By Rex Reed 1/17/12 7:45pm

movies

Bale and Ni Ni.

From The Withered Tree, Flowers of War Bloom

In the dark history of human atrocity, one savage, inhuman chapter that is always missing from the textbooks in courses about the Pacific conflict in World War II is the Rape of Nanking. Except for the occasional documentary, this harrowing event has gone largely unexplored by filmmakers, yet it surges with historic value and the elements of heartbreaking drama. Ask history majors about what the Japanese did to freedom-loving civilians to alter the world and all they know is Pearl Harbor, Bataan and the Death March. Now the great Chinese director Zhang Yimou has made a valiant and compassionate effort to enlighten the ignorant. The Flowers of War is his best film since Raise the Red Lantern. It is emotionally shattering. Read More

By Andrew Sarris 8/13/01 12:00am

Lonely Farmer, 39, With Car, Seeks Lady. Send Photos.

Colin Nutley’s Swedish-made Under the Sun , which received an Academy Award  nomination last year as best foreign film, is

in every way a gentler, simpler and sweeter movie than another highly praised

Scandinavian film, Mifune , which did

not. From a screenplay by Mr. Nutley, in collaboration with Johanna Hald and

David Neal, and Read More

By Andrew Sarris 5/28/01 12:00am

Zhang Yimou Romances Us and His New Gong Li

Zhang Yimou’s The Road

Home , from a screenplay by Bao Shi, based on his novel Remembrance , is quite simply the best and most emotionally engaging

film I have seen this year. It has a seemingly naïve idealism and virtue in a

cinematic cosmos drenched with “neo-noir” cynicism and brutality. In some ways,

Read More