Blu-ray debut for Zhang Yimou's gorgeous and dark period piece, SHANGHAI TRIAD

Don't know how I happened to miss SHANGHAI TRIAD when it was released theatrically in the USA during the turn-of-the year holiday season of 1995-96. Chinese filmmaker Zhang Yimou and his star Gong Li were at the height of their critical and arthouse/ mainstream success around then, and the film itself -- a beautiful and quite dark costume/ gangster melodrama set in Shanghai in the 1930s -- holds up exceedingly well.

In any case, it's great to be able to catch up with the film in its new and very fine Blu-ray transfer from Film Movement. Visually, this is one of  the more beautiful movies you're likely to encounter, even if you will wonder if and why Zhang (shown at left) decided not (or simply neglected) to bother with any day-for-night effects. Nighttime has never looked this bright or sunny.

The initially-simple-but-soon-grows-more-complicated story involves an adolescent Tang family member (Wang Xiaoxiao, below, right) from the provinces who has come to Shanghai to work for the boss of an upper-echelon crime family, more specifically for that boss' spoiled and nasty showgirl mistress (played by Ms Gong, below, left).

Betrayals of many types soon follow, and characters (some of them, at least) grow and change. By the end of this breathtakingly gorgeous and quite dark movie, the lessons learned have come at a huge cost. If Shanghai Triad does not have the obvious political and emotional heft of To Live, nor the historical/political/feminist framework of something like Raise the Red Lantern, all of these things remain essential to the film nonetheless. They may seem buried under the melodrama, but in a sense this makes them register all the more oddly yet strongly

There is only a single Bonus Features on the disc, but it's a whopping good one: a video essay by Grady Hendrix entitled "Trouble in Shanghai" that goes to town on all the ways one can view Shanghai Triad -- including as a kind of unintentional biopic/biography of both Zhang and Gong and the filmmaking process itself. This is a witty, funny, hugely intelligent piece of criticism/provocation, but do wait until you've seen the film to watch and listen to it.

From Film Movement Classics, in Mandarin with English subtitles and running 108 minutes, the film makes its Blu-ray debut this Tuesday, August 4 -- for purchase (and eventually, I would hope, for rental, too).

Chinese noir about trust, truth and reward money: Diao Yinan's THE WILD GOOSE LAKE

Beginning with a look at the youthful criminal underworld of China (as it learns how to steal motorcycles), against a backdrop of the country's venal and stupid over-development of the housing market (one scene even takes place against a mural of a would-be new community gone bust), THE WILD GOOSE LAKE proves a consistently fascinating trip along the underbelly of the nation that has given us, among other things, Chairman Mao and the Corona Virus. As you might imagine, it ain't a pretty sight. It'll easily hold your attention, however.

The writer/director here is Diao Yinan (shown at right), who co-wrote the sweet, funny, moving Shower some 21 years ago. You could hardly ask for a more different movie -- in tone, genre, attitude and maturity -- than this new one, which you might call all about theft, drugs and rock-'n-roll (without much of the rock-'n-roll, though there is an oddball group dance number midway along).

One character here makes reference to "the Olympic Games of Theft," and while the theft is not up to that level, it certainly is an interesting example because, for quite awhile, we're not even certain what is being stolen let alone how and why. When we find out, the answer is pretty damned dark -- as befits a good neo-noir, which The Wild Goose Lake certainly is.

The film's style is to pile on flashback after flashback, sometimes within each other. Yet thanks to the filmmaker's smart sense of how to track time, place and event, he allows his audience to keep up surprisingly easily. Its main characters are the mid-level criminal, Zhou, played by Hu Ge, who is, as his name might suggest, a huge attraction in China. He's gorgeous, sexy, charismatic and not especially versatile, given that he offers up a variety of one and one-half expressions during the entire film. Never mind: he gets the job done.

After a surprise beheading of a young associate, Zhou (accidentally, he says) kills a cop and spends the remainder of the film being hunted down, even as he tries to re-bond with his woman Shujun (the delicate Wan Qian, above), while staying out of the clutches of the new girl in town (Gwei Lun-mei, below), the motives of whom remain ever just-out-of-reach.

Add to this a passel of lesser (or maybe greater) criminals also intent on getting the prize (which only slowly reveals itself) that Zhou holds, including some cops only marginally less corrupt than our criminals, led by a Captain (Liao Fan, below) who may be a tad less venal than the rest of his crew.

The movie boasts one big action scene toward the beginning (below), and not really another until the climax, at which point the most ruthless perpetrator is finally revealed. However, that final action scene is so dense, bloody and brutal that it should knock you into submission, as well as knock your socks off. (It boasts the most original dual use of an umbrella that I can recall, and this is not merely as a weapon.)

By the denouement, The Wild Goose Lake finally offers its first glimmer of hope amidst near-total negativity. Up to then its portrait of low-end Chinese society is utterly damning. Trust is mentioned more than once in the movie, yet few we see deserve it. Ah, China -- the other equally hypocritical superpower, as Communism tries to go Capitalist! Good luck with that.

From Film Movement, running 111 minutes, and in Chinese with English subtitles, the movie opens tomorrow, Friday, March 6, in New York City at Film Forum, followed by a Los Angeles run at several Laemmle theaters and at the Alamo Drafthouse Downtown, beginning March 13. Here in Boca Raton, it will not open until April 17 at our Living Room Theaters. To view all currently scheduled playdates, cities and theaters, click here and scroll down.  

The utter hopelessness of today's China: Vivian Qu's noir melodrama ANGELS WEAR WHITE

I'm not sure from where the title of this very dark and unsettling Asian-noir melodrama comes from, but the only even partial white worn in ANGELS WEAR WHITE, the new film from writer/director Vivian Qu (shown below), comes at the film's beginning, as a couple of young schoolgirls check into a seaside hotel, accompanied by an older man who seems just a tad suspicious. After that, we have to wait until the finale of this popular-at-festivals film to finally give us an all-white dress worn by its lead actress, the very good Vicky Chen, who ends this film in an oddball scene that

combines coincidence with a feel-good climax which can be interpreted, I suspect, in several ways: as an escape (but to where?), as the filmmaker's need to give us something positive at last, or perhaps as the old died-and-gone-to-heaven number in which our heroine is now one of those titular "angels."

In any case, how you react to this finale -- which includes, by the way, a marvelous and surprising use of one of Hollywood's most enduring icons -- will probably determine your approval rating for Angels Wear White.

The film tells the tale of the two little girls (above), together with their "keeper," all of whom are checked into that hotel by Mia, an only slightly older girl who, without proper identity papers, is working illegally at the hotel and soon becomes privy to a very bad event that happens there.

The first thing you may notice here, something that continues and only grows worse throughout the movie, is how venal and crooked is almost everyone we see. If Ms Qu is not saying that corruption is a -- probably the -- way of life in China, I'd be very surprised. One can't help but wonder how a film like this got by the Chinese censors. (I'm very glad it did, however.)

As usual, the more powerful are the people shown, the more corrupt and impossible-to-counter they are. This makes cops, top to bottom, the worst of the lot, with the medical profession not too far behind. Women, particularly young girls, are at the bottom of the power chain. Not to say that Ms Qu does not indict women, too. The little girl we get to know best here, Wen, has a mother (below, left) you would gladly rid the girl of, had you the chance.

In the heroics department are just two people, a female lawyer (played by Shi Ke, shown below) who stays on top of the abuse case in the center of the film, along with Wen's up-till-now mostly absentee father, Geng Le (above, right), whom we first imagine to be just another male "rotter" but who slowly takes on surprising depth and emotional strength at the movie moves along.

By the roiling and powerful climax, you'll want to take a semi-automatic to both the police and the hospital doctors. And yet what shortly precedes and then follows this seems sheer folly in terms of filmmaking. When a certain character turns out to be have been badly beaten (instead of being outright murdered, which would make much more sense, given the society we've seen here) and then a short time later appears bruise-free so that she can dress in white (like those titular angels) and give us a feel-good finale, you will wonder if Ms Qu has capitulated to Hollywood -- and not simply because of how she presents that movie-star icon at film's end.

The performances are A-1, especially from the three young girls, as well as that of Ms Shi as the lady lawyer and Mr. Le as Wen's dad. And the director's use of background shots -- as, above, with various wedding photos being taken near the beachside hotel -- speaks volumes about appearance vs reality in Chinese culture. Angels Wear White has much to recommend it. I just wish it had a little more.

From KimStim, in Chinese and with English subtitles and running 107 minutes, the movie opens this Friday, May 4, in New York City at The Metrograph, and on May 18 in Los Angeles at Laemmle's Music Hall 3.

Film noir and subversive humor combine with animation in Jian Liu's HAVE A NICE DAY

Not comparable with much else that TrustMovies has so far seen, especially in the realm of animation, Chinese filmmaker Jian Liu's new bizarre concoction entitled, with supreme irony, HAVE A NICE DAY proves such a darkly amusing look at China's underside -- does this country possess an "upside"?  Even when we see its cultural capitals and sleek skyscrapers, there always seems to be nefarious doings afoot --  that our grin turns quickly into a grimace.

As we watch Mr. Jian (shown below), as writer/director, take a gimlet-eyed look at what passes for a part of China's middle class (most if not all of them involved in crooked dealings), we see a society in which nitwit consumerism reigns supreme. (Yes, one might say that the USA reflects all of this, too.)

It seems that not only criminals, gangsters and family members are dirty, but maybe even some Buddhist monks, as well. "Dirty" may not be quite le mot juste, however, as these folk are simply trying to get ahead (or merely survive) as best they can. What they do ranges from criminal (unless stealing from a criminal is not a criminal act) to merely immoral, very violent or just plain mean.

Jian's movie is full of economics, humor, philosophy and politics -- though the latter is, I suspect, somewhat buried. If I were Chinese I'm sure I would have gleaned at least double the amount of information and enjoyment from the film, yet what I managed to get still provided an awfully good time.

My favorite moment comes as a criminal couple (above) imagines their upcoming life in Shangri-la (below) as a kind of musical number done in the style of those old Chinese Communist propaganda songs.

Among the philosophical wonders here is the explanation by one character to another of why freedom actually equals consumerism, while what you get depends on where you buy. This is quite the original little gem.

Animation-wise the movie's simplicity also proves its great strength. Jian mostly uses stationary backgrounds in front of which the action takes place. It's an odd combo of realism and stylization, and it works very well to create what you might call animation noir.

We follow along as that ever-popular "bag of money" leads one character to another and yet another until we've come full circle and seen what greed (and, yes, need) can produce. The fact that the first fellow we meet (you couldn't in your wildest dreams call him a hero) is stealing that money in order to pay for a second facial surgery for his girlfriend (because her first one was badly botched) just adds to the film's "crazy consumerism" theme. (Too bad Jian doesn't animate that bad plastic surgery; it'd be interesting to see what he came up with.)

There is so much dark fun to be had here, with much of this coming from the fact that (probably to keep his budget in tow) the director cuts away from almost all of the kind of excess blood, gore, car crashes and "action stuff" that so many of our current blockbusters delight in overdoing.

From Strand Releasing and running a just right 77-minutes, Have a Nice Day opens this Friday, January 26, in New York City at the Angelika Film Center and in Los Angeles, the following Friday, February 2, at Laemmle's Ahrya Fine Arts -- after which it will play another 18 cities across the country. Click here, then scroll down to click on Screenings in the task bar, to see all currently scheduled playdates, cities and theaters.

Stream it! Tsui Hark's YOUNG DETECTIVE DEE: RISE OF THE SEA DRAGON -- beauty in action

Imagine, if you will, Creature from the Black Lagoon, given a full-bore Asian update -- with all the color and pyrotechnics and undersea/up-on-land, ancient maritime/ martial arts action you could require, plus a sweet love story, and a plot that goes the original maybe ten times better, while morphing into a lovely fairy tale for kids and teens -- and you just might have an idea of the great beauty and fun to be found in Tsui Hark's delightful sequel to his original (and also delightful) Detective Dee movie, YOUNG DETECTIVE DEE: RISE OF THE SEA DRAGON.

Made in 3D (just as was the original Black Lagoon guy, back in 1954), the riot of color in gorgeous compositions and set pieces may be one of those rare sequels to outdo its original -- which was also pretty damned good. Mr. Tsui (shown at left), a Vietnam-born filmmaker who has worked mostly in China and for a short time here in the U.S.has quite a record as producer, director, writer, even actor and editor. As they say, he knows the ropes. As both spectacle and big-budget moviemaking, YDD: ROTSD delivers the good as well as just about anything else TrustMovies has seen in a long time. I have no idea of what this film cost to make, but I swear that every penny is up there on the screen -- in beauty and pleasure.

In the original Dee, the character was older (played by Andy Lau), super-smart of course, and still able to fight. Here, as a young man (Mark Chao, above), he's equally smart, fit and rather sexy in his own quiet manner. The story features not only the titular sea monster but that Black Lagoon-like creature, as well, and it's his tale of love for a prized courtesan that helps bring the movie to added life.

We also see again that iron-willed and not-so-nice Empress, embodied by the powerful Carina Lau (below), and our hero find himself up against a combination foe/friend/soul-mate who is constantly getting in his way and then helping him, along with sundry other characters, good and evil. For pulchritude, there a lovely actress named Angelababy (above, but isn't she embarrassed to sport  a moniker like that?)

Betrayals, battles, and one knockout sequence in which our heroes must fight for their lives while scaling a sheer cliff, there's all this and more. Then midway along we discover that our hero has one vey sizeable weak point -- not helpful in battling at sea.

There's some humor here, too, plus sets and costumes of such bountiful glory as to be immediate Oscar qualifiers (if the Academy members ever deigned to see a movie like this one), and even end credits that features yet more laughs -- if you're inclined to sit through the extra ten minutes.

The special effects department has come up with a fabulous sea monster, and the concluding battle is terrific. This movie took me back to my childhood with its enormous sense of charm and wonder, though of course we never saw anything this spectacular in those days. It puts Hollywood's supposed blockbusters mostly to shame.

YDD:ROTSD (in Chinese with English subtitles and running two hours and 14 minutes), which is said to have received a limited theatrical run here in the U.S. but seems to have managed to get no reviews at all, is available to view now via Netfix streaming (where it looks simply ravishing in high definition -- even without the 3D) and elsewhere, too. If you're in the mood, moviewise, to be a kid again, don't miss it.

Wang Xiaoshuai's 11 FLOWERS offers a narrative of China in a time of change....

...and, for a change, that time is not present-day. Instead, with 11 FLOWERS -- the new film from Wang Xiaoshuai who has earlier given us both Bejing Bicycle and In Love We Trust -- we're whisked back to 1975 (just one year, the title cards tell us, before the end of the Cultural Revolution) to a small town in southwest China. Those of us old enough will recall this awful time of the Red Guards and the Chairman Mao personality cult, when it seemed to us westerners that China was under the influence of a bunch of brainwashed nuts.

Perhaps because it takes place so near the end of this trying time and is seen mostly from the viewpoint of its eleven-year-old, sort-of hero (and his schoolmates), the film (directed and co-written by Wang, shown at right) appears to be much quieter and more benign than we might imagine. Just beneath that placid surface, however, is roiling all kinds of trauma. 11 Flowers does a bang-up job of bringing us that undercurrent in a way that an eleven-year-old would experience it: off-center, via snippets of conversation by adults who want to keep anything untoward from the eyes and minds of the children.

On the cusp of adolescence -- toward the end of the film, our hero has his first wet dream, the remains of which are found by his parents, which occasions one of the film's most charming scenes -- Han, who looks to become a gifted gymnast, is put in charge of his school's training (above), which means the need of a new shirt. This proves a brilliant move, for the shirt (hanging out to dry, on the riverbank below) then acts as a conduit to reveal everything from character (particularly that of Han's mother) to the film's major event, and onwards, snaking its way around both symbol and something very real and moving.

The filmmaker makes us keenly aware of how children perceive things -- from hearing those conversational snippets, to suddenly seeing adults running through the streets or events taking place at a distance, from which they can parse only a bit of what is happening. Mr Wang is also is also terrific at showing us how children, as smart as they may be for their age, simply cannot be expected to act like adults until they are that. Till then, they are at the mercy of their elders. At times, you'll so want young Han to rise to the occasions presented him. It is greatly to the credit of the filmmaker that the boy cannot.

Mr. Wang sees children as neither heroic nor cowardly but simply as kids negotiating that windy path to adulthood. The road here involves parents, friends, politics, employment, sexuality, even murder and retribution -- all observed and understood believably by eleven-year-olds, with us adult viewers able to fill in the blanks, thanks to the filmmaker's double-duty skills. This is one of the best -- because it's unsentimental -- films about childhood, and about China and its history, that I have seen in some time. Well cast and beautifully acted, it's yet another feather in the cap of this lesser-known but quite humane and talented filmmaker. Let's hope it does not get lost in the ever-greater shuffle of small movie gems that appear, and then quickly disappear.

11Flowers, a Chinese-French co-production with English subtitles and one of those rare narrative films we sometimes get from First Run Features, runs just under two hours and opens in New York City tomorrow -- Friday, February 22 -- at the Elinor Bunin Munro Film Center and the Quad Cinema. Over the next month or so it will open in a few more cities across the country. Click here to see all currently scheduled playdates, cities and theaters. As this one is from FRF, you'll be able to see it eventually on DVD (and maybe VOD and streaming), as well.

DVDebut -- DETECTIVE DEE AND THE MYSTERY OF THE PHANTOM FLAME: Its Blu-ray visuals are beyond gorgeous!

If ever a movie cried out to be viewed on Blu-ray, it's Tsui Hark's DETECTIVE DEE AND THE MYSTERY OF THE PHANTOM FLAME. Roundly praised by most critics (we love a good time, especially if it's unusual or exotic) when it appeared in U.S. theaters earlier this year, the movie is out this week on DVD and Blu-ray, and TM must tell you that this is one of the most beautiful Blu-ray films he's yet seen.  If you already have a Blu-ray player, add the movie to your Netflix or Blockbuster queue. If you don't, the film proves a good enough reason to finally purchase one. It's that spectacular. And beautiful.

Sure, it's full of CGI effects (done damn well, too), but more than that, it's exceedingly colorful and detailed. Full of history, mystery, intelligent scripting and interesting characters brought to life by a starry Chinese cast, it is also one of the most oddball mixtures you could imagine. And that's what makes it so much fun. Director Hark more than lives up to his reputation as one of the most creative and talented of action directors (born in Vietnam, according to the IMDB, he was educated in film at the University of Texas, Austin!).

Don't let this amazing movie, out now for purchase or rental, get by you unseen.

Lou Ye's SPRING FEVER: difficult and feverish -- but worth wrestling with

Just keeping the characters straight (though most of the males are gay or bi) should present the first big hurdle in viewing SPRING FEVER, the latest half-hidden passion fest from Chinese bad boy Lou Ye. It took TrustMovies a good portion of the film's 107-minute running time to piece together who these people were and what was going on. Post-screening, as he stood and talked with two compatriots about this film -- all of us still struggling to make certain we had our facts correct and with mixed (but much more positive than negative) feelings about the movie -- he realized how taken he had been with Mr. Lou's alternately delicate and deeply-felt creation.   

Still in trouble with the powers-that-be, after earlier no-no's like Weekend Lover (censored), Suzhou River (banned) and Summer Palace (which got this writer/director banished for five years), Lou, shown at left, now tackles homosexuality head-on and comes up with a movie that is difficult, unusual, but very hard to shake, once it's gotten its claws into you. China might want the world to believe (as Israel once asked us to do) that there is simply no homosexuality within its own borders (and even if there were, the state would certainly not countenance it -- no, no, no!), but if we accept Lou as our guide, man-to-man love is all over the place -- closeted, perhaps, with plenty of secret assignations, but also pretty "out there," complete with cross-dressing nightclub performers, trannie bars, the works!

Seemingly shot on the fly, often dark and muddy, the movie features a lot of man-on-man heat, mostly heavy petting ("All that kissing!" as one IFC employee put it at the screening I attended), with some nudity now and then (rear rather than frontal).  What interests Lou (if not, perhaps, you) is the great passion involved here, and the need of the individual to act on it and to have the privacy to do so, at the same time as the state insists on overseeing everything.  This is a conundrum difficult to resolve, and part of the pleasure of the finale, or so it seems to me, is that this individual-against-state situation does at last find some peace and resolution, even if much has to be given up in the process.

The movie begins as a gay twosome, expands to a trio (the wife of one of the men) and then into a quartet, when she hires a photog-
rapher to follow her husband. The photographer has his own girlfriend, though he soon becomes fixated on the unmarried of the two gay men, and so finally the movie is a quintet -- until, sadly, it becomes a quartet again -- of lonely, unsatisfied people frustrated by their own needs, half of which are forbidden by the state.

Beginning with scenes of flowers in the rain and poetic quotes to match, Lou runs the risk of seeming pretentious.  Yet the poetry -- of seasons, insects, flowers and feelings --  begins to take hold in the writing and even in the sub-par visuals.  There's a hypnotic quality to the movie, along with a sadness and melancholy that is finally unshakable.  Spring Fever marks another collaboration, after Summer Palace, with writer Mei Feng (who won, to some disagreement, the Best Screenplay award at Cannes last year).  It is certainly an unusual screenplay, I'll give it that: one that challenges but also rewards.

Guilt, identity, a fluid sexuality, and questions, question, questions. Besides the incursions of the state, there is something else that is keeping the two original male lovers apart.  When the equation changes, and the more female of the two bonds with the photographer, the same inability to give over and commit is still there.  Is this the inscrutable East?  Or the even more inscrutable notion of sexual identity?

You try to figure it out, as Spring Fever, via Strand Releasing, opens this Friday in New York City at the IFC Center and maybe elsewhere, soon, I hope.