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matthewae86
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Maang taam (2013)
Frankenstein of Mainland China-HK coop film
This review contains minor spoiler
Ok. People outside Greater China need to know that Mainland China has established a quota system on foreign films , which HK production is count as one of them. However, production can bypass this quota by making the film Sino-HK co-production, which requires Mainland China investment as we as casting Mainland Chinese actor and actress. I don't mind the storyline may be censored to fit the regulation of the Central Government, but could the director cast someone that really able to act? The Mainland Chinese actor and actress in this film are pale and looks like a filler.
There is some artistic imagination such as the dance room of Béthanie was CG into urban build up area, but casting Mainland Chinese actor or actress into supposed HK Cantonese speaking role, is odd already, and then sometimes the director even forget to add Cantonese dubbing into that role. So that did he/she in-film character has something wrong to forget he/she mother tongue? I already don't mind the artistic imagination of losing phone coverage in HK, or the mad killer that survived in the wild for many years.
And then for Andy Lau and Sammi. It seems due to the cliff on the supply of talented actor and actress of HK, the film still rely on big cast to carry the whole film. Andy Lau is 50 when this film is released, so that he may still fit the role, but Sammi in her 40, as a sidekick, which her classmate is pregnant in the film, seems way too old . Probably on casting people that age-suitable to the film verse marketing, the director choose marketing, so that the film may commercially successful, but bad at trying to make audience to immense into the story.
Love in the Time of Cholera (2007)
You can't use 120 minute to present a novel that spawn for 50+ years
Whole movie is a train wreck. The novel was about bitter in marriage and a subplot of extramarital companionship , old age as well as intergeneration conflict. I have a version that sold in Australia thus i am not sure its running time is mislabel or censored to 97 minute. But my version did not have the whole father-in-law in exile plot, the conflict with a noble woman that is also the mother-in-law thing, as well as the secret no sex lover of the male character in the leading role (and a lot of his single, but sexist life is gone).
Also the makeup is horrible. It only has middle age makeup for the male character in the leading role for probably 20 to 60, plus a horrible creepy adult look for the age that is suppose to be "young adult", and another makeup for the old age, plus another cast that for the teen age. In some scene the husband of the female character in the leading role (spoiler, which is not the male character in the leading role), looks way younger that the male character in the leading role. And the female character in the leading role, always looks too young despite having old age makeup already. The story need way more stage of makeup for 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70 as well as probably need to cast a real old man for the old man scenes, not just CG the old woman breast on it, the face need to be old.
Midway (2019)
It is not a documentary nor Hollywood boom-boom hero action film
It does not contain spoiler if you read the detailed WWII Pacific theatre history book, but it may surprise you that the film is not actually about Battle of Midway only. Instead, it start with the Pearl Harbour attack and focus on one of the US aircraft carrier on counter attack, the mis-step and so on . Since it is based on real wartime hero, it is not boom-boom Rambo or Ace pilot shoot down 100 aircraft Hollywood production, but instead immense on the story retelling of real time history on those months as US Navy after the Pearl Harbour
Crazy Rich Asians (2018)
It just a drama not documentary, be chill
The film is a fictionalization of Asian tycoon family, which, the city should be placed in Hong Kong instead of Singapore. Or in the near future it should set the cinematic universe in Mainland China. Since it is fictional, the clash of ABC (Western) and Asian with Chinese cultural background, should made more dramatic instead of skin depth stereotype.