WasAnnon Slow pace in the most part of the movie.

PiraBit if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

Robert Joyner The plot isn't so bad, but the pace of storytelling is too slow which makes people bored. Certain moments are so obvious and unnecessary for the main plot. I would've fast-forwarded those moments if it was an online streaming. The ending looks like implying a sequel, not sure if this movie will get one

Sarita Rafferty There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

GodsPrototype There's not many films I've seen that really open the tear ducts but I was literally crying within the first ten minutes such is the power of the setup and the opening section of the film. It is based around the infamous earthquake of 1976 where 240,000 people were killed, just think of the boxing day tsunami for the human scale of this disaster.Don't expect a disaster movie with buildings blowing up and skyscrapers falling down in million dollar effects set-pieces, it's not like that. What it is, is an extremely well made ten minute segment at the start of the film in which we see wholesale destruction on a truly 'real' scale. The fact that the special effects in this film were done by 'Weta' from New Zealand, who worked on the Lord of the Rings trilogy et al, proves how remarkable they are.There is one moment when one of the after shocks hit that really got to me. A mother finds her son in the rubble and holds onto his hands, as the aftershock hits, he slips down further into the darkness as more rubble falls onto him. She turns to the sky, uncontrollable tears rolling down her face, and screams 'God, you bastard'. From that point on - that was me done, I literally cried hard. Very rare for me to do that.From then on the clean up starts and the rescue operation begins, the mother is given a choice to choose between the life of her son or daughter such is the way that a concrete slab is resting on their dying bodies.Truly emotional and it doesn't stop for a good half hour until you get a chance to wipe away the tears. From then on, then drama begins. It is an hour of drama and watching everyone grow up separately that in places is very slow but you know is building to an emotional confrontation.This is where the English title really comes into play. An aftershock is not just the rumblings of the earthquake, it is the aftershock of decisions made on the cusp of emotion. The final song over the credits is titled, 21 seconds, 32 years. So much can change in so little a time and the drama is people's inability to understand or even cope with their decisions.The girl actually survives but blames her mother for choosing her brother to be rescued so she hides her true identity to rescuers and lives 32 years before finally finding her way back. The acting is immense, amazing even on behalf of the mother and the daughter at the end.The daughter discovers her brother by chance when they both separately decide to help in the rescue of the 2008 earthquake. Their meeting is muted and not really shown on film, which is a shame, I felt that there were some scenes missing from the international cut. Yet, they hold back the emotional punch for when the daughter is finally reunited with her mother 32 years later.I've given it 9/10 because it is a truly emotional film, probably the most emotional with the subject matter that I've ever seen. The only downside is in the completeness of the story, I do feel that some scenes may have been missing.Yet, the effects at the start, the acting, the music and the emotional punch truly hold this film above many others. I'm very surprised that it was not included in the Academy's best foreign picture film. Or maybe I am, because the films that win are never quite the ones that deserve to.Stunning, I can highly recommend this, just get a box tissues ready, no matter how hard a heart you have!

Phobon Nika What is it, where is it, how will it affect me? A story told over a whole generation following members of a family separated as a result of the Great Tangshan Earthquake of 1976, some of which are unaware of the others' survival. Despite being the youngest, arguably least wise and time-tested film on the list, you'll find me using the first person a lot more than otherwise for this piece of reasoning, as it's devilishly easy to shout at the tip of one's lungs why Aftershock is as good as the position on the list it sits in. I've quite liked the last decade in film. Granted, it has only impressed me on a few momentous occasions; nevertheless it's the way that these select films impress me that makes me admire the era. The chief suspect among which is Aftershock, a modern day commercially orientated Chinese film depicting a piece of national devastating history with a mission statement that on face value seems as watertight as a colander, as sturdy as a chocolate fireguard. If by a twist of fate the blueprint for such a film ended up in the hands on a Hollywood director, it would have been a sure-fire disaster. Nonetheless, Aftershock is one of the greatest films of all time simply because it sweeps over every possible obstacle the sheer scale of the challenge undertaken presents to those making the film with unmatched ease. It's one of the greatest films of all time, although it appears drastically out of place amongst such a crowd, because it's overwhelmingly good at what it sets out to do: made with skill, thought, potency, confidence, structure, planning and a touch of the divine. To plot the course of a divided family as its members grow over a 25 year timeframe was a bar raised impossibly high. But when finished watching Aftershock, it's simply dumbfounding! At once, simultaneously, I'd seen everything like it before, yet I'd never seen anything like it before: an epic drama laced with national heritage that displays such perfected film-making in each and every scene, from the script that can pluck each and every heart string, to the flawless execution of character age and growth, both aesthetically and behaviourally. Did I mention that Aftershock is the only film that's ever made me cry like a baby? At the end of the day it's still an epic drama with a big budget, a formulaic canvas to paint on that's been done time and time before, but Aftershock has so much more power and attention to detail within it that, by the time the climax of the film comes around and one's tear ducts have ingested plenty ecstasy enough, remembering the petty flaws of the film or how such a concept for a film doesn't fit the stereotype of 'truly great' is forgotten and the film completely encases you in what it's trying to achieve. How many films succeed with that kind of intensity, throughout the cinema halls of fame? Realistically, I could count them on one hand. On my thumb we find rookie Feng's 2010 Aftershock, every bit worthy of being named the 13th greatest film of all time.

Laura Kammermann This film captivates you within the first 5 minutes. I sat down to watch the beginning to see if it was any good and found myself discarding all responsibilities to see what happened to the characters. The music, acting, and script is so beautiful before you know it the 2 hours is over and your left mesmerized by the haunting tale. I Recommend taking the time out of your day to watch this movie. The subtitles are not bad. During some parts of the film it's hard to keep up with the subtitles but most of the time they take it slow. The acting in this film is heightened because when I watched it I payed more attention to the sound of their voices then what they were saying. The feelings they projected brought me to tears multiple times. This film is a 10/10.

cxa1 I want to start with a status posted on the Twitter by director Xiaogang Feng, one of the most famous directors in China, who has over two billion Chinese Yuan of total box office returns of all the movies that he has directed. He posted on his Twitter: "I met a warm-hearted person who advised me earnestly and kindly to treat the leucoderma on my face and offered me his secret prescription handed down from his ancestors for free. Thank you very much but I will just keep this illness with pleasure. It is not because that I am unappreciative, but because everything is going well with me. This little retribution is way better than a serious disease that can be deadly. This is a balance and it makes the people who hate me feel better.""Balance" is a Chinese attitude towards disasters. As a Chinese, I believe that if something bad happened to me, there will be something good in the future as compensation because after all, we are all going back to where we started. This is called "balance". China has gone through all kind of disasters, ranging from foreign invasion to earthquake and flood. Some people said "A country will emerge stronger from adversities"; some others said "This is samsara" which is the idea that things come full circle. Somehow, emphasizing on "balance", Feng directed the successful movie "Tangshan Earthquake" which is a box office champion in the history of Chinese movies. Although it is not as perfect as some writers praised, I think "Tangshan Earthquake", directed by Feng, is worth watching. Known as being good at shooting comedies, Feng demonstrated his mastering and controlling of the sensation in this tragedy. If you ask me whether I cried when I was watching it, the answer is, of course, yes. And so did the young girl sitting next to me and the middle-aged couple in front of me. If we say the purpose of a comedy is to make audiences laugh out loud, then the purpose of tragedy is to make people cry and we have to admit that Tangshan earthquake is successful since it made most of audiences in the movie theater cry. The movie tells the story of a mother, Yuanni, and her daughter and son, Deng Fang and Da Fang, and how their lives were forever changed by the Tangshan earthquake in 1976. Yuanni lost her husband in the earthquake and was forced to choose only one of her two children that were squeezed by the two ends of the same slab of concrete. "Both! I want them both!!!" Thousands of audiences were moved by her grieved yelling and crying. Helplessly, she made a hardest decision in the world ever. "Save my son" she spoke softly. We respect Yuanni strength when facing the disaster and the loss of her families; we sympathize with her misfortune when she has to raise her son by her own; and we can feel her pain every year on the same day of the earthquake when she explained to her husband and daughter how to find their way to their new home over and over again. We are surprised how deeply her tears, her twinkles and smiles, her grief face and thin silhouette, touched our souls and affected our emotion. Little Deng, who was still alive, still conscious when she heard her mother chose to save her brother and had to accept the truth that she was abandoned, but unable to say anything with the slab of concrete crushing down on her, bursted into tears. At that moment, I could hear whimpers all around the theater. After she was dug out from the ruins, she marvelously woke up in the rain, surrounded by thousands of dead bodies. She was all alone, dirty, disheveled and bedraggled. Her left eye was red and swollen because of the lengthy pressure of the heavy block, but she was still alive! With rescue workers rushing by her, she found herself in the most depressingly gray world of rubble and death… You know she was looking around, for family, but you know they were all gone. A Chinese soldier happened to passed by and noticed her. He wrapped her in his coat, as any decent man ought to do, and as he asked her where she lived, where her parents were, if she had any relatives left, you are screaming in your head, "no, you dummy, can't you see?! They're all gone, they're all gone!!!" As she broke down and began crying, your heart breaks into millions of fragmented pieces. Deng was adopted by another family after the earthquake. She did not go back to her own family and she did not want to because she could not forgive her mom's words "save my son". No one was wrong in this event, but we can feel the shadow that was left by the earthquake in her little heart. Thirty-two years later, in the year of 2008, another earthquake in Sichuan province brought Deng and her brother together again. As victims of Tangshan earthquake, they know how despairing they were when they were waiting for rescue and they both joined the rescue groups voluntarily to help the people who are suffering what Deng and Da had suffered 32 years ago. It seemed that a "samsara" was achieved and everyone went back to their original position, but things are totally different after so many years. After the earthquake, Yuanni never went out of her deep remorse of abandoning her daughter. She sacrificed the rest of her life to stick to her families that did not exist anymore. Da, her son, said: "The collapsed building has been rebuilt, but the house in my mom's heart was never rebuilt up."