One can quibble with the film here and there, and it takes a turn toward conventional sentiment at the end, but it's a pleasure to be able to describe a film as Hollywoodish and mean it as a compliment.

| Oct 18, 2018

...lovely and slight

Full Review | Original Score: B | Jan 29, 2005

See Zhou Yu's Train for the interesting Chinese scenery, or see it to feast your eyes on the always beautiful Gong Li, but don't see it for the drama

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Nov 27, 2004

A film that has considerably less on its mind than it thinks.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Oct 30, 2004

It just may be a movie that has difficulty transcending national borders.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Oct 19, 2004

Li fails to stoke much heat in Sun Zhou's pretentious and symbolic love triangle.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Oct 19, 2004

[Zhou Yu]'s contradictory impulses, as well as a convoluted narrative structure, make Zhou Yu's Train a rough ride.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Oct 15, 2004

The whole thing would be pretty painful if not for the presence of Gong, who makes some of it watchable.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Oct 15, 2004

Most, I suspect, will walk out of the theater wondering why they had to work so hard for so little reward.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Oct 14, 2004

Beautiful to look at but aimless as a broken compass.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Sep 24, 2004

When the sum of this film's parts are measured, it is nothing more than a celebration of the exquisitely beautiful Gong Li.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Sep 23, 2004

Zhou Yu's Train has its strengths, but it's clearly no bullet train.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Sep 17, 2004

A knotty, dreamy paean to romantic longing, Zhou Yu's Train is at once ravishing and precise.

| Sep 17, 2004

Zhou Yu's Train looks good, but there's no denying that there's very little lurking underneath its pretty surface.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Sep 16, 2004

Has a tiny little point -- living solely by one's emotions can be a painful time-waster -- but it makes that point within a needlessly tricky structure and with too much time spent on images that amount to pretty, poetic filler.

Full Review | Original Score: 1.5/4 | Sep 16, 2004

Dramatically, this train never leaves the station.

| Sep 11, 2004

[An] over-conceived, over-edited, under-written perfume ad.

Full Review | Sep 10, 2004

This is one of those languid numbers where slow motion -- and there's lots of it -- is meant to signify poetry, and a line like 'I know my lake is artificial, but it's full of water' is supposed to seem lyrical.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Aug 27, 2004

A terrific film.

| Aug 27, 2004

The effort required at the end of Zhou Yu's Train to sort out exactly what just went down isn't worth the payoff.

| Aug 27, 2004