Lost in Beijing (Uncut NTSC All Region Import) Tony Leung, Fan Bing Bing, Tong Da Wei, Li Yu

• NTSC All Region Import, Widescreen 1.85:1
• Language: Mandarin
• Subtitle: ENGLISH, Traditional Chinese
• Dolby Digital 2.0
• 112 Minutes

Shuangxi leaves his hometown for Beijing and soon finds work in a photo studio, hoping that one day he will be able exhibit his own work. He lives with his girlfriend, Xiao Qian, in a rented courtyard, and apart from the humiliation of having his temporary residence permit constantly scrutinized by the police, life is good for Shuangxi, whose first joint exhibition wins praise from critics. However, events soon take a tragic turn when a gas leak asphyxiates his girlfriend and leaves Shuangxi with both physical and psychological injuries. With the persuasion of his family, he reluctantly returns to his hometown, restarting the life that he had been so eager to leave behind. First time filmmaker Shi Lei, a graduate from the Beijing Film Academy, wrote, directed and produced the film, despite being a relatively new arrival to the industry. Unlike his prominent classmate, Wang Xiaoshuai, who made his name as an art-house film director, Shi Lei found his niche filming documentaries for the CCTV Science Channel. After fifteen years in TV, Shi decided that the time was right to return to his cinematic roots, a move that resulted in Shuangxi. The life of a young migrant worker couple who moves into the fashionable nightclub district in Beijing is plunged into turmoil as the wife is raped by her boss at the foot massage parlor. The husband's jealousy and anger is dissipated when he decides to blackmail the rapist, but things become even more problematic when he finds out his wife is pregnant and either man might be the father. LOST IN BEIJING is a controversial assessment of human desires and greed in a China undergoing rapid economic expansion.

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Just Visiting

• JUST VISITING is one very funny fish-out-of-water comedy the whole family will enjoy. It's 12th century France and Count Thibault of Malfete (Jean Reno, MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE) finds his beautiful bride-to-be (Christina Applegate, TV's JESSE) done in by malevolent magic. So he and his loyal servant Andre (Christian Clavier, LES VISITEURS) request the help of a local wizard to right the wrong

JUST VISITING is one very funny fish-out-of-water comedy the whole family will enjoy. It's 12th century France and Count Thibault of Malfete (Jean Reno, MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE) finds his beautiful bride-to-be (Christina Applegate, TV's JESSE) done in by malevolent magic. So he and his loyal servant Andre (Christian Clavier, LES VISITEURS) request the help of a local wizard to right the wrong and bring his beloved back. But the wizardry goes awry and the pair is transported to 21st century Chicago where they mee! t Thibault's descendant Julia (Applegate) and her scheming fiance. With their timeless values of honor and courage, they wreak hilarious havoc as they foil diabolical plots in modern-day Chicago and try to find their way back home.Actors Jean Reno and Christian Clavier, along with director Jean-Marie Poiré, were the creative team behind The Visitors, a French comedy from the early 1990s that was a massive hit in its native land and a cult favorite in America. Enthusiastically compared by some to Monty Python and the Holy Grail, The Visitors concerns a time-traveling, medieval knight and his lowly servant, both lost in the 20th century and both shocked by the discovery of their descendants' reversal of fortunes. The film works not only as a nutty bit of slapstick, but as a cheeky satire about class conflict. The Visitors deserves its admirers, but it doesn't deserve Just Visiting, an oddly inappropriate remake featuring the same cast and d! irector, all of whom are undercut by an annoyingly sentimental! spin on the original story. This time, Reno and Clavier inexplicably end up in a modern-day U.S. instead of France, and the lure of freedom for Clavier's downtrodden character is tied up not in economics but in his attachment to a fetching neighbor. Blame cowriter John Hughes (Home Alone) for turning something that was once sharp into something dull and sticky. With Christina Applegate, Malcolm McDowell. --Tom Keogh

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