AniInterview Sorry, this movie sucks

SunnyHello Nice effects though.

Lollivan It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

Skyler Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

paulknobloch How does a Chinese director empty the noir sensibility of any and all of the glamour associated with its Hollywood counterpart? How does it become a study in pure dourness and grimness? If you're Yi'nan Diao, the first thing you do is set it in a place as grim and dour as a northern Chinese factory town circa 1999. In this frozen wasteland that may or may not be Harbin – it doesn't matter, it could be Siberia – the ball gets rolling when dead body parts start showing up on the conveyor belt of a coal processing plant: after all, in this time and space in China, the human body is just another physical commodity…Following a bloody shootout that leaves the two main suspects and two of his partners dead, we jump forward five years to find the surviving detective, Zhang Zili, paralyzed by the trauma, retired from the police force and passed out in the snow in an alcoholic stupor. But things are never what they seem in noir, right? So he's dragged back into the case when a former partner of his suspects the involvement of a black widow- like female at the heart of the matter. An exotic call girl? A mysterious nightclub singer? No – just some depressed woman who works at a dry cleaner's where she's regularly mauled by her piggish oaf of a boss.The plot is unimportant, really, because the film is one big painting, a night-time world where the neon signs of the internet gambling dens and bleak taxi-dancing joints are beaten into submission by the cold dark chill of northern China, where all color and light are sucked into the film's essence, which is nothing but a black hole, a gravitational death machine that swallows up every photon in sight. At one point, while spinning around the world's most depressing ice skating rink, Zili asks his former partner, "Does anybody ever really win at life?" Of course not. Like all the other catatonic ice skaters, he's just going round and round, sometimes ahead, sometimes behind (depending on one's point of view…) getting nowhere while people continue to copulate and kill and die. The key to the film is the direct translation of the Chinese title, which means "daytime fireworks." I'll let you figure that out for yourself, but if you like your noir pitch-black, this one's for you.

Leofwine_draca I'm a big fan of Asian cinema, and I'm always happy to sit back and watch a Chinese thriller. However, BLACK COAL, THIN ICE takes some sitting through, purely because of its pacing. This is one of the slowest-moving films I've ever seen, and it feels like it goes on forever. The plotting is straightforward detective/police procedural stuff, and feels stretched out to fill the running time.This is a mood piece throughout, focusing on summoning up a chilly atmosphere rather than worrying about the intricacies of story. It's also a thematic film exploring some social themes in China: alienation, husband/wife relationships, adultery, abuse. The problem I have with it is that it just didn't wow me. Everyone else seems to love it, so perhaps I'm missing something.The characters are thinly drawn but somehow likable despite this; it helps that the lead actors, Fan Liao and Lun Mei Gwei, are both very good and naturalistic in their roles. Some moments of quirky comedy are the best thing the film has to offer, but for the most part it's just about long, drawn-out and repetitive scenes with the odd jarring moment. Although I like the genre, I didn't enjoy this film, and was really waiting for it to end more than anything else.

Dzold Yan It seems that, every few years, there are one or two Chinese films that, despite being slow-paced, dark, and lacking A-list stars, somehow manage to attract a large domestic audience without being controversial enough to risk complete censorship. In 2014, the only example I have seen so far is this, Black Coal, Thin Ice. The reason for its domestic success is presumably because of its awards at the Berlin Film Festival.As the story unfolds, despite being based around a series of murders, the film has a pace more similar to an art-house film than a crime- thriller. A couple of scenes were impressively disturbing, made even more so by the slow paced, subtle atmosphere surrounding them. The setting of a polluted, dark, seedy city in a long Heilongjiang winter seems perfect for the noir tone of the film. A subtle musical score, with some dissonant strings combined with (terrible) Chinese pop songs (intra-diegetic) creates a fantastic atmosphere. The closest thing to it I have seen is Suzhou River, which, now I come to think of it, has a lot of similar motifs (I haven't seen Diao Yinan's previous films). The acting performances were all impressive, the female lead (played by Taiwanese Gwei/Gui Lun-Mei) seemed suitably out of place in the Far Northeast of Mainland China. Liao Fan's male lead, and Wang Xuebing's character, were both impressive.Despite a bit of dark humour that made me giggle, Black Coal, Thin Ice is a relentlessly grim and slightly disturbing film. I was impressed that it wasn't (more) censored in China, as it paints a pretty depressing picture. Despite being enthralled by the film, I won't be booking a flight to Heilongjiang any time soon.

Cheng zi Wang I have to say it's same kind of thriller movie like "Sea of Love" because the plot n characters are similar: lonely alcoholic detective in love with female serial killer suspect.The movie has great effective cinematography. I started to follow the story since the first shot. After 15 minutes and couple sequences, I was totally in the story until the movie title suddenly start at that pint: why it has to be there???After the title, it was good, until the mystery is solved, it start to lose the audience. looks like nothing left to tell, so just killed the time.In the end, I felt unsatisfied, and I felt less attached to the main characters, even disliked the male role because he forced the woman to sleep with him then he sold her.Overall, the movie is still worth to watch. The picture looks great, many scene has good mood, and it's still a well directed movie.By the way, the director and the main actress are from Taiwan and the story takes place in norther China (where I was born), so I couldn't help noticing the unrealistic accent n character n settings.