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Also opening: 'The Children of Huang Shi', 'Tuya's Marriage' and 'Bigger, Stronger, Faster'

The Rocky

Published June 12, 2008 at 7 p.m.
Updated June 12, 2008 at 7:04 p.m.

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Chow Yun-Fat, left, and Jonathan Rhys Meyers in The Children of Huang Shi

Photo by Sony Classics

Chow Yun-Fat, left, and Jonathan Rhys Meyers in The Children of Huang Shi

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The Children of Huang Shi

* Rated: R

* Running time: 125 minutes

* The stars: Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Michelle Yeoh, Radha Mitchell

* The story: Based on real events, The Children of Huang Shi is set in the Japanese-occupied China of 1937, where a young English reporter rescued 60 orphans and led them across snow-bound mountains for nearly 1,000 miles to reach the safety of the Mongolian desert. On the journey, the Englishman leans on the leader of a Chinese partisan group and falls in love with a reckless but brave Australian nurse who is both an opium addict and a self-trained nurse on horseback.

* What the critics said: "Roger Spottiswoode directs with old-fashioned style, avoiding the saccharine with realistic depictions of a war-ravaged China (where he filmed) and a cast well-versed in stiff-upper-lip," wrote Jeannette Catsoulis of The New York Times. "The terrific cinematographer Zhao Xiaoding photographs dust devils and bullets as carefully as the luminous face of Michelle Yeoh, whose role as an enterprising war widow adds political nuance to a determinedly apolitical script."

* Another point of view: "Jonathan Rhys Meyers . . . has never quite found the right role for his arresting good looks and what seems to be a simmering Crock-Pot of pathos waiting to be loosed from his soul. This isn't it," wrote John Anderson of The Washington Post. "Really, though, the best thing about Children is the cinematography by Zhao Xiaoding (Hero, House of Flying Daggers), which is so distracting because it so outclasses the rest of the movie."

Tuya's Marriage

* Unrated

* Running time: 92 minutes

* The stars: Nan Yu, Bater, Sen'ge, Zhaya

* The story: A Mongolian desert herder has two kids, a husband who has lost both his legs and 100 sheep to care for, but she can't keep it up after hurting her back and collapsing in the fields. The only way to take care of the family is to divorce her husband on paper and look for a new spouse who'll support the whole operation. A series of suitors lines up, but it's not easy to find a man who fits the bill.

* What the critics said: "Comic and heartrending, (director) Wang Quan'an's study of a woman who's too responsible for her own good has the mythic quality of a great Western - it's all strikingly shot against vast, unforgiving landscapes and crushing big skies - and is as weirdly piercingly intimate as a good Sam Shepard play," wrote Bob Strauss of the Los Angeles Daily News.

Bigger, Stronger, Faster

* Rated: PG-13

* Running time: 103 minutes

* The story: Director Christopher Bell's documentary tells us how, when he was 12, the Reagan-era "don't mess with America" doctrine was boiled down to big biceps and a win-at-all-costs attitude. The filmmaker - who was the only brother in the Bell family who didn't use steroids - examines all his childhood heroes, including Sylvester Stallone and Hulk Hogan as well as several sports personalities while tearing apart the myth of a level playing field.

* What the critics said: "The performance-enhancing quality behind this muscular movie is director Chris Bell's willingness to go far beyond the call of duty. It might have worked perfectly well as a family story . . . but Bell sees the issue of drugs and sports as a metaphor for the overachieving ethos of Americans at large (no kidding) and their ability to see exactly what they want to see," wrote John Anderson of Newsday.

* Another point of view: "Bigger, Stronger, Faster works so assiduously to prove that the level playing field is a myth that at times the sheer number of examples threatens to overwhelm it; it would have worked at half the size," wrote Carina Chocano of the Los Angeles Times. "Overall, though, it's a fascinating and unexpectedly profound and melancholy meditation on what we have become as a country."