Road Home

Pros: An endearing love story directed with sensitivity; ample opportunity to oogle the inimitable Zhang Ziyi
Cons: May be experienced as cloying by those with low tolerance for sentimental romantic fables

I like to see a director stretch his horizons and take chances – just as I myself sometimes choose to watch a film that lies outside my usual range of film preferences – such as a horror film. When a director takes such a chance, I don't want to ...

Pros: Stirring performances by Zhang Ziyi and Zhao Yuelin. Lush, evocative landscapes.
Cons: See Di run. See Di hide. See Di cry. You get the picture.

Despite the seemingly innocuous nature of Zhang Yimou's The Road Home, this film will probably generate much debate among its viewers. It is a love-it-or-hate-it film. Those who have seen it usually fall squarely into one of two camps. Either...

Pros: Gorgeous scenery, authentic peasant-types, change of seasons, emotive female faces, stone-hard male types
Cons: Swallow whole the unlikeliness - a fairy-talish unreality, slow-dragging scenes, too few mudcovered villagers

In 1958 China, a city-trained male teacher is desperate for work. He signs up on a street corner for a rural village position. How likely is this? China in the 1950's was a dictatorial and struggling country. Any city boy with his wits about him ...

Pros: Simple, effective story; superb photography; the great Zhang Ziyi
Cons: No full frontal nudity

The great Chinese director Zhang Yimou has long been tolling outside the Hollywood precipice that embraced John Woo, but somehow I don't think he'll ever board the ferry to our mucky waters (Let's wait until "Hero" opens). And film enthusiasts should...

Pros: Looks great, and so does Zhang Ziyi
Cons: It's kind of a snooze in its lyricism

The pictures do the talking in The Road Home; it is like Zhang's last film, Not One Less, without the pretence of docudrama. There's almost no way to discuss it except to gawk verbally, which isn't a shame exactly (the world can always use...

Pros: Graceful simplicity in its theme, motifs, acting, and cinematography
Cons: May be a little to simple for some (slow moving?) but not for me!

This film tells the story of a road, a road that serves a different purpose each time we view it, but always leads to the same destination-- a simple, comfortable place we all call "home."

Home is rural China for Di and her blind, elderly...

Pros: Beautifully Shot, Well acted, good characters
Cons: Predictable, somewhat bland overall

First off, my rating is based on the fact that I'm viewing this as a cultural experience. If rated as an American film, this probably would have been a 1 1/2 stars. Being that it is a Chinese film, I feel judging it by the exact same standards...

Pros: Beautiful in every sense of the word.
Cons: The simplicity of the story may not prove to everyone's liking.

Love is eternal, allowing nothing to stand in its way.

In the above aphorism lies the basic philosophy of Zhang Yimou's
The Road Home , a film that perhaps defines the classic love
story. Tender and exquisite, it makes full...

Pros: Brilliant performance by Zhang Ziyi
Cons: Tear jerker - bring kleenex

This sparsely simple but elegantly made film will take you places your heart has never gone before. Set in the primitive hinterland of rural China, it is a flashback movie that introduces an old widow making unreasonable demands on her modern son who...

Pros: Wonderful direction and cinematography. A simple yet touching story.
Cons: None.

I have always been a fan of Zhang Yimou since he marvelously made Raise the Red Lantern in 1991. Of course, Zhang went on to make my personal favorite and the theatrical masterpiece, To Live in 1994, which about sums up the...

Pros: pretty, charming, quaint, idealistic
Cons: super syrupy and sentimental at times, laden with slow-mo

The Road Home begins after the death of Luo, the father of the voice over character who goes to visit his newly widowed mother in rural China and assist with the funeral. Complicating the funeral is the mother Di’s request that Luo receive a traditional...

Pros: great performances, story, etc.
Cons: none

This is a film which reminds me of an old Western film. The film starts in black and white when Chinese businessman Luo Yusheng(Sun Honglei) goes back to his village to arrange his father's funeral. His mother wants his father's coffin be brought back on...

Pros: Wonderful love story, looks at the changing place of family. Lyrical photography. Haunting music.
Cons: Not for the cynical. Women, don't watch this in eye makeup that runs.

My husband and I watched this together. We were blown away. It is the only love story either of us can remember seeing that made us want to call and thank our parents. This film is two love stories, one nested inside the other. We loved them both....

Pros: Stunning sound work
Cons: none

This is a beautiful movie, but above all its excellent features shines its sound work in DVD version. Its absolutely stunning. The vast majority of today's Hollywood movies are in fact mono, despite the claims about Dolby Digital. The content (dialogs...