Search

Release: April 8, 2014

$7.99

Description

Product Description A "brilliant exploration of violence and corruption in contemporary China" (Jon Frosch, the Atlantic), a TOUCH OF SIN was inspired by four shocking (and true) events that forced the world's fastest growing economy into a period of self-examination. Written and directed by master filmmaker Jia Zhangke (The World, Still Life), "one of the best and most important directors in the world" (Richard Brody, the New Yorker), this daring, poetic and grand-scale film focuses on four characters, each living in different provinces, who are driven to violent ends. An angry miner, enraged by widespread corruption in his village, decides to take justice into his own hands. A rootless migrant discovers the infinite possibilities of owning a firearm. A young receptionist, who dates a married man and works at a local sauna, is pushed beyond her limits by an abusive client. And a young factory worker goes from one discouraging job to the next, only to face increasingly degrading circumstances. Review A blistering fictionalized tale straight out of China, A Touch of Sin is at once monumental and human scale. --Manohla Dargis, The New York Times Jia s film remains a troubling, exhilarating epic of pugnacious surreality that s filled with jabbing questions and no simple answers. --Film Journal International A bitter, brutal, often brilliant exploration of violence and corruption in contemporary China. --Jon Frosch, The Atlantic Jia s film remains a troubling, exhilarating epic of pugnacious surreality that s filled with jabbing questions and no simple answers. --Film Journal International A bitter, brutal, often brilliant exploration of violence and corruption in contemporary China. --Jon Frosch, The Atlantic

Release: January 20, 2026

$7.99

Description

In this visionary chronicle of China’s turbulent new century, acclaimed director Jia Zhang-Ke embarks on a kaleidoscopic odyssey across time and space, incorporating footage captured for his previous films into an entirely original, captivating epic. Drawing on a twenty-three-year collaboration between Jia and actors Zhao Tao and Li Zhubin, Caught by the Tides casts them as a pair of estranged lovers, tracking these characters across an increasingly alien China as they age in real time, from the dawn of the millennium to the COVID-19 era. Observing the future-shock developments transforming his country, Jia constructs a sensorially immersive, emotionally profound portrait of both a world in flux and two people navigating its uncertain currents. SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES Meet the Filmmakers: Jia Zhang-Ke, a Criterion Channel original interview Trailer Notes by film critic Carlos Aguilar Top About this item Similar From the Brand Reviews Caught by the Tides (Criterion Premieres) [Blu-ray]

Release: September 24, 2024

$6.99

Description

Jia Zhangke reflects on the history of Shanghai through interviews and memories spanning generations.

Release: July 12, 2016

$7.99

Description

Mainland master Jia Zhangke (A Touch of Sin) scales new heights with Mountains May Depart. Starring the luminous Zhao Tao, the film is both an intimate drama and a decades-spanning epic about how China's capitalist experiment has affected the lives of one splintered family, leaping in time from the past to the present to the speculative near-future. Jia's new film is an intensely moving study of how China's economic boom and the culture of materialism it has spawned has affected the bonds of family, tradition, and love. Bonus Features: English Subtitles, Closed Captions, 5.1 Surround Sound, Booklet Essay by Aliza Ma, New York Film Festival: A Conversation with Jia Zhangke (73 min., courtesy of Film Society of Lincoln Center), Trailer

Release: December 1, 2020

$7.99

Description

Product Description Still Life, winner Golden Lion, Venice Film Festival 2006, is an empathetic portrait of those left behind by a modernizing society and, as in director Jia Zhang-ke's earlier films (Platform, Unknown Pleasures, The World), it is a unique hybrid of documentary and fiction. In Still Life, great changes have come to the town of Fengjie due to the construction of the Three Gorges hydro project: Countless families that had lived there for many generations have had to relocate to other cities. Fengjie's old town, which has a 2000-year history, has been torn down and submerged forever, but its new neighborhood hasn't been finished yet. There are still things that need to be salvaged and yet there are also things that must be left behind. In Still Life, such life-changing choices face both Sanming, a miner traveling to Fengjie in search of his ex-wife of sixteen years, and Shen Hong, a nurse who has come to Fengjie to look for her husband who she hasn't seen in two years. Both Sanming and Shen will find who they're looking for, but in the process they too will have to decide what is worth salvaging in their lives and what they need to let go of. Review Elegantly photographed. Sublime, soulful art. A modern master of postmodern discontent, Jia Zhang-ke is among the most strikingly gifted filmmakers working today. His work exists on a continuum with the modernist masters, among other influences, but he is very much an artist of his own specific time and place. --Manohla Dargis, The New York Times Four stars! Exhilarating. A breathtaking collision of fact and fiction. A movie to change one's view of both cinema and life. As such, it's very, very dangerous. --John Anderson, Newsday Breathtaking. Stark and beautiful. One of the world's most celebrated directors. Remarkable images. One viewing is not enough to absorb Still Life. Jia's finest film yet, both a docudrama with obvious social and historical relevance and a subtle, slow, quietly powerful chronicle of human loss. It never seems inaccessible or willfully arty, but it won't yield all its secrets on the first date. --Andrew O'Hehir, Salon.com See more