Truly Dreadful Film

Lack of good storyline.

Fanciful, disturbing, and wildly original, it announces the arrival of a fresh, bold voice in American cinema.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

This is certainly not a perfect movie, but 5 stars out of 10?!? its more a 6-7. The movie had humor and love and well it was typically Chinese in that there is no real happiness possible on earth for true love and only in death can you be together. But there is also a deeper message, can you love some enough that you would die for her or him, love some one enough that you would sacrifice your love, your memory of them to save them.I know I have never loved anyone like this, and never will. For seeing a glimpse of this magical fairy tale love, which is so powerful that not fulfilling it is an agony beyond description, that it turns one's hair white in an instant and that this love is so mighty that it will even conquer the forgetful mind, in a way it even conquers reality/death, since it shows the lovers ascending into the stars at the end, as if they have left the earth forever and went to a place were dreams are eternal.I love this kind of bullshit. Because we humans do not love like this, we love in many ways, we will even die for love etc. die for our children but rarely does a man or woman follow love with out question. And maybe we shouldn't since it can lead to madness and ruin and suffering without end, discarding all reason as we stalk the one we crave who wants to know nothing about us, but maybe that is not even love. I don't know and I won't ever know. But to believe that some one, somewhere out there has felt such a thing is joy enough to give this movie a 10 (even though it's more of a 6 on a rainy day). I hope no one feels offended by my sentimental bullshit.

An epic alike Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon this movie is not.,,,,,,,,,,,,,, Unless you know a bit about Chinese history you are not going to know much about what is happening as the scenes and characters seem to go from one place to the next without much explanation and everything becomes a blur of narrative. There is obviously an overriding love theme in the movie but this is a major distraction from the flow - the story seems to go really fast until slow, "un-natural" and rather boring scenes of romance between the two leads. The Good - Some of the fighting scenes are done well but there are not too many of those. The Bad - The romance between the leads is quite mechanical and not very believable. The Ugly - Someone got the scissors out too many times especially at the start of the movie-making you wonder what is ultimately happening. Then suddenly someone is giving someone red pills......wait am I watching "The Matrix"The CGI is particularly awful at the last scene - which at a supposedly emotional moment I laughed my heart out. Those who watch will no doubt do the same.

"The White Haired Witch of Lunar Kingdom" is based on "Baifa Monü Zhuan", a novel by Liang Yusheng. The story resulted in several previous films, but I have not seen any of them, so I cannot compare this new version with the old. However, I assume that these earlier films are more watchable, as they wouldn't have relied so heavily on CGI and wire stunt work--something which actually seemed to detract from my enjoying the movie. In other words, there were so many crazy stunts and magical happenings that the story itself seemed secondary--especially the crucial romance between the two main characters.The story begins in the late Ming Dynasty in China. The country is beset by foreign invaders as well as disloyal schemers within the government. However, to hide their scheming, the plotters have implicated Jade in the assassination of a governor. This is complicated because the witch, Jade, has fallen in love with Zhuo Yihang--the man who is the governor's grandson! So, Zhuo is torn between his love for her and his loyalty to the emperor-- and, for a while, he pretends to believe that Jade is responsible for the killing and no longer loves her. What is to become of the pair? See the film...though I wouldn't rush to do so. There's MUCH more to the story than this...but frankly I had a hard time following the film. Much of this is because I found my attention span drifting often through the course of the movie. Why did I find myself so uninvolved with the film? Well, it all goes back to the CGI. Too often, the director focused on stunts instead of the story. The important romance seemed to take a back seat to cool slow-motion arrows, 'wire fu' stunts (where the various characters fly about as if by magic--much like you saw in Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon) and an overly complicated story. The bottom line is that I have seen many Chinese epics that were satisfying and enjoyable from start to finish. This one, in contrast, left me feeling a bit disappointed and confused.

Hong Kong movie director, producer and screenwriter Jacob Cheung probably does not believe in churning out productions like a factory line, considering his sparse filmography. However, whenever the 54 year old filmmaker directs a movie, it is something we'd enjoy. His credits include A Battle of Wits (2006), which was nominated for Best Director and Best Screenplay at the Golden Bauhinia Awards and Beyond the Sunset (1989), which was a nominee at the 9th Hong Kong Film Awards. Of course, there is the much loved Cageman (1992), which showcased the director's ability to translate human relationships and emotions on the big screen. Cheung's last work was Ticket in 2007, and seven years later, we were very much looking forward to his latest work.But alas, what a letdown and regrettably, a laughable piece of CGIladen movie it is. Maybe this comes with the fact that it is yet another remake of adaptation of Liang Yusheng's classic fantasy novel The Story Of The White Haired Demoness (1957), about a star-crossed love story between a witch-like woman and martial arts expert Zhuo Yihang.The version we are all familiar with is Ronny Yu's 1993 movie The Bride With White Hair, starring Brigitte Lin Ching-hsia and the late Leslie Cheung, which is widely considered a classic of the genre. Here, it is an ironically too messy and overstuffed piece of work that lost our interest 30 minutes or so into the movie.For the uninitiated, the 104 minute movie tells the story of a witch- like woman known as the Jade Raksha (Fan Bingbing) who becomes a wanted criminal after getting framed for the murder of a prominent government official. At the same time, a young man known as Zhuo Yihang (Huang Xiaoming) is framed for the murder of the emperor. The two fugitives meet by chance and fall in love, but when Jade Raksha becomes a prime suspect who is responsible for the murder of Yihang's beloved grandfather, can there still be a happy ending?There are countless scenes boasting expensive CGIeffects, but they are not excuses for the evident lack of chemistry between leads, who despite putting in lots of effort to emote individually, just do not manage to stir any emotions with their supposedly tragic romantic relationship. This is an obvious case of how the industry hopes to bank in on the stars' commanding power in Mainland Chinato earn some quick bucks.It doesn't help that there are several complex palace intrigue and politicking side plots which serve nothing but confuse and dilute the interest levels of viewers. Nope, thefootnotes of character names and relationships superimposed on the side of the screendo not help.The uninspiring screenplay includes the intriguing sub-plot of apolitical marriage of convenience between the male protagonist and the beautiful daughter of a scheming eunuch, amidst other uninteresting story lines. They are jam packed into one movie here, and bythe time the moviereturns to the romantic couple, we can't be bothered to find out about their fate. Even playing Leslie Cheung's heartfelt end credit song doesn't help anymore.