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Reviews
Maður eins og ég (2002)
Great movie -- worth setting time aside to watch
... In the rarely seen Icelandic movie A Man Like Me, the audience will laugh out loud amid the breakdown and aftermath of the relationship. The 2002 film is director Robert Douglas's most commercially successful. He also met his future wife, a Chinese-born woman, on the set. But the film is refreshingly free of Orientalist clichés, perhaps because the leading woman's character was originally conceived as a Pole. Douglas tells the Global Times that filmmakers decided to cast the role with a Hong Kong actress Stephanie Che so could widen the commercial appeal of the film. Douglas said they also wanted to visit a more exotic location than Poland. In the opening scene, the main character reveals on a televised dating show that his longest ever relationship ended after just three months when he found a used prophylactic in his bed. The waitresses at his regular Chinese restaurant where he often eats tease him about being famous. Júlli agrees to help paint the house of the main love interest, Qi, and he meets her daughter. A montage of syrupy moments backed by a romantic songs shows the couple falling in love. This scene is a homage to cheesy Hong Kong romantic comedies, Douglas says. Júlli asks Qi to marry him, and in a twist, she says no, asking him if he thinks she needs a visa. Júlli is devastated, and the two stop talking. To cheer up, Júlli quits his job, gets a new haircut and clothes, and starts selling a health supplement as part of a pyramid scheme. He fails miserably. The only customer is his father, a musician with a single hit record twenty years before that won a "Silver Cassette" for selling 2,500 copies. The father dreams of representing Iceland in the annual Eurovision music contest. Qi returns to China to care for her sick mother, and Júlli follows, intending to profess his love for her. When he arrives at her village in Guangdong, he sees her with her ex-husband, and returns home in despair. The film ends with Júlli and Qi having a chance meeting. They have a pleasant formal conversation, and promise to meet again for coffee. Neither of them acknowledge the fact that she is many months pregnant. Júlli's father, meanwhile, gets rich selling the nutritional supplement to U.S. soldiers based in Iceland and has a second rise to fame, representing Iceland in the Eurovision competition.... A Man Like Me is the precise kind of film that people attend independent screenings to see – intelligent, funny, movie, and unknown to most people outside of Iceland, where it was a money-making hit....
Di dao zhan (1965)
Classic and entertaining Chinese propaganda film, loved by Chinese today.
Chinese villagers try to defend against marauding Japanese troops by building a network of tunnels in their villages.
It doesn't work.
So the villagers use intelligence and teamwork to prepare for a second attack...
This film is a favorite of many Chinese today.
Most have seen it in schools or on TV.
The subtitles are pretty good compared to those on other films from this era.
This works not only as an entertaining war movie but a glimpse in another era and mindset.
Nihon chinbotsu (2006)
Japan Stinks
First off, this is the worst movie I've ever seen. That may make you want to see it, but it is not bad in a good way. It's boring, implausible, poorly shot, ridiculously scripted, and lacking in cool disaster effects.
Worse, it is intensely patriotic without a trace of irony or fun, wallowing in a sense of Japanese uniqueness and victimhood. Everyone abandons the Japanese in their hour of need. Particularly the Koreans. The most noble characters choose seppaku -- going down with their ship as their beloved island sinks. "Only Japanese would think this way," says the prime minister.
If this movie in any way reflects the Japanese opinion of their place in world opinion, the first thing they should do to rectify the problem is stop making movies like this.
American Soldiers (2005)
U.S. soldiers try to save wounded sergeant and learn futility of war in a series of symbolic encounters in Iraq
Anyone making a movie like this has a point of view, and it was interesting to try to figure out what the message of it was going to be. As the soldiers nobly face a series of obstacles that symbolize the problems the U.S. faces in Iraq, that point of view emerges -- this is all for nothing. The film starts out as if it is going to be a realistic re-enactment of a day in Iraq, but the encounters become more and more symbolic and far-fetched as it goes along, including accidentally happening upon a secret CIA torture camp and killing the enemy in a mass knife fight because they are out of ammunition and the U.S. forces are out gunned. Could be an interesting film to provoke a conversation with someone who is pro-war.