The Mystic Nine Side Story: Flowers Bloom in February (2016)

Not that bad

To be clear it's not that good either, but it's still not that bad. Honestly, none of the Lost Tomb stories have been that great. I'm watching them in order and so far none of them make me want to recommend them. Chronologically, I couldn't tell if this was before or after Mystic Nine. They didn't mention any years that I can remember. Perhaps that was on purpose.
As in the others the action here is good. The tomb is nicely done albeit small and they're not in the tomb for very long.

While Mystic Nine wants to drill in how horrible the Japanese were (like the Chinese are any better ..ok I'll put my sociopolitical pov away), this side story bashes you over the head with it. Quite frankly, it's annoying. The writing is lacklustre. The acting is just ok. No one is winning any prizes here. The production could be better, but I don't think this was a theatrical release, at least I hope not. I will say I liked Er Ye much better here since he wasn't screaming Ya Tou every 3 minutes.

The acting...wait was there acting? Like I said above no one is winning any awards although I did enjoy the performance of Mo Yuan Di, who is an actual Chinese opera theatre actor. I found the voices of the 2 main Japanese characters annoying. It's rather hard to judge acting when most if not the entire movie has been dubbed and this one was obviously dubbed probably from Canto to Mando. (Most English subs are done on the Mandarin dubs.) Anyway, many times the voices and mouths weren't synced.

Generally speaking, I don't do re-watches of dramas, but movies I do. However, I will not be rewatching this one. I have no interest in seeing it again. The music suited the movie.

Overall, it's not bad to watch on a Saturday afternoon movie binge, but don't make this any kind of highlight. If you do, you will sour.

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Watch At Your Own Demise

My god where do I begin... this movie can be summed uo wuth one word. And you guessed it! BAD! Utter hot garbage.

The story waa so bad and plain. Meaningless deaths, it was overall unnecessary. Actually the whole movie is unnecessary. Too much was spent on trying to make Er Ye look cool that it looks cheesy and cringey.

Production was below quality. I was expecting movies to look better/ be more detailed than dramas, but this just looks cheap. Although the Buddha Tomb looked great though, pretty much the only nice thing about the drama. So much green screen/CGI was used for pointless shots.

Don't get me started on the acting. Bland as ever. Lay was better in the Mystic Nine drama than here. Everyone else is just...sigh*

Anyways, I thought this movie was a waste of time. After watching Chen Pi's & Jiu Ye's movies being pretty good and ok, Er Ye's is definitely worst out of the bunch.

So, if you've read this far, heed my warning lol Don't bother watching unless you have time to kill and you are beyond bored. Or you're Lay's super fan then I guess.
Watch at your own demise.

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