Glimmerubro It is not deep, but it is fun to watch. It does have a bit more of an edge to it than other similar films.

WillSushyMedia This movie was so-so. It had it's moments, but wasn't the greatest.

KnotStronger This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

Darin One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

GusF Unleashed on the unsuspecting English speaking world under the title "Lost in Beijing", this is a truly abysmal film. I really hated it. No, I didn't just hate. I utterly despised it. This is the first film that I have seen in Mandarin and the first entirely in a non-European language so that was interesting, which is certainly a great deal more than can be said for the film itself. The film's co-writer and director Li Yu is one of the few women to perform either function in the Chinese film industry. That's quite impressive. However, I would have been significantly more impressed with that accomplishment if she had any talent. I'm a big believer in assigning blame where blame is due so I should say that Fang Li was the other person responsible - and I use that word deliberately - for this blight on cinema. The "script" is absolutely appalling and not one moment of it comes close to resembling reality.The numerous sex scenes and its pronounced anti-government tone ran afoul of the Chinese censors which led to the film being banned in its native country, albeit after it had already been released in a heavily edited fashion. I'm very much against banning films or any other work in principle but I could have lived with having never seen this film. I found parts of it very offensive, not the aforementioned sex scenes but the often incredibly tasteless treatment of the subject matter. Other parts of it seemed like they had been written by a 15-year-old boy who had seen one too many pornos. If cinema were food, this film would be food poisoning. I assume that the Mandarin dialogue was translated accurately, even if it wasn't transcribed accurately since the person who wrote the English subtitles had clearly never heard of a full stop. The dialogue was pathetic but I would not be surprised if it gained something in translation. I would certainly not be averse to watching another film in Mandarin. This film showed me that making absolutely dreadful films is not the soul purview of the English speaking world. That's something, I suppose.The film stars Fan Bingbing in a mediocre but...well, no mediocre performance as Liu Pingguo, a young woman from a poor province who has migrated to Beijing with her idiot husband An Kun, played badly by Tong Dawei. She works as a foot masseuse at the massage parlour Golden Basin. One night after a party, she is raped by her boss Lin Dong, played in a rather good performance by Tony Leung Ka-fai. By an astonishing coincidence, at that exact moment, An Kun just so happens to be washing that exact window and witnesses the rape. That night, he has sex with Pingguo while saying, "Did he ¤¤¤¤ you like this?" Irrespective of how it was intended, it came across as marital rape. An Kun then decides to blackmail Lin Dong for 20,000 yuan. He later visits the rapist's wife Wang Lei, played by Elaine Jin in the film's best performance, and she suggests that they have sex to even the score. She takes the fact that her husband is a rapist in her stride, expressing no shock or sympathy for his victim. The plot, such as it is, is a powerful repellent against logic, common sense and common decency.This unconvincing and sordid melodrama gets even more complicated when Pingguo learns that she is pregnant and that either Lin Dong or An Kun could be the father. Given that Wang Lei is infertile, the two couples come to an arrangement: Lin Dong will give Pingguo and An Kun 100,000 yuan if the baby is his whereas they will receive nothing if the baby is An Kun's. This part of the film devolves into what I assume was intended to be funny. This part of the film was basically a black comedy involving a rapist, his victim and their respective spouses who are having an affair to make up for the rape. Classy. As it turns out, An Kun is the father but he bribes the doctor into falsifying the blood test results so that Lin Dong thinks that the child is his. Pingguo and An Kun move in with Lin Dong and An Kun with Pingguo pretending to be her son's nanny. In an entirely unbelievable development, Pingguo becomes quite fond of Lin Dong. Eventually, he discovers that he is not the child's father and he breaks down crying while sad music plays in the background. Boo bloody hoo. It boggles the mind that this scene, the worst of a very bad bunch, was included. I was infuriated, disgusted and offended that I or anyone else was expected to feel sympathy for a rapist because the woman that he raped had a child that wasn't his. It's contemptible. Even thinking about the scene makes my skin crawl.Overall, I was not a fan of this film. If this does not turn out to be my least favourite film of 2016, I may give up on films altogether. Actually, I may give up on humanity altogether, move into the mountains and spend the rest of my hopefully very long life communing with nature. I only finished watching it because I made myself a promise that I would finish each and every film no matter what and there was certainly a lot of "what" on this occasion. Or maybe it was because I practiced self- flagellation in a previous life. As I was loaned a copy of the film on DVD, I didn't have to pay a cent for it but I still feel like asking for my money back. I would rather have dysentery than watch this again.

mothnm A lower class, working, married woman gets pregnant with lots of plot twists, money, moral dilemmas and human intrigue. If a travelogue/vocabulary brush up is your motive for watching there are some shots of Beijing looking bleak in winter, Tienamen Square, and the Forbidden City in the background during a conversation. My food-traveler mother wanted to know if there was food. With the key character being a pregnant female, she's eating all the time. If low-grade, sordid, masseuse/hooker scenes are what you seek, quit watching after the early drunken rape by boss scene. Otherwise that cutoff point is where you will quit watching, disgusted, wondering why the film wasn't cataloged as porn, but it is also exactly when the film gets interesting and stays interesting to the end. I started cleaning the kitchen at that point but checked in on the film running in the background just in case it redeemed itself. It did redeem itself, and turned out to be captivating.

barlenon The story itself seems unlikely, starting when An Kun, a city migrant working as window cleaner, by chance witnesses Liu Pingguo, his wife, being raped by her boss, Lin Dong, the sleazy owner of a massage parlor. Seeing an opportunity, An Kun goes to Lin Dong for hush money. When he refuses, An Kun reveals everything to Lin Dong's wife, Wang Mei. Wang Mei is upset but not surprised at her husband's actions and tells An Kun he will never get the money. However, as a form of compensation, she offers to have sex with An Kun and they start an affair. These two couples are brought closer together when Pingguo becomes pregnant and there is uncertainty about who the father is. Since Lin Dong desperately wants a son, he now willingly offers compensation. An Kun accepts the money but becomes increasingly uncertain of his decision to give up the child.As farcical as this plot may seem, everything is handled in a realistic way. Even the story in some way represents the common dilemmas faced by immigrants to the big city. Personalities are nuanced. Characters are neither wholly abusive and evil nor passive and innocent. Every detail in the environment is authentic, modern China. The acting, and cinematography are brilliant. Beijing is remorseless, cold and bleak. The city provides opportunity and wealth but not without cost. Broadly speaking, this film is a social commentary about greed and desire and elusive satisfaction of modern life.

clerk123321 Ping Guo is a gem of a movie! I've been watching a lot of Chinese movies recently, but Ping Guo is one of the best of the bunch.The story is about two couples intertwined due to unlucky circumstances, but most of them in their hands. During the movie, a very harsh and very real light is shed on the difference between poor and rich in modern Beijing and it will leave your mind thinking about it long after the movie is over. This is a very good thing - in my opinion movies are supposed to make you think, supposed to move you. Ping Guo did just that and is worthy of watching for everyone who isn't afraid of foreign movies and who is willing to look at something else than popcorn Hollywood.This movie will keep you entertained for nearly two hours and will make you want for more movies of this director. And that's a very good thing!