Wang Gang Movies
- 2001
A man looking for a job gets a family in return in this low-key drama. Yu Dagnag is a laborer who has just lost his job in a factory, and suddenly finds himself with no income and no immediate way to support himself. While eating at a noodle shop, Yu spies a baby with a note pinned to its clothes; it seems the child's mother is Feng, a streetwalker willing to pay 200 yuan each month to anyone willing to watch her baby while she's earning a living. With no spouse or roommate to bother and few immediate financial prospects, Yu takes Feng up on the offer, telling his puzzled neighbors that the baby is his nephew. Before long, Yu finds that he likes looking after the baby, and Feng finds that she likes her new babysitter; Feng eventually moves in with Yu, and his financial situation brightens when he finds work repairing bicycles. But Side, a criminal whose underworld activities have been curtailed by a bout with leukemia, is interested in claiming the 200 yuan Feng was offering for watching the baby, and when she and Yu refuse to let him have the baby, Side takes matters into his own desperate hands. Anyangde Guer stars Zhu Jie, Sun Guilin, and Yue Senyi; it was written and directed by Wang Chao, and was screened at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival as part of the Directors' Fortnight series. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi
- Starring:
- Zhu Jie
- 1996
This is the final entry in Chinese filmmaker Huang Jian Xin's trilogy of social satires. Like its predecessors Stand Up, Don't Bend Over (1993) and Back to Back, Face to Face (1994), Signal Left, Turn Right offers a gentle (at least, enough to keep the censors at bay) but razor-sharp look at the foibles of those who comprise contemporary Chinese society. The story is set at a Chinese driving school and follows five disparate students and their stern teacher on the road to owning a coveted driver's license. There are few such schools in China and those that do exist are generally run by the military. This school, with "Developing Skilled Drivers for the Nation" as its motto is owned by Li, an army officer and run by staunch Party member Hou, who also works as the school's sole teacher. His class is comprised is the capitalistic and newly wealthy Chai; pretty Cheng Fen, who wants to drive a taxi; long-haired and rebellious and drug addicted young man Mung Bean and finally the class latecomer Yang Wei, an arrogant intellectual from Beijing University. All of the characters and the ways in which they deal with their lessons are deliberately designed (but not unrealistic) stereotypes who represent different factions of contemporary Chinese society. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi
- 1995
This Chinese war drama is set within the cave-riddled hills and valleys of the Chinese-Vietnamese border. The film was actually made in the mid-eighties, but it was banned because authorities perceived that it showed weakness within the Chinese army. The film opens as a group of front-line soldiers are sheltering themselves in a small cave while the Vietnamese shell them. But for a small portable phone, the soldiers have no contact with their troops. Much of the story focuses on the psychological effects of their confinement in the face of unrelenting bombing. Matters do not improve when the water runs out, and the mice and snakes that inhabit the cave appear. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi
Purporting to tell the true story of Japanese medical experiments on the civilian populace of Manchuria during the Sino-Japanese war and towards the end of World War II, this graphic film from director He Chi-Chiang pulls no punches in portraying atrocities in question, most of which historians have confirmed are based for the most part in fact. While the film was one of the first to explore the subjectmatter of what was known as Unit 731, critics have noted that the film's depiction of such unspeakably horrific war crimes is too shocking for the film to deliver any particular message. Highlights include a woman's skin pulled off her bones like gloves, a cat eaten alive by rats, and a frostbitten man's fingers knocked off with a hammer. In the film's most infamous scene, a man is put in a hyperbaric chamber and pressured until his intestine shoots six feet out his rear end in close-up. The story is told from the perspective of some young Japanese recruits doing their part for the war effort. There is one neutral character, a cute youngster, with whom the audience is brought to sympathize -- only to later see him graphically dissected. Controversy over the film has extended beyond its mere portrayal of such cruelty, as its open use of animal cruelty, as well as actual autopsy footage, is unlawful in many countries including the U.S. and China. ~ Robert Firsching, Rovi
- Starring:
- Wang Gang, Mei Zhao Hua, (more)
