Mandarin Movie Reviews with Frank Fradella

太极张三丰，　就是最好的！ 我的父亲母亲和英雄这两部电影也很好

@ Danjo This movie with the magic cellphone rememberd me of this movie http://imdb.com/title/tt0096928/ (I wonder how that movie would be in Chinese ;-) )

I like contemporary movies and 疯狂喜剧. There's some kind of selection on the forum under the title : Learn Chinese with ChinesePod Forum. ex: http://forum.chinesepod.com/viewtopic.php?p=16358&highlight=#16358 Ps: I don't really like Gongfu movies and TV Drama.

I loved "Not One Less" Another beautiful film by the same director, Zhang Yimou, is "The Road Home." http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0235060/ You will love it. It has gorgeous cinemetography and a deeply touching story.

I saw a very good (and funny) movie on a bus about a Bejing man who divorces his wife and goes on a search for another woman, with the help of a mysterious man and a magic cell phone. It was simple enough to understand for the most part without English subtitles. I would love it if anyone could tell me the name of this movie. I've seen maybe 7 or 8 Zhang Yimou films and would recommend all of them. I saw them in America mostly so I don't know all the Chinese names, but they would be easy to look up on www.imdb.com. The best are probably "Not One Less," "Hero (英雄)," "The Road Home (我的父亲母亲)," "Raise the Red Lantern," and "To Live." "Ju Dou" (an early one) is also very good, and "Shanghai Triad" and "Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles" aren't bad. "Farewell my Concubine" (same director as "The Promise" which I didn't like) is decent. A sad but good Cultural Revolution tale is "Xiu Xiu." Also "Eat Drink Man Woman" by Ang Lee (Chinese name Li An but I'm not positive which characters) is worth watching, modern tale about family in Taiwan.

I see Danjo and I have alot of the same tastes. I love MOST OF Zhang Yi Mou's films (with the excption of his latest 2 big budget fiascos, Curse of the Golden Flower and House of Flying Daggers, both just overbloated but empty stories). However I loved The Promise and hated Farewell My Concubine. A really great but relatively unknown movie by Zhang Yi Mou stars one of my favorite actors 趙本山，有話好好説 （aka Keep Cool). Still I feel China's single best director is Zhang Yi Mou, and his movies are the most enjoyable and varied. The only thing is that most of his films just end so tragically!

Another terrific film with great acting and music is "In The Mood for Love" with Maggie Chang and Tony Leung. Wang Kar Wai is the director. "The only thing is that most of his films just end so tragically!" That makes me chuckle because I'd always thought it's really typical of Chinese films to be over the top tragic and melodramatic. It's just very Chinese (to me.) The ending of "House of Flying Daggers" is so typical of those ubiquitous tragic Chinese movie endings.

I'll have to check out 太极张三丰. Dumplings is another good Chinese movie, but you have to have a strong stomach to watch it.

Hey, Moloch! Thanks for the great plug! I really appreciate it! AZERDocMom - I actually reviewed "The Road Home" on my first podcast, which is still available for download. Check it out!

Frank, I sure will!

I had completely forgotten about "House of Flying Daggers", because as has been said it is so... forgettable. Convoluted and irritating plot. Haven't seen "Curse of the Golden Flower" yet. I watched a movie with my students that reminded me of "Not One Less," about rural education, I believe called 美丽的大脚 ("Pretty Big Feet" was the awkward English title) which was good.

Danjo, The name of this movie is "Call for Love" aka 爱情呼叫转移 It's on the forum : http://forum.chinesepod.com/viewtopic.php?t=1819

Awesome, thank you, I didn't think I would be able to find it again.

I liked Pretty Big Feet too.. and Ju Dou was just hard to watch at times. Spring Subway is another good one, so is Quitting (昨天), and My Neighbour Tortoro.. Probably the saddest movie I ever saw was called Warm Spring.. I highly recommend it, but don't think I could watch it again.

苏州河 这部电影也不错。

So true, I really didn't like that movie because I thought it pulled out all the cliche'd stops! Also there was a point when all the exaggeration was A BIT MUCH to say the least!