This week’s movies offers quite a lot of diversity and not only within the film crew but also concerning the stories. The Cutthroat Island director Renny Harlin continues his film career in China with a thriller taking place during Christmas eve. Sounds familiar? With little resemblance to Die Hard 2 his new movie Bodies at […]
Author: Linus Fredriksson
Monster Mayhem 《异兽来袭》(Chen Haifan, 2017)
An UFO lands in a mountain area close to a skiing resort. The resort is almost abandoned due to the arrival of the summer. A caretaker of the resort has guests at his place but very soon the summer paradise becomes a hunting ground for the alien monster that arrived with the UFO but egoistic […]
Shanghai Fortress 《上海堡垒》
Some time ago I wrote about the film Shanghai Fortress on Instagram (sinoscifi). With the premier of Frant Gwos “The Wandering Earth” a trailer for the film was also shown before the film. At this moment “The Wandering Earth” has made more than 3,5 billion yuan and its only a matter of time before it […]
The Spring Festival Films
The Spring Festival (also called the Lunar New Year and sometimes the Chinese New Year), has for some years now been a period when Chinese films got to dominate the box-office without the interference of foreign films (though not completely free from foreigners). Not only does Chinese films dominate because of the more obvious reason […]
Animal World 《动物世界》(Han Yan, 2018)
Zheng Kaisi (played by Li Yifeng) suffers from some sort of mental delusion which is being activated whenever he feels strong emotions. When activated he sees himself as a clown and all threats around him turn into ferocious monsters. On top of this Zheng is working a job with a low wage and has medical […]
Passengers (Morten Tyldum, 2016)
I Morten Tyldums Passengers blandas intergalaktisk nybyggarromantik med en inte helt oproblematisk hyllning till tvåsamheten. I det hypertekniska rymdskeppet Avalon färdas Jim Preston och Aurora Lane, samt cirka 5000 passagerare till, mot den privatägda planeten Homestead II där de ska börja sitt nya liv. I en resa som ska ta 120 år vaknar Jim och […]
The Secret of Immortal Code 《伊阿索密码》(Li Wei & Zhang Nan, 2018)
Any cinema goer who is slightly familiar with Blade Runner and Alien will quickly see that director Li Wei (李伟) and Zhang Nan (张楠) has taken many of the film themes from these two science fiction classics. Lacking in both suspense, fear and angst of solitude and isolation, and a believable desolate dystopian world The […]
Guns and Roses 《黄金大劫案》(Ning Hao, 2012)
Original title: 《黄金打劫案》 English title: Guns and Roses Director: Ning Hao (宁浩) Starring: Lei Jiayin (雷佳音), Tao Hong (陶虹), Yamasaki Keiichi (山崎敬一), Fan Wei (范伟). The local street thug Xiao Dongbei (小东北) suddenly becomes entwined in a great heist after receiving detailed plans for the route of an armored transport carrying 8 tons of gold. With […]
Domestic Film Premiers in China – 15 december
Do you remember the film about the model worker Guo Mingyi (郭明义)? He got about 21 million followers on Chinese social media Weibo where he spreads love, empathy and communist rhetoric in a way that Lei Feng would have admired. You don’t remember that movie? It made a modest 20 million RMB on the box-office […]
Domestic Film Premiers in China – 1 December
This is my first attempt to have a weekly update of Chinese films that has recently premiered in China. I’m already a bit late with this one but in the future I will try to post an update on Chinese film premiers every Friday. The post excludes foreign films so therefore there isn’t any information […]