Tag: Timmy Xu

REVIEW: Su ren te gong [The Rookies] [2019]

Jared Mobarak

Every battle needs a theme song. I should have known better considering I’ve seen two Alan Yuen films before: a directorial effort in Firestorm that forgets its unwavering severity in the third act to deliver farcical chaos and a screenwriting effort in Monster Hunt wherein the lead is a pregnant man with the salvation of monster-kind cooking in his belly. I should have known the American trailer for his latest work Su ren te gong [The Rookies] was manipulated beyond its desire to pretend Milla Jovovich was its star. While…

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REVIEW: 大鱼海棠 [Dayu haitang] [Big Fish & Begonia] [2016]

Jared Mobarak

Without happiness, what’s the meaning of longevity? In 2004, directors Xuan Liang and Chun Zhang created a Flash animation for an online contest. From there they would expand it into a feature length film steeped in Chinese supernatural legend. And despite some funding snags over its twelve-year production schedule, 大鱼海棠 [Dayu haitang] [Big Fish & Begonia] would ultimately turn its approximately five million-dollar budget (in today’s US dollars) into just shy of one hundred million at the Chinese box office. It’s no surprise then that it would make its way…

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