Film Fresh’s ever-growing collection boasts a number of films from around the world (subtitles included!). Today, we’d like to highlight 3 fantastic films from China that have been hailed by critics from Hong Kong to New York:

KUNG FU HUSTLE 

Directed, Produced & Starring Stephen Chow
When Roger Ebert first saw the action-comedy KUNG FU HUSTLE at Sundance 5 years ago, he described it as "Jackie Chan and Buster Keaton meet Quentin Tarantino and Bugs Bunny". The film went on to receive the award for Best Picture at the 2005 Hong Kong Film Awards, was nominated for Best Foreign Language film at the 2006 Golden Globes, and received a 90% approval rating on the website Rotten Tomatoes. Fans of this film have expressed their admiration for its “cartoon” style and use of traditional Chinese music, which accompanies zany kung fu showdowns and dance sequences. Other critics described KUNG FU HUSTLE as a comedic yet equally captivating version of CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON.

The charming, manipulative prostitute of Zhang Yimou's
SHANGHAI TRIAD.

SHANGHAI TRIAD
Directed by Zhang Yimou

Jack Matthews from NEWSDAY says, "From the glowing artifice and warm surfaces of chic Shanghai to the natural blues and greens of the misty countryside where the tale leads, it is, in the truest sense, poetry in motion." This film follows a beautiful prostitute, who is used as bait between feuding ganglords in 1930’s Shanghai. Janet Maslin of the New York Times expressed her initial reservations that this film would merely use the cliched genre of the "gangster film.” Nevertheless, as she writes, the film "movingly affirms the magnitude of [Zhang Yimou's] storytelling power.” Poetry in motion, indeed.

THE WOODEN MAN’S BRIDE

Directed by the fifth generation filmmaker Huang Jianxin
Hal Hinson of the WASHINGTON POST calls this film “the most visually stunning, emotionally powerful western since Clint Eastwood's UNFORGIVEN" (more). The story revolves around a young woman who is kidnapped on the way to her wedding, and her fiancé is killed while trying to rescue her. What ensues is a shocking and tragic tale of a woman’s oppression. As Stephen Holden of THE NEW YORK TIMES describes, the film is a "methodical, cool-headed expose of an
oppressive sexual code that treats women as chattel and metes out
brutal punishment to violators" (more).