The Best Challenging Movies to Watch (+Language: Mandarin)
One of the cinema’s most noble roles is to challenge pre-conceived perceptions and tackle difficult questions about humanity and the world. Here are some of the most important and topically challenging movies to stream right now.
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At two hours and nearly 30 minutes, Stonewalling is quite long. The third film from spouses Ryuji Otsuka and Huang Ji takes place in slow, slice-of-life moments, centered around a female lead that mostly doesn’t actively make choices for her own life, so it can feel frustrating to watch. But as the film unfolds, Lynn’s […]
At the fringes of society, sometimes, all you have is your family. You would do all you can to feed, clothe, and protect them, and your fate hangs in the balance of what they do in return. Abang Adik is centered on two undocumented orphans in Malaysia, and because they only have each other, Abang […]
Focusing on the personal over the global, 76 Days serves as a valuable reminder for generations to come, of the catastrophic human cost of a pandemic. The film’s directors (including one or more filmmakers who have had to keep themselves anonymous) take an entirely boots-on-the-ground approach in Wuhan, China. Together they find both humanity and […]
If all live-action superhero media stopped here, it would’ve been a triumphant conclusion. Carving its own path from the subversive Alan Moore classic and still so much gutsier than most superhero films and TV shows, Damon Lindelof’s Watchmen miniseries continues interrogating the idea of powerful masked vigilantes to explore institutionalized racism, America’s history of anti-Black […]
China implemented the one-child policy in the 1980s in order to curb the population growth, ending it by 2015 due to the shifting dependency ratio. So Long, My Son depicts two families while the policy was implemented, alternating between past and present to depict how the fickle finger of fate changed their destinies in a […]
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Can the Western only be made in the West? The Italians answered with the Spaghetti Western, and in 2010, China came up with their own gunslinging, horse riding group of gangsters in Let the Bullets Fly. It feels just like an old fashioned Western in Old China, only with quips as fast as its bullets, […]
If there’s one thing to say about House of Flying Daggers, it’s that it’s absolutely, absurdly, downright beautiful. The sets are lavishly designed, the landscapes are gorgeous, the colorful costumes are elaborately embroidered, the fight and dance choreography are breathtaking, every shot is colorful, and even the three leads in the love triangle are some […]
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During wartime, war supersedes everything, including love. Wartime would have people ending relationships, forgoing potential dates, and seducing enemies to lead them to downfall, all in order to win, but sometimes, this rarely goes as planned. Lust, Caution is one such story, with the novella’s emotional repression making it a great match for director Ang […]
Like many of Edward Yang’s films, The Terrorizers examines Taiwan’s urbanized society, but this time, it’s centered around the rougher side of town, where a shooting incident connects the lives of three couples. At first, the scenes don’t make much sense, as the film rapidly shifts from couple to couple without explanation, and the sequence […]