Alicia I love this movie so much

Stellead Don't listen to the Hype. It's awful

Beanbioca As Good As It Gets

Bob This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

webbertiger Dear Director, I can't help keeping comparing this movie with Farewell My Concubine, one of the best Chinese movies I have seen, which was also directed by you. Yes, having the same director, both tell us a story of Peking Opera singer(s), and both cover a turbulent era of certain decades during the twentieth century in China. I have to say, however, this one is disappointing, in many ways.I have no doubt about your directing skills just by watching Farewell My Concubine. There, the roles were hysteria, and it's original, intensive, surprising, and thrilling. In Forever Enthralled, you tried to use the exactly same style, but unfortunately, it feels unnatural and overdone, as you were transfered from a brave pioneer to a boring follower of the previous yourself.Like all types of arts, a real master piece can't be duplicated. Same as motion pictures. Farewell My Concubine is such a master piece that any mimicking trials afterwards, intentionally or not, turns out to fail, even though they are from the same director. There's nothing wrong to make another film of Peking Opera singers, but just don't use the same skill again and again.Dear Screen Play Writers, Did you realize the story is unbalanced? The first half of this film drags too long and the pace is way too slow, unnecessarily slow. I know you may want to emphasize Master Mei's earlier life experience that affected him so much, but the title of this film is not "The Teenager hood of Mei Lanfang".Visiting the US actually was an important experience of Mei and also a great step to give him the opportunity to gain the international fame. However, your film made this part too weak. It's finished in such a hurry in the audiences' applause before I got a chance to focus on the singing of the leading actor. Is this a trick just because the actor couldn't perform the Opera well even though he is a pop singer? Check La Vie en Rose (2007) to see how a movie about a singer can make the singing magnificent.Dear Ziyi Zhang, I didn't see much improvement of your acting skills from Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. Not bad, but not good enough either. Yes I'm picky. But it has a long way to go before a actor/actress becomes a top one.Dear Leon Lai, Maybe they picked you for this role because you're a singer, but this role turned out to be too weak and too blurry. Maybe this is not your fault. They just didn't select the right person to act Master Mei. Imagine in the movie Dream Girls (2006): if Beyonce played Effie White, the situation would be insanely different.Dear Honglei Sun, I usually don't like those characters you played in the movie, but this one is an exception. Congratulations! You acted so well that I thought this movie should be called "The Story of Mei and His Brother Qiu". YOU ARE LITERALLY THE LEADING ACTOR. They didn't give enough chance to let Mei sing, but you got enough chance to act, and acted the best compared with others in this movie. In this movie, you were a super fan of Peking Opera and a super fan of Mei. You quit your staple teaching job and followed Mei to explore his career, felt happier about his every success than himself, worried him more than anybody else when he was in trouble, and helped him become a real master. Good job! Good for Brother Qiu, but not that good for this film, because this film is not supposed to only focus on Brother Qiu.Dear Team, Sorry, frankly speaking, this movie is not enthralled.

Harry T. Yung After going somewhat astray with "Wu ji" (2005), director Chen, his loyal followers are happy to see, is back in form with this biopic of China's legendary Beijing Opera icon MEI Lanfang. While general consensus has it that this film does not quite reach the height of "Farewell my concubine" (1993), it is a step in the right direction, especially when you shudder at the realization of how low his one-time camera man ZHANG Yimou can sink, with the likes of "House of flying daggers" (2004) and "Curse of the golden flower" (2006). People just have to realise that not everybody can be Ang Lee. But I digressed.Structurally, two-and-a-half-hours "Forever enthralled" can be seen as a film in two parts. Part One, comprising the first 60 minutes, is "young Mei", without the stars Leon Lai and Ziyi Zhang. The ensuing 90 minutes is "middle-age Mei", covering the main events in his life from a top artist's predicament, an affair with a fellow artist, tremendous challenge of bringing a totally alien art form to New York, surviving with integrity and dignity during the Japanese occupation and triumphant return to the stage after victory. On the surface, this second half should constitute the soul of the film. And indeed, it is well acted and well shot. However, if you can only see half of this film, it should, without question, be the first half. It is just superb.Let me go into the second half first. Leon Lai portrays an introvert, emotionally lonely Mei at the height of his career, but seems to be in constant fear: fear that he cannot maintain his performance at the pinnacle, fear of life in general. While there are almost inevitable verdicts from some critics that he is poker-faced, Lai deserves better. While Mei shows little emotion, at least as portrayed in this script, there are times when nuances come through, especially his transformation in the New York venture and his determined resistance of the Japanese demand that he perform during their occupation of Beijing. Lai in general handles his role credibly.While Mei pays little attention to anything outside his art, two people virtually run his life. One is his mentor QIU Rubai, played by the larger-than-life villain you saw in "Seven swords" (2005), SUN Honglei – "playing against type – an actor of usually masculine parts finds fulfillment in the role of a thinker" as a local magazine aptly asserts. It is a role that Sun fills extremely well, stealing many a scene from our lead hero. The other is his pragmatic, no-nonsense wife FU Zhifang, played by CHEN Hong whom, if you have seen the aforementioned "Wu ji", cannot fail to remember as Goddess Manshen, with the most ridiculous hair-style that anyone has ever seen. Chen has turned in a solid performance.Ziyi Zhang is billed as the female lead not so much because of the screen time she has been allocated as the importance of her role MENG Xiaodong, an actress with whom Mei not only had the chance to collaborate, but also to fall in love. In her relationship with Mei, Meng is at various times coy, flirty, professional, affectionate and coldly determined. This is the best yet that I have seen of Zhang's performance.This "second half" then has all the elements and ingredient of high melodrama. It plays out as such, albeit at the high end of the scale of artistic melodrama.It is the first half that lifts this film a couple of notches. It has none of the stars in the second half, except for Sun, as Qiu appears very early in Mei's life. The theme of this first half is quite simple: Mei's rise to stardom through a dual of artistic talent with his grandfather and teacher, Shisanyan (or "thirteenth swallow", his stage name). The two initially perform side-by-side but when Mei's quest for innovation becomes almost insatiable, the two not only split up, but also end up in fierce competition. There is no animosity, only artistic pride and strive for excellence. Young YU Shaoqun plays youth Mei to perfection, and would have you believe that he has decades of acting experience behind him. But it is veteran WANG Xueqi's (the eccentric villain in "The warriors of heaven and earth" (2003)) portrayal of Shisanyan that is above perfection. Rather than a one-dimensional rigid old actor from the traditional school, Shisanyan is a human being of flesh and blood, proud but not vain, never patronizing his grandson and protégé who dares to challenge him. In Shisanyan's last show, to an all but empty theatre, we see two layers of unexcelled performance, by Shisanyan with tragic pride, and by Wang, playing Shisanyan. Then, there is the scene between young Mei and Shisanyan that will break the most cynical of hearts.The first hour of "Forever enthralled" is cinema at its best. The rest is just bonus.

smallbob I went in not expecting much as my Chinese isn't perfect yet and I knew it was going to be a chore trying to keep up with the words but I found it wasn't too bad to understand. In the end though I just didn't really see it as that good of a film, the script was mediocre and the acting was at times overly dramatic, even for Chinese films. I thought it was just me at first as the girl next to me was crying during the film but my friend who was also watching turned to me and said "That was terrible..." and she is Chinese so i think it really was just not very good. My Chinese is coming along and I've started to really enjoy watching Chinese movies in Chinese if only for the interest of testing my language skills but this was just not worth it. I would have preferred to go see one of the others I've already seen than to sit through this one.

Victoriah06 This film was infuriating to watch. It boasts a very talented cast alright, but it is a far cry, nay, hardly an echo of FAREWELL MY CONCUBINE. It's almost like the director was trying to COPY snippets of his old self. Given that Farewell is one of my favorite films, I was utterly disappointed in Chen Kaige. He has completely lost his touch. From the hardly notable art direction, costumes, cinematography to foremost, the long and tedious plot which never builds into anything, Chen is a goner. In fact, I would say the fifth generation Chinese film directors are no longer worth watching. They have too much money and access and they are already devoid of stories to tell.Do not do what countless Chinese are doing, going to the movie just to criticize it. It generates box office money and gives the wrong sort of support to directors who no longer deserve to make films.I felt sick after 2.5 hours watching this tedious show.