It's summer vacation time again. With the huge number of students and teachers going on their long holiday, the film market will be heating up with the weather. As is typical for this month, no imported films have been scheduled for this period, yet there are more than a few highly anticipated domestic works ready to take up the slack. Action, comedy, fantasy, horror and romance, a various amount of choices are here for all moviegoers.
The big guns
July garners quite a few film works, either from renowned directors or staring popular actors or both. July 3 sees the release of two films: mainland director Chen Kaige's Monk Comes Down the Mountain and Hong Kong director Derek Yee's I Am Somebody. While the former has plenty of star power lined up, the good word of mouth the latter has been receiving makes competition between the two unavoidable.
Set during the mainland's Republic of China period (1912-1949) Monk Comes Down the Mountain tells the tale of a Taoist monk tired of the loneliness of the mountains who decides to return to society and ends up caught up in schemes between the Chinese army, gangsters and the Japanese army.
Adapted from the well-known novel of the same name and featuring a group of popular actors and actresses, the martial arts epic has been highly anticipated since the project was first announced in 2013.
While only several short trailers have been released so far, netizens seem excited for the film. On film information website mtime.com, active reviewer Gu Yan wrote that looking at the posters and trailers for the film, he believes Chen has grasped the essence of the novel, which depicts a more realistic martial arts world rather than something coming from someone's imagination.
While Chen's film has a star-filled cast, Yee's I Am Somebody relies nearly completely on little-known performers that normally only play extras on TV and in film.
Choosing to make a comedy depicting the story of the struggles and dreams of extras working in Hengdian town, the biggest film and TV production base in the world, Yee has stated his goal for the film is to encourage young people to follow their dreams.
"I didn't think this could be a Derek Yee film! To be honest, I almost wrote him off as a commercial director who made rubbish films," a netizen going by the nickname Jinxia Jinian commented on mtime.com.
"The film's topic makes me think he's full of sincerity, and the trailers look interesting."
Scheduled for July 16, fantasy-comedy Monster Hunter is another highly anticipated film. Though director Raman Hui is still a relatively new name to mainland audiences, Monster Hunter's cast - Jing Boran, Bai Baihe, Wallace Chung and Jiang Wu - is sure to bring in large crowds.
Hui is actually known for quite a few Hollywood animated works such as Shrek the Third (2007), Kung Fu Panda: Secrets of the Furious Five (2008) and Puss in Boots: The Three Diablos (2012).
The CGI-live action hybrid tells the story of a young man named Tianyin who is forced to swallow a magic egg after which he becomes pregnant with the future king of monsters. A local monster hunter Xiaolan wants to sell the baby for a reward, but everything changes when Tianyin gives birth to an adorable monster named Huba.
Horror season
While most horror films produced on the Chinese mainland tend to receive poor audience feedback, this July will see three films in the genre for audiences' wallets: Chang Chen Ghost Stories (July 3), Psychic (July 24), and Detective Gui (July 24).
While Chang Chen Ghost Stories is based on the scary stories from the popular early 1990s radio program of the same name, it is still unclear which of the stories from the show will be making a move to the big screen; although old fans of the audio series may be able to recognize some familiar elements.
The Chinese title of the film hints that the film may mark the beginning of a series of films. Meanwhile, fans of the old show are just holding out hope that the current film will live up to the old series and won't ruin their childhood memories.
Psychic focuses on a form of ancient shamanistic practices in Asia that are believed to be able to exorcise spirits that linger in the world of the living but also can be used to bring misfortune to human beings.
Though the story about a haunted house and hidden memories is nothing moviegoers haven't seen before, director Danny Pang is a veteran of the horror genre with an approximately 6.5 average score for his former flicks. While not a very high score, for the ill-nourished horror film market in the mainland it's more than a passing grade.
Different from the other two films, Detective Gui is more of a suspense film than a ghost story, yet its scenes of murder and dismemberment fit if firmly in the horror genre.
The detective of the title Gui Xiang is a talented young woman who has demonstrated a talent for cracking murder cases since childhood. Possessing a high IQ but low EQ, her social abilities are further hampered after her boyfriend goes missing.
Setting out to find her man, she becomes involved in a gruesome murder case.
Detective stories hold a certain amount of glamour for mainland audiences, add to that the rare depiction of a female protagonist and Detective Gui may just be able to attract both male and female audiences into theaters.
Small but interesting
Blockbusters are not the only films coming next month, there are plenty of mid-budget works that may pique audiences' interest as well.
Scheduled for July 9, Ne Zha is more of an art film than a straight up commercial film. A film aimed at younger audiences, it depicts a friendship between two teenage girls, rather than romance. Young 16-year-old Li Xiaolu transfers to a new class where she meets a new friend Wang Xiaobing. Sharing many happy moments together time eventually causes the two to drift apart.
While the film features all new names, from the director to the actors, the film won two awards at this year's Shanghai International Film Festival and two nominations during last year's Taiwan Golden Horse Awards.
