Rating: 
Summary: Charming feel-good movie
Review: The back-of-the-box version of this story - a teenage teacher from bumbletown ventures into the big city to find her lost student - really makes a lot more sense than the actual plot, where her motivations are left more or less inexplicable behind the cloak of her reticence. The movie is more valuable for local color and Cultural Understanding than it is for characterization; it's a re-enactment of a true story, and pretty much all the characters are playing what they really are - the adorable little farm kids really are adorable farm kids in real life, etc.Recommended for students of Mandarin as the vocabulary level is pretty simple.
Rating: 
Summary: This movie tricked me...
Review: The movie seems simple enough. A girl, really nothing more than an older student, is selected to watch over the school while the schoolmaster is away. The teacher is stubborn (if not too smart) and suggles to keep the class intact till the master comes back. When one boy, needing to make money for his family, goes to the big city the sub follows, to try to find him.
The cast is made up of normal people. The students are real students, the shop keepers are real shop keepers and the street bums, for all I know, are real street bums.
At first the film seemed slow. Sometimes the movie tried to be TOO clever and did things that I seemed to see coming a mile away. But it was a trick, like when the kids in Rome hold up a newspaper in front of your face while another tries to pickpocket you. The director is using what seems like formula scenes that any Hollywood hack could write while slowly weaving a truly emotional story that only hits you near the ending. Maybe it is because the cast are NOT actors, or the actions taken by the cast seemed so normal, or the scenes of street life were so REAL. By the end of the movie, when the teacher was on TV asking for the boy to come home, I found myself crying. THAT is not the norm for me.
The movie is like a mass-produced car that some artist has worked on. Outside it seems plain but on the inside it has real power. In some ways more powerful than 'The Road Home'.
Rating:
Summary: No pretentions
Review: The story is moving, the amateur actors put up admirable performance, and the message about the state of education in today's Communist China is both bold and revealing. This is not Chairman Mao's China.
Rating: 
Summary: Engaging movie
Review: This documentary style movie (a production of Guanxi Movie Studio) devoids of any special effects & it told the story as it was, about poverty & education system in China. The movie was made more potent by using non-actors & actresses but real people, if viewers were patient enough to watch the end credits. I went to China early this year & every corners I went to, I was "pestered" by Chinese from villages like the one depicted in this movie who were trying to sell me souvenirs. Every time I saw them from afar, I would run with my dear life or kept my distance & many foreigners shared my sentiment. At times, they would give chase & their persistency was amazing. But after watching this movie, you would emphatise their plight & it's all about survivor. Naturally, this coincided with what the young boy said in the movie before its finale, that what he remembered most about his journey to the big city was having to beg for food. Here, viewers would be able to witness major contrasts between rural & urban Chinese & obviously, there's still a huge income gap to be bridged. A very heart-felt & personal movie. Highly recommended. Subtitle was handy as rural Mandarin spoken has got their distinctive accent, which a natural Mandarin speaker like myself found hard to grasp at times
Rating:
Summary: a heart-warming film
Review: This film was apparently based on the true story of a 13 year old girl, Wei, who was recruited to take over a rural classroom for one month while the teacher is on family medical leave. The teacher tells her that too many kids are dropping out of school and that if no kids have dropped out when he returns, she will get an additional 10 yuan reward in addition to the 50 yuan that the mayor has promised her. When one of the boys goes off to the city to earn money for his destitute family, Wei goes after him. When she arrives in the city she finds that the boy became separated from his traveling companions at the bus station and nobody knows where he is; he is lost and wandering the city alone begging strangers for food and sleeping in alleys. Wei is determined to find the boy, but why? Is it for the reward or does she actually care about him? It seems she was initially motivated by the reward but then later when she realized he was lost it touched her heart and she wanted to find him. The child actors were so cute and natural, I enjoyed their performances. A charming story with a happy ending.
Rating:
Summary: Gets better and better over time
Review: This is a movie that not only sneaked up on me, but it stayed with me for a few days. I think the film had many opportunities to grab the golden ring with easy payoffs (i.e. the novice teacher who ends up doing a miraculous job educating students misdirected by poverty a la 'To Sir, With Love' or 'Stand and Deliver' or 'Dangerous Minds' or yadda yadda yadda; or the naive bumpkin who travels to the big city and becomes an accidental celebrity by spouting simple but profound aphorisms a la 'Being There' or 'Forrest Gump' or yadda yadda yadda) but it doesn't. Teacher Wei's laughable pedagogical methods and her speechlessness at the TV station felt so genuine that I wanted to stand up and applaud. And initially, right after seeing the movie, I (wrongly) accused Zhang of losing his bite since the film seemed to be lacking his usual criticisms of China's corrupt octagenarial oligarchy. But after letting the film sink in my mind over the few days, I began to recall the images that point out the outrageous economical and educational disparity between the rural and urban population. So this film finally answers the question of why the revolution will not be televised -- the necessary advertising sponsors disapprove. My only quibbles with the film is that the story arc is still fairly predictable, and what's up with the closing captions at the end of the film? They should be reserved only for documentaries or movies based on true stories or spoofs of those types of films.
Rating:
Summary: Satisfying film that avoids all the cliches
Review: This is a movie that not only snuck up on me, but it stayed with me for a few days. I think the film had many opportunities to grab the golden ring with easy payoffs (i.e. the novice teacher who ends up doing a miraculous job educating students misdirected by poverty a la "To Sir, With Love" or "Stand and Deliver" or "Dangerous Minds" or yadda yadda yadda; or the naive bumpkin who travels to the big city and becomes an accidental celebrity by spouting simple but profound aphorisms a la "Being There" or "Forrest Gump" or yadda yadda yadda) but it doesn't. Teacher Wei's laughable pedagogical methods and her speechlessness at the TV station felt so genuine that I wanted to stand up and applaud. And initially, right after seeing the movie, I (wrongly) accused Zhang of losing his bite since the film seemed to be lacking his usual criticisms of China's corrupt octagenarial oligarchy. But after letting the film sink in my mind over the few days, I began to recall the images that point out the outrageous economical and educational disparity between the rural and urban population. So this film finally answers the question of why the revolution will not be televised -- the necessary advertising sponsors disapprove. My only quibbles with the film is that the story arc is still fairly predictable, and what's up with the closing captions at the end of the film? They should be reserved only for documentaries or movies based on true stories or spoofs of those types of films.
Rating:
Summary: A Story of Lessons
Review: This is a very affecting film, one that draws you into school life in rural China and involves you directly in the travails of a young temporary teacher, only a few years older than her pupils. American educators with their PhDs, their unions and their billion dollar annual school budgets could benefit from watching this film to learn something about the basic art of teaching children.
Rating:
Summary: A moving film - a sober reminder of how the other 80% live
Review: This is NOT a political protest film, despite the tendency of some people to politicize every major piece of contemporary Chinese film-making. If this film has a political over-tone at all, it would be to serve as a propaganda piece for the government-sponsored Hope Project, a massive fund-raising campaign to benefit rural education. Rural education is in fact one of the bright spots of the Communist record, considering that prior to the Communist take-over the vast majority of rural China was illiterate, and efforts to promote literacy (even those sponsored by Christian missionaries) were violently opposed by the traditional gentry. But of course, all that was too much Chinese history to expect from people who insist on referring to the director as "Yimou", when his family name is Zhang. We do not refer to Mao Zedong as Zedong. I probably don't need to rehash the basic story of the film or to point out yet again that the director casted local non-actors for every major role in the film. The result is a film that has the look and feel of a docudrama. But despite the somewhat awkward acting, all of the characters are entirely believable. While the story line is certainly somewhat contrived, the film was peppered with enough believable details to maintain the viewer's suspension of disbelief. And it's these seemingly trivial details that will move you, sometimes deeply. The problems exposed by the film are the universal problems of poverty. Even if China were to become democratic in the US model tomorrow, all these problems will remain for some years to come and may in fact exacerbate in the short run. Watch the film, and try not to squander the good fortune you enjoy.
Rating:
Summary: Good
Review: This movie puts the viewer through the whole range of emotions. I found myself being frustrated at first, then downright rolling my eyes at times. Some parts are so out of whack and so unrealistic that it is funny, even if it was not intentionally filmed to be so. One wonders how a teacher can be so stupid at times. However, the ending is brilliant and very touching. I only began to appreciate the movie once I realized that the teacher did not care about the bonus 10 yuan for keeping her students, and therefore the fact that she spent more than she would receive in an attempt to recover her student was no longer relevant.
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