Ramblings on Cinematic Matters
Next in my Zhang Yimou retrospective, I look at the visually distinctive Shadow. Watching Shadow (2018), I was reminded of someone playing an elaborate game with dominoes. Like a domino master, Zhang Yimou and his co-screenwriter Li Wei set up their characters and plot through a long period of painstaking preparation, before they then start …
Continue reading “Seeing the World in Black and White: Shadow Review”
The next entry in my Zhang Yimou retrospective poses the question: what happens when wuxia warriors face off against giant lizard monsters? Watch The Great Wall to find out! Five years after making The Flowers of War, his first film with a major Hollywood star, Zhang Yimou directed The Great Wall (2016), which featured not …
Continue reading “Dealing with Uninvited Guests: The Great Wall Review”
Next in my Zhang Yimou retrospective, I watch Coming Home Coming Home (2014), directed by Zhang Yimou and written by Zou Jingzhi, functions effectively as a thematic sequel to Zhang’s 2010 movie Under the Hawthorn Tree. Both movies focus on a romance: one between very young people in Under the Hawthorn Tree and one between …
Next in my Zhang Yimou retrospective, I look at The Flowers of War. Imagine one of the most wrenching scenes from Schindler’s List: the brutal sequence in which the Nazis forcibly round up the Jewish residents of the Krakow Ghetto, killing many of them. Now imagine that Steven Spielberg intercut that sequence with the Nepalese …
Continue reading “Historical Fiction: The Flowers of War Review”
Continuing my Zhang Yimou retrospective, I consider the bittersweet Under the Hawthorn Tree. Like many other artists, Zhang Yimou has certain scenarios and themes he returns to again and again. He also likes reworking essentially the same story in different variants, sometimes improving on the previous version: as I mentioned before, his early movie Ju …
Continue reading “Watering the Tree of Revolution: Under the Hawthorn Tree Review”
The next installment in my Zhang Yimou retrospective requires actually going back in time to fill in a gap in the series. Better late than never… Earlier in my tour through Zhang Yimou’s movies, I had to skip Keep Cool (1997), because I could not then find a copy. I have since been able watch …
The next installment in my Zhang Yimou retrospective also involves looking back at the inaugural work of the Coen brothers. For his sixteenth feature, Zhang Yimou did something new: remaking another movie. Zhang’s movie A Woman, a Gun, and a Noodle Shop (2009) is a transplant to a Chinese milieu of Blood Simple (1984), the …
Continue reading “Murder Most Foul: Blood Simple and A Woman, a Gun, and a Noodle Shop Review”
Returning to reviewing after a little hiatus, I look at the next movie in my Zhang Yimou retrospective, Curse of the Golden Flower. Curse of the Golden Flower (2006) is Zhang Yimou’s third foray into the wuxia genre. The movie differs from its predecessors in two notable respects, though. First, it reunites Zhang, for the …
Continue reading “Domestic Disharmony: Curse of the Golden Flower Review”
I continue my Zhang Yimou retrospective with Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles. Following his two wuxia movies of the early 2000s, Zhang Yimou returned to contemporary China and more naturalistic filmmaking with Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles (2005). The basic story is the stuff of tear-jerking melodrama, but the movie is subtler and …
Continue reading “Starting under One’s Feet: Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles Review”
Next in my Zhang Yimou retrospective, I look at House of Flying Daggers. House of Flying Daggers (2004) is Zhang Yimou’s second wuxia movie, and it raises the pressing question: “Does the movie live up to that title?” The answer is no, not quite (could any movie?). It comes close, though. Co-written by Zhang with …
Continue reading “Stabbed in the Back: House of Flying Daggers Review”
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