Ba wang bie ji 1993

Vincent Canby, New York Times: One of those very rare film spectacles that deliver just about everything the ads are likely to promise. Read more

Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader: This is entertaining filmmaking on a grand scale. Read more

Entertainment Weekly: Read more

David Ansen, Newsweek: Chen's remarkable movie uses an unusual love triangle to telescope more than 50 years of tumultuous Chinese history. Read more

James Berardinelli, ReelViews: A motion picture experience that few will soon forget after leaving the theater. Read more

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times: The film flows with such urgency that all its connections seem logical. And it is filmed with such visual splendor that possible objections are swept aside. Read more

Richard Corliss, TIME Magazine: The scenes in the Peking Opera School, where boys are caned for doing wrong or right, are no less horrifying than the later tableaus of public humiliation at the hands of the Maoists. Read more

Geoff Andrew, Time Out: Appropriately operatic, Chen's visually spectacular epic is sumptuous in every respect. Intelligent, enthralling, rhapsodic. Read more

Derek Elley, Variety: Seductively lensed but emotionally uninvolving. Read more

Hal Hinson, Washington Post: The director carries us through this early history with impressive sensitivity; he has a beautiful, graceful touch, both with the camera and with his actors. Read more

Desson Thomson, Washington Post: Like Cheung's ethereally plaintive voice, the movie is a siren song that's appealing at first, but held too long. It becomes an increasing whine. Read more