Les Feux sauvages

The photography was superbe, grandiose or intimate, always striking. OTOH, I (and my date) was unable to follow the story at all. Perhp[as if I knew more about Chinese geography and social customs it would have made more sense, but as it was it left me with nothing more than a huge dark question mark covering over any thought I might have had about the film, a physical rejection of the sound level of ports of it, but also with a trove of images - both nature, man-made, and of haunting faces that will not soon fade away. The one thing that provided some unity came to me afterward when I thought about the title and realized that the movement of the film is analogous to the tide -- washing out to sea bringing all kinds of things from elegant boats to detritus with it, then flowing back upstream.

This one is the real deal; our esteemed director (all of his projects are foremost "director's films") is one of the greats whom you can discuss in the same breath as Vigo and Varda without puffery.

Jia has a tremendous feel for the Chinese people and is able to capture the textures and rhythms of life there like few others I know. It's this humanity and curiosity, combined with incisive wit and subtle indictment of hypocrisy, that allow him to sidestep censorship of politicized content.

This movie could have been a slight and indulgent scrapbook, but the cast and creative teams--working over an extended schedule to make 'Boyhood' blush--keep the whole thing pitch perfect. Like that earlier milestone film, it's a movie almost without any big moments... and yet there is a vast catharsis that fills in during its latter half.

By the time it gets to the last shot, which I now count among my favorite final shots in cinema history, it achieves a sweeping and yet deeply personal sense of determination in the face of the unknown future we all face. I recommend you see it with a lot of people at a cinema.

A meditation on love and passing time; a woman searches for her lost lover within the rubble of a deconstructed city as well as her own shattered memory, the Three Gorges Dam consumes cities whole just as time swallows people, women sing and dance in joy and hurt, and dreams surface and submerge again. Lives are changing, and we often don't notice.

Utilizing primarily b-roll and outtakes from previous films, Zhang-ke weaves a cerebral and imaginative tale. While I wish the material was all new and put together with more of a cohesive story in mind, I can't deny that Zhang-ke has a magical and mesmerizing touch in all that he does, even in his wandering. Seen at the Toronto International Film Festival.

The most striking thing about this film is seeing the natural aging of the actors, but the collage of the different projects into a single film is rather shaky and risks turning off several people at the start of the film. Several bold choices from the directors, including the use of intertitles and what appear to be images taken from surveillance cameras. When we get to the end of the film, we can be moved and consider this project as a good film, especially with the evolution of the relationship between the two main characters, but the first part prevents us from being very generous for the rating of the work. Good use of music (it's more of a musical film than a dialogue film). Good soundtrack. Good finale.

One of Jia Zhangke's best movies. The best of his works are mainly those documentary-like films with deep reflections on modern China and its ordinary, often invisible people caught in the tide of the country's transformation over the past four decades. I spent over 30 years in China, from 1980s to early 2010s. You may not find dramatic plots in this movie, but many of the scenes reflect what I experienced and witnessed there. This movie feels like a collage, bringing back memories of my life over the past three decades.

Most of the scenes feel both real and surreal from today's perspective-especially when you think about how fast and dramatically Chinese society has evolved, along with how people's lifestyles and mindsets have shifted with the tides of time.