that hardly existed a decade or so ago in a commercial format like, say, Hong Kong's. With a huge internal market but slim pickings elsewhere — partly due to growing localisation among Asia's other film industries — the immediate future of China's filmdom will depend as much on the development of that local talent base as on any merging of the Mainland, Hong Kong and Taiwan industries into a conglomerate branded "Greater China". At a time when Hong Kong and especially Taiwan seem more and more anxious to forge their separate cultural identities, that could, anyway, prove easier said than done. And in business terms it makes little sense, especially given the meagre box-office income from those territories.
Back in 2010 it already looked like China's film industry was finally starting to grasp its own future and identity. By 2013 there were real, encouraging signs that it was also starting to grasp the bigger picture as well.
Going North
Despite China's growing development of its own talent base, Hong Kong directors, actors and technicians still found plenty of work on the Mainland in 2013 — most notably in big-ticket "co-productions", a catch-all term for movies that are generally majority-Mainland financed but use mixed casts and crews. With the number of 100%-locally financed productions now only about 20 a year, "going north" (北上) remains the only option for Hong Kong film-makers who want to make anything apart from local comedies, ghost films or modest art movies. It's not always a comfortable choice, given the differences in culture, language, attitudes and working practices — a little similar to the relationship between British and Australian film-makers and Hollywood — but for most there's no other option.
Like their fellow-Chinese in Taiwan, almost no Hong Kong directors have relocated to the Mainland, preferring regular fly-ins instead. But unlike most Taiwan directors, they have at least taken a pragmatic attitude towards the situation — and as a result continue to play a significant role across the border.
After five years, both WONG Kar-wai 王家衛 and Stephen CHOW 周星馳 finally re-appeared — the first with martial-arts epic The Grandmaster 一代宗師, a magnificent torso of a potentially much greater movie, and the second with the hugely successful Journey to the West: Conquering the Demons 西游 降魔篇, a comedy-action prequel to his Monkey King films of the mid-'90s. Both featured Greater China casts and managed the tricky job of being culturally pan-Chinese as well, partly because this time Chow remained behind the camera.
Other co-productions, like Herman YAU 邱禮濤's Ip Man: The Final Fight 葉問 終極一戰,Ronny YU 于仁泰's Saving General Yang 忠烈楊家將, and TSUI Hark 徐克's Young Detective Dee: Rise of the Sea Dragon 狄仁杰之神都龍王, essentially remained Hong Kong in feel, with the directors still recycling what they've been doing best for a quarter of a century. The same could be said for Jackie CHAN 成龍's franchise re-boot, Police Story 2013 警察故事２０１３, which was actually directed by Mainlander DING Sheng 丁晟 (The Underdog Knight 硬漢 (2008), Little Big Soldier 大兵小將 (2009)) but was hobbled by the 59-year-old megastar still locked into his usual schtick.
Veteran journeyman Clarence FOK 霍耀良 directed action star Donnie YEN 甄子丹 in two very different Mainland-set vehicles, the misbegotten romance Together 在一起 and more memorable crime saga Special ID 特殊身份, though both were flawed by weak scripts. Even more awkward were Barbara WONG 黃真真's rom-com The Stolen Years 被偷走的那五年, which was entirely China-financed but for some reason was set in Taiwan with a Greater China cast, and Kenneth BI 畢國智's wannabe futuristic thriller Control 控制, set in an unnamed East Asian metropolis populated by Greater Chinese.
Two of the year's best excursions were by Peter CHAN 陳可辛, a cross-border veteran (Perhaps Love 如果・愛 (2005), The Warlords 投名狀 (2007), Wu Xia 武俠 (2011)), andJohnnie TO 杜琪峯, still a cross-border newbie (Romancing in Thin Air 高海拔之戀Ⅱ (2012)). Chan's American Dreams in China 中國合伙人 tapped directly into the country's Zeitgeist with a long-limbed story of international business aspirations by three male friends, drawing strong playing from an all-Mainland cast led by HUANG Xiaoming 黃曉明. To's first 100%-financed Mainland production, Drug War 毒戰 (2012), successfully transferred his quirky, playful style to China with a mixed cast, as well as broadening his own directing horizons. Unfortunately, after the tough shoots of that and Romancing, it may be a while before To "goes north" again.
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