The movie, as same as "You Only Live Twice", was filled with rich oriental style. The place of the story was Hong Kong and Thailand (even there were some Chinese Communist soldiers in the Cultural Revolution), and the typical oriental style would make the estern audience feel familiar. The ideological struggle in the movie seemed be largely weakened, and the concern to new energy and personal battles between spies became new focuses.
Yuen Qiu, well known for "Kung Fu" later, also starred in the movie. At that time she was so young to have just a few minutes to perform a kung fu girl. The role of the American tourist was quite funny.
This was a traditional Kung Fu movie, with rare special visual effects used, which was so rare in contemporary movies. It was so good to watch two kung fu masters (Lau Kar Leung & Gordon Liu) fight in the movie nowadays.
However, there were still some common problems of the old-styled movies, like the actors acted more or less artificially. Some parts went too far in amusing the audience, may not be suitable for the whole movie.
An excellent work! This movie was one of the best explanations of "1984" by George Orwell, and the only difference was: people won finally in the movie. A totalitarian regime could maintain its rule only by fear, lie, coercion, which could only produce repressed people, mutual distrust among people (even within the ruling group), and the final grave-diggers to bury the ruling bureau.
The power of the people is the strongest to bury totalitarian state powers.
For mainland Chinese, the movie was more than a sci-fi film, but a realistic one.
V for Vendetta: The Revolutionary Speech:
Quotes:
V: Good evening, London. Allow me first to apologize for this interruption. I do, like many of you, appreciate the comforts of every day routine- the security of the familiar, the tranquility of repetition. I enjoy them as much as any bloke. But in the spirit of commemoration, whereby those important events of the past, usually associated with someone's death or the end of some awful bloody struggle, a celebration of a nice holiday, I thought we could mark this November the 5th, a day that is sadly no longer remembered, by taking some time out of our daily lives to sit down and have a little chat. There are of course those who do not want us to speak. I suspect even now, orders are being shouted into telephones, and men with guns will soon be on their way. Why? Because while the truncheon may be used in lieu of conversation, words will always retain their power. Words offer the means to meaning, and for those who will listen, the enunciation of truth. And the truth is, there is something terribly wrong with this country, isn't there? Cruelty and injustice, intolerance and oppression. And where once you had the freedom to object, to think and speak as you saw fit, you now have censors and systems of surveillance coercing your conformity and soliciting your submission. How did this happen? Who's to blame? Well certainly there are those more responsible than others, and they will be held accountable, but again truth be told, if you're looking for the guilty, you need only look into a mirror. I know why you did it. I know you were afraid. Who wouldn't be? War, terror, disease. There were a myriad of problems which conspired to corrupt your reason and rob you of your common sense. Fear got the best of you, and in your panic you turned to the now high chancellor, Adam Sutler. He promised you order, he promised you peace, and all he demanded in return was your silent, obedient consent. Last night I sought to end that silence. Last night I destroyed the Old Bailey, to remind this country of what it has forgotten. More than four hundred years ago a great citizen wished to embed the fifth of November forever in our memory. His hope was to remind the world that fairness, justice, and freedom are more than words, they are perspectives. So if you've seen nothing, if the crimes of this government remain unknown to you, then I would suggest you allow the fifth of November to pass unmarked. But if you see what I see, if you feel as I feel, and if you would seek as I seek, then I ask you to stand beside me one year from tonight, outside the gates of Parliament, and together we shall give them a fifth of November that shall never, ever be forgot.
The movie met almost all of the adolescent fantasy expectations: a super-rich kid, whose identity kept closed until the end of the movie (even he himself had not known about it), looked so cool ("handsome" was not a strong adjective anymore), and the super-rich kid was kind, nice, humane, good at sports, and simply the Price Charming for all girls. -- OK, this almost could be the only selling point of this movie.
Yao Chen's another work to re-shape her screen image. Obviously she was trying to establish a screen-white-collar-image for herself. The movie itself was common, a routine of "man and woman living together and falling love", nothing specially shinning.
The story was not very complicated, but very well worth pondering. The point of the movie was not simply an ethical question: what's your choice if you HAVE TO sacrifice one person to save some others? As the example of the movie: a terrorist wanted to do something evil, and in order to save the innocent persons to be killed by him, do you prepare to use All (Note: All!) methods to trial him? There is no single Right answer for this question, everyone has a reason to make his own choice from his ethics and life experience.
Actually, personal choice doesn't matter much, the point of the problem is: why there are someone who would like to take such extreme and violent solutions to sacrifice tens of thousands of other people? What's his belief? What's the conflicts he faces? Why does he prefer to take such an extreme way to solve his problem? In order to avoid such situations, is there any other systematic ways? What kind of society do we expect to establish? -- Perhaps only at this point can we provide a more appropriate answer.
This movie could be regarded as the sequel of "Dirty Dancing", but actually the two had nothing related. The only connection may be that the actor Patrick Swayze starred in a role in the movie again.
This movie was based on the true story, which was somewhat plain: two lovers had to separate from each other because of the country's dramatic political unheaval. Of course, the story was not the key point, the passion inside and the Latin dance were. The dancing in the movie was indeed enjoyable, but I did not know whether it was because the actors and actresses were younger, the Latin dance choreography seemed a little not as good as "Dirty Dancing".
An opposite man/enemy was in need when the conflicts in a movie developed. In "Toy Story 1", the opposite was the child who liked to destroy toys; and in this movie, the opposite was an evil middle-aged man who liked to collected and re-sale toys (well, just think from another stand, this man did nothing wrong actually, didn't he?). The group of toys defeated the middle-aged man with their teamwork and friendship. Compared to the previous episode, this one made the most obvious progress in visual effect.
剧情要展开冲突，总是需要一个对立面的。在《玩具总动员1》里，对立面是一个喜欢破坏玩具的小孩，到了本片中，对立面就成了一个居心不良的喜欢收集和贩卖玩具的大叔（换个角度想想，实际上这个大叔也没做错什么）。一群玩具在和大叔斗智斗勇中，依靠团结和友谊，战而胜之。相比上一集，可能最明显的进步就在于视觉效果上。
Performance impression:
Directors: John Lasseter, Ash Brannon, Lee Unkrich
This movie was the first long 3D animation movie produced totally by computers; before this one there were some 3D works ("Tin Toy" and "Knick Knack"), but this was the first full-length production. The movie was splendid, and it was better that the movie was more than some demenstrations on 3D vision effects (actually it was useless to show off with the 3D techniques at that time), but offered us the audience a good story: What if there would be a new leader in your team? This was more than a question for the current team leader, but also for everyone in the team.
这几乎可以说是第一部由电脑制作的长篇3D动画，之前虽然也有一些作品开始尝试了3D制作（如《锡铁兵》和《小雪人大行动》），不过成系统的长篇制作还是首例。作品果然非同凡响，而且更出色的是，本片并没有停留在技术的炫耀上（当然实际上那个时候的3D技术也没什么好炫耀的），而是深入挖掘了一个故事：团队中可能出现新的领导人，自己要怎么办？这不单是现任团队领导的问题，也是团队中每个人都要面临的问题。 Performance impression: Director: John Lasseter
Fortunately or not, the movie repeated the successful routine of the movie "Ong Bak" both on the story and the characters' set, only the fact that the male leading role was about to look for an elephant, not a Buddha head as in the first one. The only difference from the "Ong Bak" was the improvement of the fighting skills, however, the action skill alone can not attract the audience for long.
Chinese audience may be more familiar with the cast, as it was the dancer Jin Xing who starred the leading villain. Many Chinese kew about her (him) was not because of her dancing, but because she was one of the first to publicize her transgender identity.
The movie was made in a relatively early age, so it was kind of traditional large production, and showed the audience the realistic life of the Great Genghis Khan.
The story of the movie was good: spy war in World War II, and the idea of conflicts in the movie was elaborately conceived, but the director (also the male leading) Liu Yunlong was not so good at editing, which made the whole movie appeared to be a little lengthy and tedious, somewhat a bit like a literary movie.
The moive was somewhat like a Hong Hong version of "What Women Want", and they both focused on that women were in need of men's appropriate understanding and communication.
The movie was based on the true history: the first high-level anti-corruption case (Liu Qingshan, Zhang Zishan) since 1949 in Mainland China, and this movie was made to warn the present officials or official candidates. However, in fact, the warning may be no effective unless the political institution transformed. When we explored the history of that era, we found that it was true that Liu, Qingshan and Zhang, Zishan corrupted, but they did not have to be killed; the real reason of their killing kept mysterious and not known.
Garfield was probably the best known cat in the world by far; it was fat, gluttonous, lazy, yet very funny. The movie followed the consistent style of Garfiled cartoon. More than just being funny, Garfiled started to correct its error after finding it had made mistakes.
In "Meet the Parents", we had found that the male role and his father-in-law just reached a simple compromise to each other. Therefore, as expected, in this movie the sequel, it was not surprising to see the conflicts broke out, and this time it was the conflicts between the open-minded bridegroom's parents and the conservative bride's parents. But fortunately, everyone was communicable and finally we saw the happy ending. Moreover, this time it was the bride's father who had been changed.
Performance impression:
Director: Jay Roach
Stars: Robert De Niro, Ben Stiller, Dustin Hoffman, Barbra Streisand, Blythe Danner, Teri Polo, Owen Wilson
How many people can be encouragd to smile facing the danger in concentration camps? Let's make it further, in fact, everyone of us could be down in his/her own life, whether it was concentration camps or other tragedies, or other posibilities. The point was: can you always maintain to be highly enthusiastic facing your life? what's more, can you affect positively the people around you, and make them to face their lives as enthusiactically as you would be?
The theme of the story was anti-fascist, but the philosophy inside was applicable to everyone.
This was one of PTU series. The PTU series was a series of movies on describing police people through their daily life. PTU was certainly the most elite part among the whole police, yet, they were also normal people without the uniforms. They had their own weaknesses, their emotional problems, their trust and their suspicion. When they were stressful or under large pressure, they may probably break rules.
Well, perhaps only in Hong Kong, or other places where there were democratic balances, would the serious works about the consideration on the police force.
This was a typical one of Sammo Hung's works. The background of story was about the contemporary situation of Vietnam War. The story's type was the typically (a group of) hero mode. The shining point of the movie was that there were so many movie stars in it, almost including all of the action performers at that time.
The movie was a Hong Kong ancient-costumed light comedy. Mr. Lun Wenxu was a real historical well-known person, but the movie just took him as a clue to string several gimmicks and jokes.
A show on ancient Greek mythology tales. It seemed that the movie tried to tell a human-orientated story on human beings (even a human with Zeus‘s blood) finally defeating gods. However, ironically, the audience would found that human beings were actually involved into the struggles among gods and just be regarded as tools only, and gods finally defeated one another.
Returned Shrek! At this time it seemed Dreamworks took the way of Disney: it started to discuss the family life and mid-life crisis; of course, as the producer who did not like take the routine way, Dreamworks found an unconventional point: if you were tired of your present life, then what if you had NEVER existed?
Having subverted all of the classic tales, Shrek series started to subvert itself and introspected the previous trilogy again. The story had nothing surprising, but it was about the family values, which was so rare in Dreamworks' woks.
Ah, by the way, the story told us: there would be helpful to think it over before signing any contracts.
