Movies
A full-blown Chinese comedy. It's nice to see the Chinese at least haven't forgotten about this genre, as pure comedies are pretty hard to come by nowadays. There's no drama, no tragedy, just a splash of romance on the side. The rest is just goofiness and setups for some silly laughs. Wang Duo Yu is a third rate goalkeeper who dreams of making it big. One day his prayers are answered, when he's about to inherit 30 billion yuan. The only requirement is that he has to spend 1 billion yuan within a month (with some some additional dos and don'ts attached). It doesn't make a lot of sense, but that doesn't really matter as it's simply an excuse for some exuberant spending. It's a typical Chinese blockbuster, meaning it looks pretty decent and no expenses were spared, but the music is pretty atrocious, the performances are well over-the-top and the film's a bit long. At long there are some decent gags and the atmosphere remains light and breeze in the second half. Not bad.Read all
Dreams and aspirations aren't all that. We all question our lives and choices sometimes, but the grass isn't always greener on the other side. Goodbye Mr. Loser is a film that explores one of those alternative realities, only to circle back and have the main character realize he's been living his dream life after all. Xia Luo used to be the class fool. His hopes of becoming a famous star were crushed early on, he settled for a lesser girlfriend and none of his friends really respect him. When his high school crush gets married, he crashes her wedding and makes a big scene. Drunk and humiliated, he crashes down in the restroom. When he wakes up though, he's back in the past and gets to redo his life all over again. You've probably seen it all before and Goodbye Mr. Loser doesn't go through great lengths to make this is anything special, but the execution is pretty decent. Performances are nice enough, the cinematography looks colorful and adds charm and the film isn't stretched out to hit the 120-minute mark. Solid entertainment.Read all
Chinese pep talk. I think this is the second Chinese blockbuster anthology made with a single goal in mind: make China look good on the silver screen. It's no surprise these film have started to pop up over there now that their local market is booming, they're simply copying Hollywood's playbook. It's a bit of a bummer though, as these project tend to usurp quality directors (like Hao Ning here), forcing them to put out subpar films. The five shorts on display here aren't terrible, but their intentions are a bit too obvious and the film is so polished that it gets a little nauseating after a while. China's most familiar actors (Bo Huang, You Ge, Baoqiang Wang, ...) are all present, the cinematography is nice and colorful and there are some quirky stories, but there's not enough variation, there's no grit and all the film offer the same self-boasting fuzzy feelgood nonsense. I hope this will be the end of it, but since these films are doing pretty well at the box office I doubt it very much.Read all