I’m currently studying Mandarin Chinese, and am looking to watch movies for listening practice in context (and hopefully pleasure :)). I have not seen much; Raising the Red Lantern and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon are basically all I can remember watching (and parts of Joy Luck Club, I suppose). I’ve also seen quite a few Cantonese movies (in particular by John Wu), but those won’t really help for my purposes.
Xie xie 
A few Mandarin films you might want to check out:
A couple more films by Ang Lee: The Wedding Banquet, Eat Drink Man Woman
Yi yi
Suzhou River
If you want more action-oriented fare:
Hero
The Emperor and the Assassin
Warriors of Heaven & Earth
Welcome to the “I’m trying to learn Mandarin” group here on the boards Windwalker!
I have Toy Story, Finding Nemo, Ice Age, Stuart Little 2 and Dr. Doolittle 2 all dubbed in Mandarin (on VCD) if you’d like to borrow them…oh, yeah, and LOTR:Fellowship and LOTR:Two Towers with subtitles (no dubbing, darn it). I got them for my girls, but they’re too little as yet to be that interested. When we were in China I figured I had better grab what I could.
I really enjoyed “A Beautiful New World” when I saw it on the film festival circuit a few years back.
Hmm, it says Cantonese/Mandarin. Not sure how much of each it is.
Thanks! I hope the library or vid store will have them.
There’s a group? All 3 that replied to this thread? (actually, I’m surprised that I did get that many ;))
The dubbed movies sounds like a good idea, but I doubt I’ll be able to find any around here. Maybe I should check Chinatown…
Hmmm… If you’re willing to spend $20 a month, it might be worth your while to get a subscription to NetFlix. I use mine more for foreign films than anything else.
Try these:
Mr. Vampire is a comedy about supernatural stuff… ghosts, vampires, spells and such, set in the late 19th/early 20th century.
Miracles is Jackie Chan’s re-make of Frank Capra’s Pocketful of Miracles. I think it was very well done.
Well, 3 is a group isn’t it? A small group, sure, but a group!
I suspect China Guy will be along shortly–he speaks quite well and may have some suggestions to offer. There are one or two others.
Where is “around here”? I was serious about loaning them to you. Gimmie your snailmail address and your absolute, sworn promise that you’ll send 'em back when you’re tired of 'em, and they’re on the way.
I speak a very small amount of Mandarin (dated a Chinese gal for many years), and I’m a serious film buff. While it’s near-impossible to name the greatest film I’ve ever seen, if I’m pressed for an answer I’ll name a film in Mandarin: To Live (Huozhe), by Zhang Yimou.
Actually anything by Zhang is likely to be a home run; Windwalker already mentioned Raise the Red Lantern, and Farewell My Concubine is another stunner. (It doesn’t hurt that most of them feature the incredibly beautiful Gong Li.)
If I come up with any other suggestions I’ll drop back in here; I’ve seen zillions of Mandarin-language films, but I’m mysteriously drawing a blank right now.
Well, this won’t help much because I can’t remember any actual titles, but Shaw Brothers and Cathay Films (two different companies) have both started, in the last 18months, a serious project of re-releasing their older films on DVD and VCD here in Singapore (I presume they’re doing similar in HK and probably Malaysia too, but I’ve not been to either place in a while so I’ve no idea).
The important thing being that Mandarin is the ONLY chinese language used in Singapore (the govt was concerned about dialectic differences, so standardised to just one, mainstream language, which I s’pose is a good idea, except it sucks that I can’t see HK films in the original cantonese. But I digress).
So… if you have an interest in seeing some older Mandarin films, mostly from South East Asia, do a search online and see what you can find. (I’ll try and find a link and post it soonish).
Oh, and the group of those trying to learn putonghua might be small, but we’re pugnacious, dammit!
(I gots to learn it, cos my mother-in-law doesn’t speak english!)
Gene Wai Yi Sien
Just thought of a few more, recent local Singapore films.
‘Home Run’ was quite good, directed by local comedian and transvestite humourist Jack Neo (he’s not really a transvestite, but his idea of absolute hilarity seems to be puting on a dress and being overtly feminine. hah… hah… -although my wife seems to find it hilarious!). The film’s based on the Iranian film, ‘Children of Heaven’ (I’ve not seen ‘Children…’ so I don’t know whether it’s base on it, or completely ripped off).
Also ‘I Not Stupid’ which is supposed to be hilarious and touching, but I found it deeply disturbing given the treatment the kids in the film receive from ‘loving’ parents. This is certainly not what I want my son growing up with. But it’s a decent film nonetheless.
‘Street Angels’ was a HK film shot in Singapore with S’pore talent a few years back. And interesting take on the girl-gang phenomonon and how it occurs in ‘squeeky-clean’ Singapore (the inverted commas are there because S’pore’s anything but clean once you live here for a while. ARGH, don’t get me started, that’s a pit thread alone, and then I’ll get kicked out of the country… again grin).
There’s also a whole bunch of lesser known films. ‘Eating Air’, ‘Tiger’s Tail’ etc, they vary in quality, and often the dialogue is predominantly Mandarin with some local dialect thrown in (Hokkien is the largest Chinese dialect here, despite being unnofficial, and is often considered the most ‘funny’ language to use, given that more humour is done in Hokkien than any other language- it also has more colourful terminology which lets comedians get dirty more easily without appearing to do so. (MY wife will go red in the face laughing at some of this stuff, and it’s completely untranslatable, but I’m learning to get the gist of it).
Something you’ll probably find in the US is ‘MeePok Man’ by local director Eric Khoo. It’s actually banned here for sexual content (apparently it’s a bit risque in bits, but it’s also supposed to be quite disturbing later in the film, from what my wife said) but I know there’s a US release. I don’t know the studio. It’s almost certainly in Mandarin because it dates from the early 90’s and predates the Hokkien/dialect rennaisance that started in filmmaking here in about '99.
There’s also a local film called Bugis Street. But I know almost nothing about it, nor where to get it.
Does that help from the SEAsian correspondant?
(and if any other S’porean dopers turn up, feel free to flame away, I’m Australian and been here for a while, so my comments and list are those of an outsider, and for that I apologise. Ok honh? Tida apa orang, tida apa! (or should that be mei guang xi, meigeren).
DG.
-phew-
I typed up a nice list with links to the IMDB and all, but the hamsters ate it. It’s already past my bedtime, so you can look 'em up yourself if you’re really interested. 
Anyway, I’ll second To Live, and add Red Sorghum, The Blue Kite, and Hibiscus Town. Fair warning, most films from mainland China are not exactly feel-good comedies, so you might want to stock up on tissues.
Jack Neo is a decent director (and scriptwriter) but unfortunately he’s no comedian(ne). His cross-dressing gags stopped being funny for quite some time already.
I’m afraid, though, that the Singaporean content in his films will be too difficult for the OP to understand. The usage of Singaporean idioms might be too different from what the OP is learning, and the pronunciation too might pose some problems.
On the other hand, learning a language is about learning about another culture, and since Chinese is spoken in many places outside of China, learning Chinese is not just about learning about China, Hong Kong or Taiwan - but also about significant segments of Singapore.
That’s my 2 cents worth on Chinese-language films in Singapore.
Personally, I wouldn’t watch China-made films if I wanted to learn Mandarin - art house ones are too boring for me, and those that are released outside of China are usually arthouse flicks. The only interesting one I’ve watched so far, IMHO, is Hero.
Taiwanese/Hong Kong films are more entertaining, eg Infernal Affairs I, II and III.
Another film to add to your must-watch list: The Road Home
I recommend anything with subtitles. Watch it once to understand the plot, and then cover up those subtitles and watch it over and over again several times.
Yale had a series of old 1930’s movies with text books. At the time I had to do the “Make Believe Couple” (jiafeng xuhuang) it was ungodly difficult. When I watched it a few years later at the HK film festival, it was really a great film for learning Mandarin. The vocabulary was really superb and practical.
I tended to just watch movies I liked over and over. Again the subtitle trick was a useful one, but make sure you cover the subtitles up after the first time or two. I still watch some of my daughters cartoons this way and pick up stuff all the time.