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jinalbert
Reviews
Chen shui de qing chun (2007)
Visually pleasing but still lacking on the story.
There are not too many Taiwanese movies that I have watched, but this happened to be one of them. The most obvious clue is the speech, which is either a Taiwanese accent or another Chinese dialect. Anyway, that is beside the point.
The good things about this movie have to the vivid color(probably shot in high definition camera), the creative camera angle(there are several good shots, but it is overdone at time), and the visual effect during the text sequences. There are some subtleness in the movie that usually gets interpreted during the text portion; however, unlike the movie itself, the interpretation is just too plain and straight to the point. Kind of ruin the flow of the movie, if you ask me. The actor and actress are not overly attractive in the movie, which seems to fit the environment pretty well. The nerdy glasses are pretty stereotypical though.
Now, the bad parts. The story is dramatic-less and mysterious-less. This is not necessary a bad thing, because I have seen few great movies with barely any plot. The idea for this movie is good, but the execution of this movie is not. Certain sequences are quite charming, but a bit too long. Some parts are a bit too short, and could have just been left out. Some of the text sequences don't add any value, and ended up disrupting the flow of the movie.
In summary, an okay movie with great cinematography.
Kanaria (2004)
A decent film
Every once in a while I across this type of Japanese film. It's a bit like David Copperfield, but with a bunch of flawed characters. The main actor is a boy who was taken out from the cult, and being placed in a foster home. However, he decided to escape in order to find his younger sister in Tokyo. Along the way, a runaway girl that hangs out with older men for money decided to help him. So what do you get when a cult-minded boy travels with a realistic tough girl? An interesting film about people with bad decisions, and a society filled with selfish desires.
Also, it's worth mentioning the main leads act pretty well. I have seen many Japanese kids bad acting... but they convince me in this movie.