• Genre: Drama
  • Release Date: 05/23/2008
  • Running Time: 125 mins
  • Director: Roger Spottiswoode
  • Cast: Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Radha Mitchell, Yun-Fat Chow, Michelle Yeoh, Guang Li, Lin Ji, Matt Walker, Anastasia Kolpakova, Ping Su, Imai Hideaki
  • Producer: Peter Loehr, Jonathan Shteinman, Martin Hagemann
  • Writer: Jane Hawksley, James MacManus
  • Distributor: Sony Pictures Classics
  • Offical Site: Click Here
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Box Office

  1. Quantum of Solace, 67.5 million, 67.5 million
  2. The Dark Knight, 26.1 million, 441.6 million
  3. Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa, 35.0 million, 116.9 million
  4. Pineapple Express, 23.2 million, 41.3 million
  5. Role Models, 11.2 million, 37.6 million
  6. The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, 16.5 million, 71.0 million
  7. The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2, 10.7 million, 19.6 million
  8. High School Musical 3: Senior Year, 5.7 million, 84.2 million
  9. Step Brothers, 9.1 million, 81.1 million
  10. Changeling, 4.3 million, 27.6 million
  11. Mamma Mia!, 8.2 million, 104.1 million
  12. Zack and Miri, 3.1 million, 26.5 million
  13. Journey to the Center of the Earth, 4.9 million, 81.8 million
  14. Soul Men, 2.4 million, 9.4 million
  15. The Secret Life of Bees, 2.3 million, 33.6 million
  16. Hancock, 3.3 million, 221.7 million
  17. Saw V, 1.8 million, 55.4 million
  18. WALL-E, 3.1 million, 210.2 million
  19. Beverly Hills Chihuahua, 1.6 million, 90.9 million
  20. Swing Vote, 3.1 million, 12.0 million
Movie Title, Weekly Earnings, Total Earnings

The Children of Huang Shi

As ploddingly familiar as it is good-looking, Roger Spottiswoode’s drama, based on the life of an Englishman who saved an orphanage full of boys from Japanese invaders and Chinese nationalists in the 1930s, distills China’s pain into the story of one white Westerner—plus his romantic interest and a wry native sidekick—making a difference while world history rages around him. Jonathan Rhys Meyers, a 21st-century Irish heartthrob appearing here with hair barely tamped down from its trendy coxcomb and an overcooked Oxbridge accent—is more incongruous than terrible as naive Brit George Hogg, who’s saved from the Japanese by Chow Yun Fat (hogging the light relief as a Chinese guerrilla who enjoys blowing stuff up) and further redeemed when a self-appointed American nurse (a capable Radha Mitchell) dumps him at a barely functioning orphanage. Once there, Hogg has the time of his life planting veggies, fending off lice and foreign soldiers, and finally fleeing with the boys along the unforgiving Silk Road. Beautifully shot by House of Flying Daggers cinematographer Zhao Xiaoding, The Children of Huang Shi is a work from the heart hobbled at the get-go by the anxiety that no one will finance, release, or show up for such earnest material without recognizable stars under the age of 35, regularly paced explosions, and the usual narrative arc curving from despair to slim ray of hope. — Ella Taylor

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