Movies in Chinese:
NOTE: NEWEST ADDITIONS ARE AT THE END, AND NOT LISTED ALPHABETICALLY.
All pictures and text from www.amazon.com unless otherwise noted.
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1
20, 30, 40 2004 Chinese with English and Chinese subtitles
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2
Blind Shaft 2003 Chinese with French subtitles
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The lives of three disparate modern women get a refreshing once-over in 20 : 30 : 40. The three women never actually meet, although their paths do cross on occasion. Xiao Jie, a twentysomething Malaysian girl journeys to Taiwan with the promise of becoming a possible idol singer. Thirtysomething year-old flight attendant Xiang has liaisons with both a married dentist and a possessive music producer. Finally, Lily is the fortysomething who discovers that her husband has a second family! She heads back into the singles scene in a bold, and somewhat comic fashion. |
In the dark caves of one of the many illegal Chinese coal mines, Song and Tang murder a co-worker. To make the death look accidental, they collapse the mine, burying the body. Then, they use this death to extort money from the mine's management, who are now pressured into covering up an accident which they believe to be the result of improper working conditions. The mine's owners give in to the two workers' blackmailing, but at the last minute, the two men's scheme takes an unexpected turn. |
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3 Blood Brothers 2007 Chinese with English and Chinese subtitles
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4
The Blue Kite 1994 Cantonese with English subtitles
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Three close friends, poor fishermen from a small village on the outskirts of Shanghai, decide to move to the big city in search of new opportunities. Once in Shanghai, they are tempted by riches they once could only imagine, but they never expected to become involved with the criminal underworld. |
Banned in China, “The Blue Kite" is the most acclaimed and controversial of all of the films to come out of the new Chinese cinema. Told from the perspective of a young boy, Tietou, it traces the fate of a Beijing family and their neighbors as they experience the political and social upheavals in 1950's and 60's China. |
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5 Eat, Drink, Man, Woman 1994 Mandarin with English, French, and Spanish subtitles
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6
Endless Way 2002 In Chinese, with English subtitles
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Senior Master Chef Chu lives in a large house in Taipei with his three unmarried daughters, Jia-Jen, a chemistry teacher converted to Christianity, Jia-Chien, an airline executive, and Jia-Ning, a student who also works in a fast food restaurant. Life in the house revolves around the ritual of an elaborate dinner each Sunday, and the love lives of all the family members. www.amazon.com |
This film is a visual poem, just simply beautiful. The story quietly tells the hardships of bringing precious drinking water to a Hunan mountain village. All the villagers---men AND women, have to help, carrying the heavy water through a narrow, rocky pass to this mountain village. The main characters are Ah-ming and A-Shui, they love each other but Ah-ming is forced into an arranged marriage. Ah-ming's wife eventually leaves,and Ah-shui is forced to go the city for a while to find work. The story is told from the point of view of a visitor involved in a difficult dam project to help the village. |
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Farewell My Concubine 1993 Chinese with English subtitles
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8
Going to School with Dad on my Back 1997 Mandarin with English subtitles
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This movie intertwines two parallel stories. It is the story of two performers in the Beijing Opera, stage brothers, and the woman who comes between them. At the same time, it attempts to do no less than squeeze the entire political history of China in the twentieth century into a three-hour time-frame. www.amazon.com
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Based on a true story, this film portrays the difficulties many children from poor families in rural areas in China have to complete a meaningful education. The father of a poor family can only afford for one of his two children to go to school. The son is chosen, but even getting to school is dangerous, as he has to cross a river to get there. |
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9 Green Tea 2005 Mandarin with Traditional Chinese, Simple Chinese, and English subtitles
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Hero 2004 Chinese, English, and French audio tracks; English and Spanish subtitles
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This urban love story is based on a short novel named "Adiliya by the River" by Jin Renshun. Wu Fang is a university student who enjoys blind dates. During each date, she orders a cup of green tea and tells the story of her close friend, Langlang. Wu Fang and Langlang believe that green tea can forecast a person’s love. Chen Ming-liang falls in love with Wu Fang. But later he meets Langlang, a piano player in a bar, with the same face as Wu Fang but with a completely different personality. What is the relationship between the two girls and who does Chen really love the most? http://www.kfccinema.com/reviews/drama/greentea/greentea.html |
In ancient China, before the reign of the first emperor, warring factions throughout the Six Kingdoms plot to assassinate the most powerful ruler, Qin. When a minor official defeats Qin's three principal enemies, he is summoned to the palace to tell Qin the story of his surprising victory. |
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11 The King of Masks 1999 Mandarin with Chinese and English subtitles
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12 Peacock (Kong Que) 2005 Chinese with English subtitles
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During the 1930s, Wang, an elderly street performer, is without an heir. Tradition demands that he pass down the secrets of his art - but only to a son or grandson. This is a period in Chinese history when daughters can be sold or given away but sons are valued highly. Therefore the old man is amazed to encounter an eight year old boy being offered for sale by his penniless father. Desperate for a male heir, Wang buys the child. He and little Doggie hit it off, even after he discovers Doggie is really a girl! Then Doggie makes a terrible miscalculation and the King of Masks is put in jail to await execution … |
The story is set in the 1970s in a small town in China. A middle aged couple has three children. The eldest son is obese and mentally challenged, therefore he is teased and outcast by others. The second child is an outgoing and energetic daughter, who is not afraid of doing anything to pursue her dreams or to survive. The youngest child is a shy and quiet boy who is ashamed of his older brother and tries to break away from the misery in his family. Breaking into three sections focusing on each of these siblings, the film allows us to look into the lives of ordinary Chinese people in the 70s. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0445506/plotsummary Summary written by YNOTswim |
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13 Raise the Red Lantern 1991 Mandarin with English subtitles
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14 Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles 2005 Chinese with English subtitles
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An educated woman (Gong Li) who is sent off to become the newest wife of a feudal nobleman in 1920s China. Nearly isolated in his spooky, palatial home, she develops relationships with several of the other wives and slowly becomes aware of a hideous legacy of punishment toward more willful women. The film has a brittle and dry quality that is deliberate, but also suggestive of Zhang working through various explorations of his own style (which he resolved in his next film, The Story of Qiu Ju). Gong Li, one of the world's great actresses, is superb. --Tom Keogh |
Takada, a Japanese fisherman has been estranged from his son for many years, but when the son is diagnosed with terminal cancer his daughter-in-law, Rie, summons him to the hospital. When his son refuses to see him, Rie gives him a videotape about the work his son was doing on a documentary film in a remote region of China's Yunnan province. Takada decides to complete his son's work. Once in China a series of obstacles and relationships bring him unexpectedly closer to both an understanding of himself and of his son. Summary written by docraven |
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The Road Home 2000 Mandarin with English subtitles
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Shower 1999 Mandarin with English subtitles
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A young man returns to his native village after the death of his father, the village's schoolteacher, who died while trying to raise money for a new schoolhouse. His body is in a neighboring town; the young man's mother insists that it be brought back on foot, lest his spirit not find his way home. From this starting point, the young man recounts the tale of his parents' courtship, which involved a red banner, mushroom dumplings, a colorful barrette, and a broken bowl. The Road Home is beautifully filmed, a simple but deeply emotional film. --Bret Fetzer |
This movie offers a comical look at the dark side of the "new" China. A man takes a shower in an efficient public shower, which looks like a mix between a porta-potty and a robo car-wash. It gets the job done in a short amount of time so that the user can get on with his life. We then meet the Yuppie businessman behind the efficient shower who is presently returning to his hometown because he believes his father is dead. As it turns out, his father is not dead. His son’s arrival creates a juxtaposition of two worlds. The father runs a public bathouse, which unlike his son’s efficient shower, serves as a social center where people bond and problems get resolved. Alas, a modernization plan calls for the bathhouse to be torn down... |
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Spring Subway 2002 Mandarin with Traditional Chinese, Simple Chinese, and English subtitles
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The Story of Qiu Ju 1993 Cantonese with English subtitles
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A couple gets lost in the doldrums of a seven-year-old marriage that seems to be coming apart for no particular reason. While the wife is drawn toward an affair with a customer, her husband, who just lost his job, maintains the pretence of going to work by riding the Beijing subway all day. There, he observesfellow passengers in the process of tentatively falling in love. The film jumps among these different romances he eavesdrops on. Extra-marital peril looms when the husband finds himself drawn to an injured schoolteacher, whom he cares for anonymously as she recovers in hospital.http://www.chinesecinemas.org/springsubway.html |
This humorous fable of justice traverses the north of China. The kick is never shown, but the entire film is based around it. It's winter in the remote Shaanxi province. Pregnant Qiu Ju is married to laidback farmer Qinglai. When village chief Wang kicks him during an argument, she sets out to ensure that her husband receives medical attention--and an apology--which remains as elusive as a dragonfly in December. Defying all stereotypes of the passive Chinese woman she remains unbowed by the frustrations of bureaucracy in her quixotic search for dignity. |
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19 Sunflower 2005 Chinese with English subtitles
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20 Suzhou River 2000 Mandarin with Traditional Chinese, Simple Chinese, and English subtitles
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It is 1976 and the death of Chairman Mao has brought an end to the tyranny of the Gang of Four. The painter Gengnian has spent years in a labour camp where his hands were permanently damaged. He returns home to his wife and his nine-year-old son Xiangyang who is deeply disturbed by the imposition of this new presence in his life. Refusing to acknowledge his talent in painting, Xiangyang lets a firecracker blow up in his hand – a desperate attempt to mirror his father’s injury and shatter Gengnian’s dreams for his son’s artistic career… http://www.e.bell.ca/filmfest/2005/films_description.asp?id=269 |
A lonely videographer living near the Suzhou River falls in love with Meimei, a performer at a night club, who is used to disappearing for days and then showing up again without a word. One day the videographer gets to know Mardar, a motorcycle courier. Mardar tells a strange story about kidnapping his girlfriend Mudan who was later so heart-broken that she jumped into the Suzhou River. Mardar is convinced not only that Mudan is still alive, but that Meimei is in fact Mudan. http://www.filmfestivals.com/paris_00/film_suzhou.htm
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To Live 1994 Chinese with English subtitles
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Big Shot’s Funeral 2002 Chinese and French, with English etc. subtitles
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To Live follows the struggles of an impoverished husband and wife from their heyday in the 1940s to the hardships that accompanied the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s. They raise two children amidst a Communist regime, surviving numerous setbacks and yet manage, somehow, to live. Both intimate and epic, Zhang's film encompasses the simplest and most profound realities of Chinese life during this controversial period, and for their honesty, Zhang and Gong Li faced a two-year ban on future collaborations. To Live is a testament to their art, transcending politics to celebrate the tenacity of ordinary people in the wake of turbulent history. --Jeff Shannon |
Eastern religion collides with Western capitalism in Big Shot's Funeral, a satirical comedy about a cameraman named Yoyo (Ge You) hired to shoot a making-of documentary about a world-famous director (Donald Sutherland). When the director has a stroke and goes into a coma, the director's assistant Lucy commissions Yoyo to organize the director's funeral. At a loss, Yoyo asks for help from a friend who promotes concerts--and before long the funeral has turned into a vast media spectacle so absurd that when the director recovers, he refuses to let Lucy stop the funeral because he's so enchanted. --Bret Fetzer |
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23 Lost in Beijing 2007 Chinese with English subtitles
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24 Lust, Caution 2007 Chinese, with English etc. subtitles
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Set against the frenzied backdrop of Beijing, where a fast growing economy has created a new class of urban socialites and nouveau riche, An-kun and his wife Ping-guo have built a modest living for themselves. One day, Ping-guo returns to work after drinking too much at lunch, and her rich (and married) boss forces himself on her, not realizing that An-kun, who washes windows, is a witness to what is happening. Seeing this as a moneymaking opportunity, An-kun decides to use blackmail. until Ping-guo learns that she's pregnant, The two couples fumble their way through a tragicomic ménage-a-quatre that left the Chinese censors blazing. |
Provocative, thrilling and sensual, Lust, Caution is the daring new film from acclaimed Academy Award®-winning director Ang Lee (Brokeback Mountain; Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon). Set against the backdrop of a transforming country, a young woman finds herself swept up in a radical plot to assassinate a ruthless and secretive intelligence agent. As she immerses herself in her role as a cosmopolitan seductress, she becomes entangled in a dangerous game of emotional intrigue, love and betrayal. |
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The Longest Night in Shanghai 2007 In Mandarin and Japanese; subtitles in English, Japanese, Traditional Chinese, and Simplified Chinese
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26 Legend of the Black Scorpion 2006 In Mandarin and English; subtitles in English and Spanish  |
China, Shanghai. Japanese top make-up artist and hairstylist Naoki Mizushima, suddenly knocked over by a bashed-up taxi recklessly driven by female driver Linshi, is surprisingly unharmed. He accepts her passionate proposal and gets into her cab. Not understanding a word of Chinese, he thinks she is being kind and offering him a free guided tour of Shanghai. In fact, Linshi is thinking that “All foreigners are suckers”, and that she can make a fast buck from her unexpected fare. So begins their “misguided” tour of Shanghai… Meanwhile, Mizushima’s colleagues are in a turmoil by his sudden disappearance. They all set off into nighttime Shanghai to look for him. (from DVD cover) |
A cross between Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Tarantino’s Kill Bill, scheming royals and other officials attempt to consolidate power in a empire in chaos. Packed with deadly plots, sweeping camerawork, and elaborate fight choreography. | ||
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27 2046 2004 In Cantonese , with English subtitles
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| In Wong Kar Wai's quasi-sequel to In the Mood for Love, 2046 is a hotel room, a futuristic story, and a state of mind. Tony Leung returns as Chow, but perhaps not the same Chow who appeared in the first film. Starting three years later in 1966, we see Chow on various Christmases as he lives, loves, and writes in a hotel and nearby restaurants. Although he is less sensitive and more of a lady’s man now, Chow's love life always seems to exceed his grasp. | |||
