Popular reviews

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  Review by chavel ★★★★

  The Road Home is a gentle love story from Chinese filmmaker Zhang Yimou (“Ju Dou,” “House of Flying Daggers”) that is removed from the city, absent of any modern appliances, taking place in relatively faraway lands sometime in the mid-twentieth century. This was the first prominent feature with actress Zhang Ziyi, one of the most easy to photograph women on the planet. She is a farm girl whom sticks to the daily rituals like everybody else in her village, a time when women had their particular duties and men had theirs.

  It begins in present day, when a successful city worker returns to the pastoral countryside to bury his father. The surviving son is strongly versed in economics from his…

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  Review by ButtNugget ★★★★½

  How can a movie made up almost entirely of scenes of Zhang Ziyi in her little red jacket stealing glances at her man and yearning for his return be so downright touching? This one got me good, and I’m beginning to like it more than director Zhang Yimou’s historical epics. There’s some cinema magic here that I can't quite put a finger on. Maybe it’s the frequent, Falconetti-esque closeups of young Ziyi’s face—or perhaps the tranquil shot composition of rural China coupled with a pleasant musical score like something out of a Hayao Miyazaki. A simple yet powerfully moving romantic tale, The Road Home follows a peasant girl who falls in love at first sight with the young teacher of…

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  Review by J ★★★★ 4

  “I’ll come back.”
  “I’ll wait for you.”

  The Road Home has faded into a tint of white and black. the snow falls like ashes from burning tears of mourning. it powders the plains and mountains. the witnesses of the pallor of her face, the blink of her sad eyes, the movement of her head. everywhere has been bereft of colour following the death of her husband. and in this remote Chinese village where she’s lived all her life, and after a long time, she reunites with her son, Yusheng, who comes home from the city. but this is not chiefly about funeral rites or the grieving process. this is a love story.

  like in Red Sorghum, Zhang Yimou uses the…

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  Review by cinema_made ★★★★

  The Road Home, a simple, old-fashioned love story from Hero director Zhang Yimou. For every single second that Zhang Ziyi appeared onscreen, I couldn't help but be enchanted by her presence. There was something so extraordinarily pure and wholly intriguing about her that I couldn't quite put my finger on. But whatever it is, she's got it and it works. However, even though Zhang is unquestionably talented, I suspect that her magnetic performance in The Road Home is not simply the product of fortuitous casting. No, director extraordinary Zhang Yimou knows what he's doing, and one can see a master storyteller at work from the film's very first frame.

  Zhang understands as well as anyone that great cinema is not…

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  Review by Mike D'Angelo ★½

  27/100

  Second viewing, last seen a few months prior to its U.S. theatrical release. (It didn't open here until 2001, so I'd already discovered Zhang Ziyi in Crouching Tiger, though this was actually her big-screen debut.) My reaction then was scathing and I stand by every word, calibrating for my lack of awareness that Zhang Y. was about to give us Hero. A film so nauseatingly inspirational that it actually ends on a shot of someone scampering.

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  Perhaps it's a testament to Zhang Ziyi's range that she's so teeth-grittingly convincing here as a simpering twit, but the fact remains that I spent the vast majority of this insipid ode to romantic devotion longing for Michelle Yeoh to show up…

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  Review by David Conner ★★★

  At first glance, this appears to be a simple, sentimental tale of a very chaste and very uneventful  courtship in a small rural village in China. If you stare at it too long, though, it begins to morph into a cryptic dialogue between Zhang Yimou’s romanticization of Chinese history and James Cameron’s historicization of American romance in Titanic.

  Hear me out. There’s not one, but two bilingual posters for the 1997 global megahit hanging in the mother’s home in the framing scenes. The soundtrack music is shamelessly derivative, featuring a slightly Easternized version of James Horner’s “Hymn of the Sea” which even has a penny whistle tootling out the refrain, in case the melodic similarity wasn’t obvious enough. There’s no Billy…

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  Review by Stephan74 ★★★★ 6

  Sensitive and Dreamy Love Story set in a Mountain Village in 1950's China.
  Staged with a beautiful Backdrop and the matching partly Traditional, partly
  Symphonic Music. And with a very
  Likeable Couple.

  Can Definitely Recommend him.

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  Review by Thomas Fjellum ★★★★

  Zhang Ziyi literally chasing after me just to give me food, is now my new dream in life.

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  Review by Monsieur Flynn ★★★★

  #3 viewing of films in Booky's challenge Actually, all that sounds pretty convincing.

  When it comes to romances, you'd be hard pressed to find a sweeter tale than this one from Zhang Yimou starring Zhang Ziyi, based on Bao Shi's novel 'Remembrance'. End credits in less than 90 minutes, no aim at grandiose elements, and still it's so filled with heart and understanding of a young heart in love, I can't see how anyone would get away from this experience without being charmed.

  It's not a masterpiece, neither Zhang Yimou's best movie nor his best lead actress. The latter is hardly Zhang Ziyi's fault. 1999 was the first year Yimou directed dramatic movies without his muse Gong Li as the…

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  Review by Gwennifer 🎞️ ★★★★★ 1

  Asia-Filmfestival

  I LOVE THIS MOVIE

  Das Tolle an diesem Film ist; er nimmt sich Zeit. Zeit sowohl die Alte als auch die Junge Zhao Di am Webstuhl zu zeigen. Zeit die Handgriffe beim Kochen zu zeigen. Zeit sie bei ihren Spaziergängen zu begleiten. In langen Szenen beobachtet man ihre Versuche einen Blick auf den Lehrer zu erhaschen. Und dabei sieht sie noch so unglaublich süß aus ♡

  So gerne ich gute Dialoge mag, es ist auch schön wenn es einfach mal still ist und gute Schauspieler mit Mimik und Kameramänner mit toller Lichtsetzung oder schönen Hintergründen arbeiten.

  Die politische Kritik ist sanft in die Geschichte eingearbeitet darf beachtet werden, drängt sich aber nicht auf.

  Ein wirklich wundervoller Film ♡

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  Review by alfi✨ ★★★½ 4

  So simple, pure and beautiful🤍🖤

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  Review by aysenur🫧 ★★★★

  longing, loyalty, love, difficulties, peace, home, death... in short, the road home is a pure, real and incredibly beautiful zhang yimou movie that tells about life.