To preface my review: I don't believe in going easy on a film while reviewing it just because I may not be a member of its intended audience from a national or racial perspective. A film director, or in the case of this specific film, directors, should always anticipate that their audience might be diversified, regardless of intentions or agendas. This is especially the case if the movie is being played in my local theater and my girlfriend (who is from a country that rhymes with Bo-Bina) is taking me to see it.
My People, My Country is a movie about people and a country (big surprise there huh?), during the aftermath of a specific political shift of a very beautiful and culturally and historically rich nation. It comprises of seven short films made through the charitable efforts of seven separate directors. It's largely historical, with some events being fictitious purely for characterization.
MPMC is literally "Flag Waving: The Movie". After the halfway mark your eyes will be coated in red lenses and you'll be seeing yellow stars while you sleep. Did you know that raising a flag in complete sync with a national anthem is apparently life or death important? This movie really wants you to know that by having two of its seven short films centering completely around that. Movies should be entertaining, and if you're lucky, enlightening. They are not supposed to be two plus hour long authoritarian glory ads.
On a technical level MPMC is all over the place. Any computer generated effects looked about two decades old, and the sound mixing was off with people talking over one another, or sounding closer or farther away than they actually were. Subtitles were mostly good with only a handful of grammatical errors in some lines. There were also instances of what sounded like German or Eastern European actors doing very poor jobs of English accents while portraying the British personnel during the 1997 Hong Kong Exit portion of the film. I've noticed unrelated Chinese made shows and movies do this before and it's as hilarious as it is irritating to witness.
I really don't have much positive to say about this film other than the story of the taxi driver in Beijing in 2008 was very charming and well done. Kudos to the director of that short, and to the main actor who was a ray of sunshine in an otherwise dreary slog of patriotic fluff. Those efforts comprise of my two points out of a ten for "My People, My Country"
My People, My Country is a movie about people and a country (big surprise there huh?), during the aftermath of a specific political shift of a very beautiful and culturally and historically rich nation. It comprises of seven short films made through the charitable efforts of seven separate directors. It's largely historical, with some events being fictitious purely for characterization.
MPMC is literally "Flag Waving: The Movie". After the halfway mark your eyes will be coated in red lenses and you'll be seeing yellow stars while you sleep. Did you know that raising a flag in complete sync with a national anthem is apparently life or death important? This movie really wants you to know that by having two of its seven short films centering completely around that. Movies should be entertaining, and if you're lucky, enlightening. They are not supposed to be two plus hour long authoritarian glory ads.
On a technical level MPMC is all over the place. Any computer generated effects looked about two decades old, and the sound mixing was off with people talking over one another, or sounding closer or farther away than they actually were. Subtitles were mostly good with only a handful of grammatical errors in some lines. There were also instances of what sounded like German or Eastern European actors doing very poor jobs of English accents while portraying the British personnel during the 1997 Hong Kong Exit portion of the film. I've noticed unrelated Chinese made shows and movies do this before and it's as hilarious as it is irritating to witness.
I really don't have much positive to say about this film other than the story of the taxi driver in Beijing in 2008 was very charming and well done. Kudos to the director of that short, and to the main actor who was a ray of sunshine in an otherwise dreary slog of patriotic fluff. Those efforts comprise of my two points out of a ten for "My People, My Country"