Dark Matter

Liu Xing (Ye Liu) arrives in Salt Lake City from Beijing to study cosmology under the world famous Dr. Reiser (Aidan Quinn). He is soon taken under the wing of Joanna (Meryl Streep), who is fascinated by Chinese culture. Liu Xing seems thrives in the university behind his pursuit of dark matter, one of the unsolved mysteries in astro physics. But when his theories start to drift from those of his professor, he winds up facing the academic block and finds himself paddling upstream.

Rating: * * +

Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress

1971 sees Luo (Kun Chen) and Ma (Ye Liu), two youngsters sent to a mountain province in China to be re-educated in a Maoist rehab camp. There they run into the village's Little Seamstress (Xun Zhou) and cache of western literature. Amid the stunning mountain countryside, the two city lads grow fond of the seamstress and introduce her to the magic of books.

The film peeps into the insane world of Maoist China. It also highlights that even though Mao stopped a lot of things, he could not stop people from falling in love. Nor could he deny the power of literature. Books open doors that usually can never be shut and have to be ventured into.

Rating: * * *