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HanYan
Reviews
When a City Rises (2021)
An ensemble movie about how a city fights against a superpower
The film follows a few characters in a pivotal year for Hong Kong as the city descends into chaos. There is the father who fights on the "frontline", a cute squabbling teenage couple and a very eloquent student leader. You really get a sense of how different people of different backgrounds are involved in this city-wide protest.
It's very much a David vs Goliath fight, but given the widespread support for the protests, for a moment, you do get taken in by the momentum and believe they have a chance.
It's sad that the film is titled When a City Rises, because we all know what ultimately happens to Hong Kong.
There are quite a few Hong Kong documentaries about this period, among the ones I've seen, I find this most comprehensive and has the strongest characters.
Jian ru pan shi (2023)
Cliche and unbelievable
The film is laughably cliche and unbelievable.
The main character always manages to arrive one second too late to move the plot forward. The cops always show up just at the right time to save the day.
It apparently took Zhang Yimou 5 years of back and forth with the censors for this film to finally come out. I don't know how much the censors are to blame, but the characters are laughably cliche, there's no complexity in their personalities, they're either total villains who are ultimately punished by the law or are complete heros with no moral qualms. A Disney movie has more complexity.
The female characters are sad, there's only one real female character, the others are just there to talk about the men. The film does not pass the Bechdel test.
Pred dozhdot (1994)
Time is not a Circle, but War is
A poignant tragedy about hatred, war, love and taking sides.
Time is not linear in the movie, but the director blatantly tells us that time is not a circle, so what is? The story is, and perhaps war is.
The story is told in three parts, with highly ironic titles: Words, Faces, and Pictures. Each story has meticulously planned, but highly disturbing parallels. The story-telling of the movie requires diligent planning, down to every single detail, exceptional creativity, and extraordinary persistence. Perhaps that's why the director Milcho Manchevski was fired by both commercial producers Warner Brothers and 20th Century Fox for "creative differences"
Before the Rain talks about hate, and how the power of hate can rise above love. It talks about taking sides, the central character in each section tries not to take sides, but circumstances often prove such efforts futile. As with Kiril and Aleksander.
In the film, all events happened before the rain, this sense of urgency, this beautiful sadness, and this inevitable tragedy. Before the Rain is my all time favourite movie.