The Banquet 夜宴》 (2006)

[Guest <3LeeDongWook]

^i agree. i stopped watching halfway butone thing i want to say is that this movie was beautiful in the sense of the decorations and scenery. lovely. but the plot and storyline is a thumbsdown.

[Guest .moony.]

it's just that she's in pretty much every one of these movies (i found most of the ones i saw crappy) it's a bit annoying. there ARE other mainland actresses who can act too

plus i don't think her acting's all that great

I second that....there are so many other better asian actresses out there...i've watched almost every movie zizi is in and i have to say she sucks (compared to the other actors/actresses). She is just like a commerial for every movie....bleh ...

I watched this movie mostly for Zhou Xun (hope i spelled it right) and Daniel Wu (man he is so hot!)

but it was quite bad....slow paced, boring, dumb fightin scenes (whats with the dancing fightin style nowadays...just like in Duelist -.- )

The cast was beautiful though lol....and the secenery was good ^^

[Guest ImSmiley]

this movie looks pretty good, i want to watch it.

[Guest luvelyasian]

where can i get the english subs for the two part file? kloofy doesn't have it-- i love these martial-arts blockbluster type movies

[Guest babygurldoc]

Movie was pretty ok...maybe b/c I was paying attention to somethings else at the time....but beautiful sceneries and all.

This movie is seriously the chinese version of Hamlet...w/ a few exceptions.

Ok...wait...so Daniel and ZYY were lovers...not mother and son?

Does the commander(forgot his name? by the way...he is so fine...love him since forever) love his sister...in an incest kinda way? If he's not...than the acting seem like it.

And who killed ZYY in the end?...my brother said it was Daniel...but I'm not sure?

[Guest saf]

yup daniel wu n the empress were childhood sweethearts, not mother n son...

Does the commander(forgot his name? by the way...he is so fine...love him since forever) love his sister...in an incest kinda way? If he's not...than the acting seem like it.

it seemed like it, din it, i mean, the general looked like he loved his sister more than he should have...

[Guest t3n5h1_chu_k015h173]

I heard from my friend friend in HK, now this movie playing in the cinemas Is this movie worth watching? any good?

[Guest babygurldoc]

yup daniel wu n the empress were childhood sweethearts, not mother n son...

it seemed like it, din it, i mean, the general looked like he loved his sister more than he should have...

Oh ok, thanx for the clear-up....

Might sound stupid, but where in the movie did you get the info from that they were lover... maybe except when he called her Little Wan...and why do they refer to one another as mother and son?

Thanx

[Guest dOotsiez]

i'm quite disappointed actually. FXG is a director i really admire for his style and his choice of scripts. he has a strong focus on realism, films about the extraordinary things in the everyday life of ordinary people - lots of black humour, satire, exposing social problems yadayadayada

but now he seems to have fallen into the cliche of films about the ancient dynasties, with beautiful cameral works and meaningless superficial idiotic plots (a bit tryhard Hero/House of Flying Daggers imo)

it's a boo from me.

[Guest SilentDream]

Oh ok, thanx for the clear-up....

Might sound stupid, but where in the movie did you get the info from that they were lover... maybe except when he called her Little Wan...and why do they refer to one another as mother and son?

Thanx

At the beginning it said that they were in love but his father married his love instead and thats why he left. Also thats why she keeps trying to keep him alive =)

[cel]

Does anybody know who did kill XXY?

We have just watched this in the theatre and suddenly.......

another unexplained ending

[Guest precious4e]

Ahh i've been so busy that I didn't even know the movie came out!

I'll probably watch it when I get home.

But from what i'm reading, it's not much to expect?

Oh well I usually watch these movies for the scenery anyways.

Off topic: Hopefully Curse of the Golden Flower will be better. Gong Li + Jay Chou + Chow Yun Fat = <333

[Guest happyshirt]

I was pleasantly surprised with this. My Expectations had not been high. very pretty sets, scenery and costumes etc and story moved along just fine. until..............................AAAAAAAAAAAAARRGGGG..... who killed the empress in the end. aiya ya ya ya ya...................

[Guest kai_^^]

i just watched it..

wow i got confused! so who kills her in the end??

[Guest sphynkter]

SPOILER ALERT

before i watched the movie i was definitely expecting something that i could at least call "good". this was based on the casting as i love ziyi and daniel wu. however, i wasn't entirely disappointed as I had read many reviews which pretty much say that this movie is a hamlet rip off and is pretty dull. As many critics have said this is in no ways like those epic martial arts movies like crouching tiger, house of flying daggers, or hero. so after reading many negative reviews i watched the movie anyways and was expecting it to be a complete rip off of hamlet. however, the main gist of Hamlet is in there, the movie does not play out exactly like Hamlet as the characters die in different ways than in Shakespeare's play, so that kinda surprised me a little.

the ending kinda had you going "uh who killed her?!" and the best I could come up with is that some random person wanted to become the next emperor and ended up killing her. and well the cycle will continue because humans are led by their ambitions and those ambitions can make people do some crazy sh!t.

however dull the plot was as pretty much everyone knows the plot of Hamlet, I still did enjoy Zhang Ziyi's acting in this movie. Perhaps i just love everything she does but I felt that she played a very convincing role and well i disagree with some peoples' comments that she is an over exaggerated actress. there is a reason that she became so famous in the first place. it's because she's great at what she does. plus she was beautiful in this movie. however, this is not to say that simply putting ziyi in a movie will automatically make it a good movie (as in this case of The Banquet).

the main thing and probably the only thing that i really liked about this movie is the costumes. the clothes were really beautiful.

so yea that's my review of the movie. this movie isn't really worth watching unless you're completely unfamiliar with Hamlet in which case you'd probably be slightly into this movie. I'm not sure.

[Guest Luly]

it's a pretty good movie till right before the ending... the ending juz falls flat and totally pisses me cos it's really nottt convincing at all. (i'm not referring to the flying sword part but the things that happened to the king.)

it's like... whether you analyse based on the situations or his personalities/characters, he would never end up like that. the change is too abrupt and totally unconvincing.

I heard from my friend friend in HK, now this movie playing in the cinemas Is this movie worth watching? any good?

it's aesthetically pleasing. story wise, it's like the chinese Hamlet with a -ahem- ending imo.

[Guest dreamloverShiWon]

Yuck I got bored after half an hour. The structures, buildings are all too westernised, and I didn't get what was with the ugly masks they were wearing. I know that it's the Hamlet story but I was thinking it'd be only the plot. And their fighting scenes are too "artistic" for my liking.

And Zhang Zi Yi being nude just shocked me, not because I haven't seen nude actresses on screen, I just thought it was totally irrelevant to the plot and it's an act to boost her sexual image... Now hollywood is used to that but the Chinese film industry is not. I'm very sure they would cut that part out in China, so that scene is made for Hollywood and I'm disgusted that a Chinese film is not made for Chinese audience but for westerners. It seems to me that all these people are just eager to make it big in the western world, they want to win the oscars so badly, they are not being true to the spirit of film making.

Apart from Crouching Tiger, none of these films (Hero, House of Flying Daggers etc) are worth watching and are made to capitalise Hollywood's hunger for MORE kungfu and ancient Chinese films. I am not going to watch anymore of these "super expensive-artistic close to dancing kungfu styles" films. And no more Zhang Zi Yi for me.

[Guest Truelover]

Hello,

I must see this movie soon. I love Zhang Ziyi, and even if the movie is a bit slow I'll stay on it (kinda hypnotised).

Kate

[Guest wanie]

I like this movie

I love Daniel Wu ♡!!!!!!

after watching this movie, I started looking for other Daniel Wu's movies!!! ^^

[Guest tomodachi-]

I thought the movie was quite well presented. well.. i was impressed with the scenery and everything.

Can't help but think Zhang Ziyi's eyebrows were abit.. too short.. looked abit funny, but eh.. i guess that was the style back then.

There wasn't much closure in the ending, but i thought the way that Zhang Ziyi was looking at the person who stabbed her.. it kinda gave me the feeling that it was someone she knew. But i don't know. Not a great thinker =)

An alright movie it was. can be quite sad at times, but not enough for me to tear up or anything.