Li Bin Movies
A young man from rural China struggles to make good in Beijing in this drama, which suggests an updated and relocated variation on the neorealist classic Ladri di Biciclette. Guei (Cui Lin) is a teenager who arrives in the big city looking for work; he and a handful of other youngsters are hired as bicycle messengers, with their employer giving them new mountain bikes under the condition that they're paid ten yuan for each message they deliver, and the bicycles are theirs once they've made 58 trips. Guei discovers the job is not an easy one, as he deals with the complexity of the huge city, confusion over who gets what message, and the condescending attitude Beijing residents often display toward the new arrivals. Guei is determined to make good and is close to owning his bike when it's stolen; Guei's boss tells him the only way he can keep is job is if he can find the bicycle, which, in a city the size of Beijing, is no easy task. Against all odds, Guei finds the bicycle, but it's now in the hands of Jian (Li Bin), who claims he got it at a second-hand shop and isn't about to give it up. Guei steals the bike back from Jian, but now has to deal with the teenaged tough and his roughneck friends. Shiqisuide Danche was produced as part of a series of films from young Chinese directors called "Tales of Three Cities," co-produced by French and Taiwanese companies. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi
Chinese director Wang Xiaoshuai crafts his pensive study of life in modern China concerning a couple who are confronted with love, responsibility, morality, and loyalty after their relationship fails and their young daughter falls ill. Years ago, Mei Zhu and Xiao Lu were a happily married couple with a beautiful daughter named Hehe. But the marriage ultimately failed, and the pair ultimately parted ways. Years later, Mei Zhu and Xiao Lu have both remarried, and Hehe is the only link that still bonds them together. When Hehe is diagnosed with leukemia, the doctors relay that the only hope for the ailing girl is a bone marrow transplant from a healthy sibling. Realizing that Hehe has no siblings, her desperate mother and father are suddenly faced with a life altering decision. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi
- Starring:
- Liu Weiwei, Yu Nan, (more)
- 2003
A beloved -- but unlicensed -- family pet is confiscated by Beijing authorities, leaving its owners scrambling as they attempt to recover the critter before it is set free outside the city limits in director Lu Xuechang's 2003 comedy drama Kala shi tiao gou (Cala, My Dog). Working class patriarch Lao Er (Ge You) is left with a large licensing fee as well as a fine after his wife mistakenly walks their unlicensed family dog Cala. The dog is taken away by the police, leaving the family with a deadline of 18 hours to pay the bill before the dog is cast out of town. As the family income cannot support such an exorbitant sum of money, they resort to other means in order to retrieve the canine -- ranging from attempting to coerce family members with connections into aiding them to convincing a neighbor to pulling a scam on the police with the license for Cala's mother. Cala, My Dog had its first official screening as part of the Forum program for the 2003 Berlin International Film Festival. ~ Ryan Shriver, Rovi
- Starring:
- Ge You, Ding Jiali, (more)
- 2000
- PG
- Add Shadow Magic to Queue
Chinese-born, American-based director Ann Hu debuts with this epic historical drama about the introduction of motion pictures to China during the beginning of the 20th century. The film is based on a true story of Liu Jung (Xia Yu), a Peking photographer who struggles to start a film industry in China in spite of the strong anti-Western sentiment of the time. At the film's outset, Liu Jung is scolded by his autocratic boss Master Ren (Liu Peiqi) for his obsession with Western gizmos after he brings home a junked Victrola. During a photo session with China's most famous opera star, Lord Tan (Li Yusheng), Liu Jung runs into Raymond Wallace (Jared Harris), a mysterious Brit who is hell-bent on introducing movies (called "shadow magic") to the Emperor. As soon as Liu Jung sees his first frame, he is hooked on the medium and committed to Wallace's scheme. This film was screened at the 2000 Sundance Film Festival. ~ Jonathan Crow, Rovi
- Starring:
- Jared Harris, Xia Yu, (more)
- 2005
A young girl living with her family in rural China finds both her father and the rapidly changing times weighing heavily on her dreams in this drama from filmmaker Wang Xiaoshuai. At the dawn of the 1980s, modern sensibilities had reached to the furthest corners of the globe, but previous political obligation had forced some loyal Chinese families to move to remote border provinces in hopes of establishing a stronger line of defense against possible invasion. Qinghong's family was one such family, though her father's growing regret of having uprooted his life for an invasion that never came has been weighing heavily on his conscience. As dreams of returning to Shanghai haunt his sleep, Qinghong's father vows not to let his daughter establish roots in the remote region in hopes that when the time comes, his clan can return to the modern world from which they came so long ago. In his quest to ensure that Qinghong is ready when that time comes, he isolates his daughter by crushing her dreams with poisonous rhetoric and attempting to ensure that her crush on a local boy doesn't have the opportunity to develop into something deeper. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi
- Starring:
- Gao Yuanyuan, Li Bin, (more)
A schizophrenic photographer becomes convinced that he murdered his cheating wife before disposing of her body in a cello case in director Zhang Bingian's blackly comic psychological shocker. As the lines between the conscious and the subconscious gradually begin to blur, madness begins to infect the mind of the deeply disturbed shutterbug (Ge You) who can't quite distinguish reality from fantasy. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi
The tumultuous relationship between a father returning home after years in a labor camp and the nine-year-old son who doesn't quite know what to make of this new man in his life lies at the heart of director Zhang Yang's heartfelt drama addressing the nature of change and the importance of family in Chinese culture. Chairman Mao has died and the Gang of Four have fallen, leaving former painter Gengnian (Sun Haiying) to return home to his wife, Xiuqing (Joan Chen), and the pair's nine-year-old son Xiangyang (Zhang Fan). His hands permanently damaged by the ravages of hard labor, Gengnian cannot return to painting, though his young son has shown an abundance of artistic promise. Troubled by the sudden presence of a father he has never known and rebelling against the path laid before him, Xiangyang ignites a firecracker in his hand in hopes that it may derail his artistic career. In the years that follow, Xiangyang's reputation as a talented artist grows while his relationship with his father remains forever troubled. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi
- Starring:
- Joan Chen, Sun Haiyung, (more)
Tian Zhuangzhuang, a charter member of China's politically beleaguered, so-called Fifth Generation of Directors (along with Ju Dou's Zhang Yimou), made this film about the gradual disintegration of an entire family targeted by Mao's political reformation movements of the '50s and '60s. Told in a series of three stories, the audience sees the little boy Tietou and his mother try and try again to rebuild their lives from the ashes left them by the madness of the era. Director Tian works from a palette of primary colors on widescreen images that are often fixed in an icy-white Kubrickian glare of omnipresent paranoia. Yet much of The Blue Kite is resplendent with palpable signs of ordinary life: noisy kids, happy weddings, loud mealtimes. Tian amplifies the human element of these heady days, so that viewers may genuinely feel the humanity ripped from this story as events overtake and shatter all hope. ~ Tom Keogh, Rovi
- Starring:
- Lu Liping, Pu Quanxin, (more)
A couple with a broken relationship learns some valuable lessons about love, life, and sacrifice in this romantic drama based on a novel by W. Somerset Maugham. It's 1925, and Dr. Walter Fane (Edward Norton) is a physician and bacteriologist who has become smitten with Kitty (Naomi Watts), the beautiful daughter of a wealthy and socially prominent family. Walter proposes marriage to Kitty and she accepts; however, while he clearly loves her, Kitty is more interested in her reputation than Walter's feelings, as she's recently turned 25, an age by which most of her peers have already wed. Kitty and Walter move to Shanghai, where he sets up a practice and she takes a lover, the British Vice Consul Charles Townsend (Liev Schreiber). When Walter learns of his wife's infidelity, he becomes furious, and impulsively volunteers to travel to China to work in a village stricken with a major cholera epidemic. While Walter's actions are meant to punish Kitty rather than reflect his own benevolence, the daily trials of living in a community in crisis have a striking impact on the couple, giving them a new and deeper perspective on their relationship. The Painted Veil is the third screen adaptation of Maugham's best-selling novel of the same name; a 1934 version starred Greta Garbo and Herbert Marshall, while Eleanor Parker and Bill Travers played the leads in a 1957 remake titled The Seventh Sin. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi
- Starring:
- Naomi Watts, Edward Norton, (more)
Following on the heels of director Zhang Yimou's Not One Less (1999), which won the top prize at the 1999 Venice Film Festival, comes this sensitively-wrought portrait of a young woman's unshakable love. The film opens in the present, shot in gritty black and white, as businessman Luo Yusheng (Sun Honglei) returns to his hometown in the rural Hebei province to attend the funeral of his father. When Luo suggests that the coffin should be brought home from the hospital on a tractor, his aging mother Zhao Di (Zhao Yuelin) rebuffs him, insisting that they conform to custom and have it carried home by local men. Later, as Luo recalls his parent's courtship, the film switches to color and travels back in time about 40 years. A young, beautiful Zhao Di (Zhang Ziyi) find herself falling for the village's handsome new teacher Luo Changyu (Zheng Hao). As the males in the village join together to build a school for the burg, Zhao Di helps the other women prepare food, waiting patiently to meet the strapping educator. Just as their romance begins, Luo is suddenly ordered to leave by the Communist authorities. As Luo packs up and leaves the village, Zhao Di races hither and thither carrying his favorite steamed dumplings, hoping to catch him before he departs. Though the odds of reunion seem slim, Zhao Di steadfastly holds vigil for her lover until miraculously, Luo returns under the cover of the night only to be once again ordered to the city where he has been commanded to stay. The pair are forced to wait another two years until they can be together. This film won the prestigious Silver Bear at the 2000 Berlin Film Festival and the World Cinema Audience Award at the 2001 Sundance Film Festival; the victories were all the more sweet for the director, as The Road Home was rejected outright from the 1999 Cannes Film Festival, prompting Zhang to angrily withdraw his Not One Less from competition. ~ Jonathan Crow, Rovi
- Starring:
- Zhang Ziyi
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