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Knight of Cups (2015)
Not bad for an experimental film, might be better to warn the audience first
This film genre isn't really made to make complete sense, usually not even shown to the mainstream audiences. Maybe this one got a slightly larger budget and some famous stars so they wanted to grab a lit money for it.
To an audience who is used to watching video art this movie is actually quite enjoyable (not saying being enjoyable is always a good thing in the art world). From briefly looking at other reviews it seems like a lot of people got the wrong idea about what a film like this should be like. So please know what u r expecting before u start so it won't be a huge disappointment (u can simply look up experimental film on Google)
Gui lai (2014)
It's hard to explain, but I will try...
The film contains absolutely minimum information about the dark side of the cultural revolution,which the books was all about. If you want to know more about that history, try read some books or some foreign documentaries, because a commercial movie that reveals those will never be released in mainland China and probably wouldn't even be finished, especially from a highly influential director like Zhang.
The brilliant side of Zhang, is that if you know enough about that time period, none of those ugly facts that this movie missed needs to be described. The novel was fictional anyways, it is a reflection and a look at that ugly truth from a narrow but interesting angle. But Zhang didn't want the film to be about that. He chose only the last 20-30 pages of the book, beautifully painted out a love story of that generation, and stopped there.
It is like a rotten apple covered with nice tasty chocolate, you take a tiny bite, you see a little bit of what's under and realize it is bad, but then you still tries carefully licking only the chocolate cover, without touching or even thinking about the ugly inside, and by the time you finish you will still remember mostly the nice tasty part of the story.
If it is the ugly inside you are looking for, if you want to know how bad did it get during that time. Like mentioned earlier, go read the novel or look for other documentaries. Born well after that time period, even I can't bare the pain sometimes when I hear stories of that period. So thank you Zhang, for making some warm memories, and something not too bitter to chew with.