The plot may be a little hard to follow, but the film-making is skillful and any effort on the viewer's part is well worth it

Full Review | May 28, 2005

At the center of it all is, of course, Zhang. Charismatic and intense, she excels in her most grown-up role to date.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Feb 25, 2005

Just like nuclear energy, long cinematic pauses can be used properly for the benefit of all, while in the wrong hands they can cause mass misery.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Feb 2, 2005

There are two movies battling for supremacy in Butterfly, and both lose. As does the audience.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Jan 21, 2005

An at times pretty but nonetheless forgettable film.

| Original Score: C | Jan 20, 2005

A gorgeous period melodrama, packed with romantic tragedy and violent intrigue, it is both gritty and dreamy, political and personal.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Jan 14, 2005

As atmospheric and moody as a film noir, the stylish, sometimes perplexing Purple Butterfly is a remarkable period piece, evoking the bustling, dense and increasingly dangerous Shanghai of the '30s.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jan 13, 2005

Hectic, lyrical, swooningly romantic and almost unwatchably brutal.

Full Review | Jan 12, 2005

... rich with emotional turmoil and searing beauty, but it could have used a little more time in the editing room to make sense of it all.

| Original Score: C+ | Jan 10, 2005

The art of it is entirely in the atmospherics; the rest is melodrama. Its 127 minute exercise in puzzle solving is draining.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jan 9, 2005

The characters are less compelling than this particular slice of history, which has rarely been dramatized in movies.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jan 7, 2005

| Original Score: D+ | Dec 6, 2004

Give in to the mood piece and bathe in its glamorous nostalgic glow. It's a beauty.

| Original Score: B | Dec 3, 2004

Mr. Lou synthesizes a wide range of styles and influences -- from Casablanca to Wong Kar-wai -- resulting in a movie that, for all its haunting strangeness, seems curiously familiar.

| Nov 29, 2004

Throughout, Zhang emotes like Bette Davis.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Nov 26, 2004

Too often, Purple Butterfly is as impenetrable as Zhang's placid, obdurate beauty.

| Original Score: C+ | Nov 24, 2004

An often remarkable, often infuriating lateral spin on genre material that desperately needs another sesh at the editing table.

| Nov 24, 2004

History is scant or purposefully blurred in Lou Ye's abstruse Purple Butterfly, a war drama with Wong-like delusions of love

| Original Score: 2/4 | Nov 16, 2004

An extravagant, intriguing but ultimately very frustrating period piece.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Aug 28, 2004

O filme tecnicamente irrepreensvel, mas o ritmo lento da narrativa e a auto-indulgncia do diretor Lou Ye simplesmente destroem a pacincia do espectador.

Full Review | Original Score: 1/5 | Nov 1, 2003