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Journey With You (Chinese Series)

I've always had kind of a love hate relationship with Chinese historical BLs. Some are genuinely excellent, but then there are others that cram in so much plot that keeping track of all the layers of betrayal and scheming gets exhausting, and I end up checking out mentally. Part of the issue is also just how much content is out there in this space, so something really has to stand out to keep me hooked. In this case, the production value is genuinely impressive, top tier stuff, but story wise, I just couldn't bring myself to actually care about these characters. There's a ton of political scheming and backstage manipulation running throughout. Somewhere in the middle of all that chaos, a hostage ends up falling for his own Prince Charming. The show runs eight episodes, each around 50 to 60 minutes long. After spending three years guarding the border, Fifth Prince Yin Qi gets called back to the capital because of a secret letter, only to end up walking straight into a deadly...

Lost Everything

This could easily have been a simple straight forward film focussing on the closeted life of a famous movie star, but there are a bunch of ancillary storylines introduced here which, in my opinion, just introduce confusion to the overall plot and takes away from the focus of the main story. Also, I feel, ambitions of the film were too high but the treatment was done at a very basic level with minimal production qualities which fails to give it a realistic film at all.

Brian is a famous movie star who comes to Miami for a film shoot and is staying at a hotel. He has everything that one could ask for, except he is in closet and cannot be openly gay. The hotel bartender David flirts with him and they both start an affair. There is a journalist who is watching every move and is looking for the big story when he finds out that Brian might be gay. Then we have all these other ancillary stories of the bartender's best friend who is also gay and has a religious famous father, who has hired a team to find dirt on his son's boyfriend and to kill him off. The guy hired to kill him falls in love with the main, best friend who runs a local art store. Then we have Brian's manager, mommy dearest like lady who arranges for a girl Michele to play act Brian's girlfriend (except Michele and Brian are friends). Weird things go on and when David realizes tht this is not going anywhere, he decides to make money out of the whole deal. He makes a video of the himself with Brian and sells it to the reporter. When the reporter refuses to give the video to Brian, the actor ends up killing him thereby destroying himself completely. Michele steals all of David's money that he made selling his video to newspaper. All the ancillary stories have their own endings and one way or the other most people lose everything that they have.

The direction was strictly ok for the film. And the acting was very uneven throughout. David and Brain did a good job but everyone else felt a bit over the top, or somehow just not fitting into the film. The film is a wannabe thriller but instead it's a bit preposterous and its hard to take anything seriously thats going on. There is a lot of talk around the actor coming out and being a role model for the society but things are so fake that you eventually don't care. The movie is a melodrama trying to give lessons but fails on both accounts. The only good thing was some good eye-candy but besides that there is nothing much impressive to hold your attention.

Strictly below average affair which can be easily skipped. (4/10)

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