A Couple More Movies

Chinese Box: Jeremy Irons is a photojournalist in Hong Kong, right before the switchover from British rule to Chinese rule in 1997. He suffers from unrequited love for Vivian (Gong Li), a Chinese woman involved with another man. He also suffers from leukemia, with only a few months left to live. He decides to do a story on this girl named Jean he sees on the street (Maggie Cheung), wondering how the switchover will affect her life. She spins him a wild story, but it turns out, she was just a suicidal girl who fell in love with a British boy whose parents didn't approve. They sent him away and she tried to kill herself.

Meanwhile, Gong Li's boyfriend, a fine upstanding businessman, won't marry her. Turns out, he pimped her out when they first fled the mainland because they were broke, and now she's not good enough to marry him and be a proper Chinese wife.

Strange movie about culture clash. I'd say don't bother unless you like Jeremy Irons or Gong Li, or Hong Kong. The cinematography was excellent.


Nemesis Game: This movie stars Carly Pope and Adrian Paul as a couple of people who like to solve riddles, and by solving enough of them, they will get to see the Design. The Design is supposed to be the secret of life. It is apparently why a woman in the film named Emily Gray tried to drown a young boy named Dennis Reveni. But what is never explained is the Design itself. Will Sara (Carly Pope) see the Design? Will she learn why her mother died seemingly pointlessly in a car accident?

The movie held my attention until the end, and then I was disappointed. I also didn't like the scientist's dumb daughter approach when Sara explained to Vern (Adrian Paul) about a monk in India nicknamed Nemesis who liked to solve riddles. Rent it if you have nothing better to do for 92 minutes.