Qing Ya Ji

This is a film that is over two hours long. Most of it is people emoting with their faces without doing anything, moving slowly, talking slowly. The rest is a bit of Wire-fu and CGI and a lot of knowledge lost in translation. That doesn't make it a bad film, because the production values and acting were good, while the story is a combination of murder mystery, detective story, love drama and monster flick. Yeah, it goes all over the place. It's just slow.

Moreover, a lot of other reviewers took the story to be about the love between the master and the empress, but to me it felt like it was more between Qing Ming and Bo Ya. Certainly they had the more romantically long face emoting moments. And that ending!

Anyway, there is a lot of stuff lost in translation for a Westerner. Even if we don't need to understand the mechanics of the magic, or the spirit servants, or the giant snake, we can get the overall idea for the story. But as many other people said, what you see translated in the English subtitles is also not enough to understand what the people are talking about, certainly not the finer metaphorical and cultural aspects of the dialogue.

Bottom line: I watched this on the TV app, which doesn't have a speed setting. Netflix! Make the speed setting available everywhere!! Did I mention the film feels really slow?

I was inspired to watch this because "Yin Yang Master" (also 2021) was entertaining. This one was different. It was a feast for the yes in terms of CGI, very realistically rendered. But the plot was convoluted, and the reasoning for the plot seemed so very arbitrary that I simply didn't care.

This movie was a mashup of old chinese kung-fu movies of medieval times, TLR, End Game, Dr. Strange, E. T. (at least the glowing fingers), and probably others. Like ye olde chinese medieval movies, the characters take themselves way too seriously, and every sentence is uttered as if a gem of wisdom to be savoured. Tiresome.

The fight scenes in the beginning was as ballet as can be. At the end, however, it got more realistic. Thanks or that saving grace.

The scenery was awesome, as was the music. Set design, etc., all great. The story? Meh.

This is a visually stunning fantasy. The acting is decent throughout and the action sequences are quite good. As most Asian fantasy movies, the storyline is somewhat convoluted making it difficult at times to understand the characters. It also has a soundtrack befitting an epic fantasy.

The movie was great thanks to engaging fighting scenes and great acting from the actors. The CGI used in the film are also top notch and the storyline itself was great. The beginning of the movie was a bit hard to understand but over time the story began to reveal itself slowly and with a great amount of suspense. The plot itself was not predictable which made the film better as it kept you guessing. Kudos to the costume designers as all the outfits all suited the characters perfectly and looked great. Probably the only complaint I have about this movie is that there were a few unnecessary characters in the film that were only probably used to thicken the plot but other than that this film was thrilling to watch and is a great Chinese movie and is worth your time. (It kind of reminded me of detective dee)

I wasn't sure what to expect of this. Having been a fan of Chinese fantasy films for a while I expected it to be the usual subpar CGI and a decent story.

The CGI on this was absolutely fantastic, I was genuinely shocked, they've come a far way. The story, although a little rushed, was touching and beautiful with incredible acting. The director has had issues before but really pulled this one off and the script was great. All around a very entertaining Thursday evening film to watch!