Curse of the Golden Flower

Time Richard Corliss

This is high, and high-wire, melodrama. It's less soap opera than grand opera, where matters of love and death are played at a perfect fever pitch. And grand this Golden Flower is.

Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington

It's a work by cinematic geniuses that reveals beauty and terror in a long-ago time with a virtuoso intensity. You won't soon forget its mad, lovely sights and sounds.

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

A dazzling costume epic, a spectacle for the eyes and for the soul.

Los Angeles Times Kevin Thomas

A period spectacle, steeped in awesome splendor and lethal palace intrigue, it climaxes in a stupendous battle scene and epic tragedy.

Salon.com Andrew O'Hehir

Another remarkable chapter in the career of Asia's most important living filmmaker. After "Pan's Labyrinth," this is the movie to see this season.

Washington Post Stephen Hunter

Zhang Yimou's Curse of the Golden Flower is a kind of feast, an over-the-top, all-stops-pulled-out lollapalooza that means to play kitschy and grand at once.

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

It's a lavish entertainment that revels in lurid colors and yet more lurid emotions.

The New York Times Jeannette Catsoulis

Since his debut in 1987 with "Red Sorghum" Mr. Zhang has made more controlled films but never one that's more fun. With Curse of the Golden Flower he aims for Shakespeare and winds up with Jacqueline Susann. And a good thing too.

Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer

Exhaustingly action-packed.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer Sean Axmaker

It's more theatrical pageant than action movie, with the showy but rudimentary martial-arts action coming off like just another ritual with the players going through the motions.

USA Today Claudia Puig

The Curse of the Golden Flower is the year's most operatic and visually lavish film.

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

Chinese director Zhang Yimou has made some of the most beautiful movies of the last 20 years, and with his latest, Curse of the Golden Flower, he has also made one of the most deliciously nutty.

San Francisco Chronicle Ruthe Stein

Like a soap opera, but most of what glitters is gold.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

Director Zhang Yimou's ambitious attempt to blend martial arts action with Shakespearean melodrama. It's not a perfect marriage but it offers two hours of solidly over-the-top entertainment featuring incredible visuals and powerful performances by international icons Gong Li and Chow Yun Fat.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

The final effect is stunning, but also sadly impersonal.

Premiere Stephen Saito

Action fans might find the film's first half somewhat of a slog to sit through because of its carefully honed exposition, while those used to Zhang's dialogue-heavy dramas are sure to be surprised by the film's brutal second half where blood spurts more than the words.

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

There are fine actors at work here. Chow is quiet and cunning, Gong Li is haughty and cold-eyed, Chen Jin is sturdy as a ghost who appears out of the past, and Gin Junjie is vividly bratty as the youngest, and most underappreciated, prince.

Miami Herald Peter Debruge

But as Western analogies go, Curse achieves an emotional fervor more in keeping with ancient Greek mythology than Elizabethan theater.

Village Voice Rob Nelson

Like his "Hero" and "House of Flying Daggers," Zhang Yimou's third global-market gigaproduction makes little sense in narrative terms even after two screenings, but the sets, costumes, and cinematography are so intoxicating that it doesn't much matter.

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

Curse of the Golden Flower is a watchable soap opera, but its marching-band martial-arts scenes are little more than weakly staged retreads of the ones in Zhang's "Hero."

The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias

Few filmmakers could produce so grand a spectacle, but Zhang used to be good for more than just eye candy.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey

This colour-drunk, sumptuous late Tang Dynasty (928 AD) drama is huge on spectacle but as devoid of delight as a Cecil B. DeMille biblical epic.

Boston Globe Wesley Morris

As easy as this movie is to watch, it's artificially flavored. "Golden Flower" runs on crocodile tears and corn-syrup blood.

Empire Ian Nathan

Imagine "The Lion In Winter" set at a Kylie gig. You can have too much of a good thing, but it is a good thing.

LA Weekly David Chute

In the end, Curse also looks alarmingly like a dry run for the opening and closing ceremonies Zhang has been hired to direct for the Beijing Olympic Games in 2008.

Variety Robert Koehler

Zhang Yimou's strangest and most troubled film, abounds in hysterical, mannered Tang Dynasty-era palace intrigue and dehumanized CGI battle sequences.

New York Post V.A. Musetto

Curse of the Golden Flower could also be called "Curse of 'Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.' " In other words, it is yet another attempt to cash in on the success of Ang Lee's 2000 martial-arts epic, which will go down in the history books as one of the most overrated films of the decade.

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

The movie has plenty to engage one's interest but little to sustain it.

Austin Chronicle Josh Rosenblatt

To question that this movie is a visual feast would be an act of real cynicism. But as the old Chinese proverb goes, "Gold and jade on the outside, rot and decay on the inside."

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

In Curse of the Golden Flower, Zhang Yimou tries to top the breathtaking poetic spectacle of his masterpiece, "House of Flying Daggers," and instead plummets into self-parody.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

I can say only three good things about his latest martial arts picture, the incoherent The Curse of the Golden Flower: 1) Gong Li deserves better roles, 2) The costumes are astonishingly beautiful, and 3) Ummm...wow, how about those costumes!

Film Threat Phil Hall

Zhang Yimou is seriously off his game with the utterly ridiculous Curse of the Golden Flower, a new epic that feels like "Hero" meets "The Lion in Winter" meets "Peyton Place." The film is worthless as a serious work of art, but it may offer the jaded viewer a surplus source of MST3K-inspired wisecracks.