Dragon Inn takes place somewhere in the desert, the defense minister Yang Yu-xuan is killed along with his family by the malicious "minister" Tsao who is an eunuch, after killing him he decides to spare the life of is two young children in order to catch general Chow who was an ally to Yang Yu-xuan.
Consecutively, when the soldiers that are with Tsao realize that he did not go to rescue the kids and instead a woman (Mo-yan) posing as a man did they decide to follow them to the Dragon Inn where they will stay until they cross the border.
Eventually Chow comes to the Inn and reunites with Mo, the kids and other soldiers travelling with them, around the same time other people who are trying to kill them also arrive at the Inn and they have a few fights. Meanwhile, the kids are in hiding in one of the rooms and Chow asks Jade(the owner of the dragon inn) to help them leave through her secret passage. Jade takes every opportunity to either get money or get what she wants and agrees to help them only if he sleeps with her. Chow being a man of principle says he will not sleep with her but agrees to marry her instead, meanwhile hurting Mo who he obviously has feeling for and its mutual. The bad weather keeps them from leaving and Jade only wants to sleep with him before helping him out. Eventually Tsao arrives with his men and since a lot of people have died only Chow, Mo, Jade, her cook and the children escape through her secret passage only to fight them afterwards. During the battle Chow, Mo, Jade and the cook fight soldiers as well as Tsao and end up killing him. They go back to the Inn to burn it and cross the border after to reunite with Chow, the kids and Mo.
The theme of the movie was loyalty, honor, greed and love.
I found the movie confusing, everything happened too fast and a lot of characters were introduced at once and I lost track of who was who. The subtitles were also fast and it was a little difficult keeping up. It was also very fictional with all the actors flying around all the time and towards the end Tsao not dying even though he had no leg or arm and he was still fighting.
However, my favorite character was Jade, even though she killed people and fed them to her guests she always made it clear that the most important thing for her was money and that is where her loyalty resided. Towards the end I feel like she fell in love and she tried to help Chow and that was also the main reason for her to destroy her hotel and join them. She made the movie be more enjoyable and at the end decided to join the "good guys" and leave her life of killing and hooking up with powerful guests behind.
Not One Less takes place in a school setting on a remote village. The only teacher the school has(Gao), who teaches all the grades has to leave the school for a couple of months because his mother is very sick and the major brings a middle school student ( Wei Minzho) to sub for him. At first Gao is very skeptical of what she can do but he has no choice but to trust her and asks her to please not let one more students leave since 10 had already left and when he comes back he will compensate her. At the beginning she has trouble leading the class and her students have trouble following along, one day a very serious challenge arises and this brings them all together. One of her students (Zhang Huike) leaves to go to the city where will work to help his mother pay off some debt. Wei and her students try to make money so she can take the bus to the city find Zhang and bring him back, they have a few failed attempts and she decides to walk to the city. Once there she finds the place where Zhang is supposed to be staying at but realizes he got lost once he arrived to the city. With almost no money but lots of will power Wei takes on the journey to find Zhang, with many unsuccessful attempts to find him on her own as a last resort she decides to ask the local TV station for help. Once there, the receptionist gives her a hard time speaking to the station manager and she decides to stay outside and ask every guy with his the one characteristic she knows about him if he is the station manager. The station manager eventually hears that she had been sleeping/staying outside the station waiting for him and decides to help her. Since Wei has no money for an ad the station manager makes her have an interview so she can ask the viewers to help her find Zhang. This was a very emotional interview for her and once it aired the owner of the restaurant where Zhang had been staying at watches it and lets Zhang know what they are looking for him. Wei and Zhang go back to the village with the news crew, once there they give another interview and with the help of people who watched the piece they are able to collect enough money to help Zhang's mother pay off her debt. They also received a lot of donations with school supplies. The movie ends with Wei and her students in her classroom using some of the new material they got and talking about their recent experience.
In my opinion this movie has many themes, one of the is the courage that Wei displays as she decides to get her student back no matter what, she goes to look for him without any money and then does not take no for an answer when she knew someone was in the position to help her. Another theme is the poverty in which this students live which causes some of the students to live in the school since their homes are too far for them to go back and forth everyday and they do not have transportation. The same poverty also shown when Zhang who is only a kid has to go work to help his mother.
I enjoyed this movie a lot, I think the way it was made really made the audience connect with the characters with them being real people and not professional actors. At the beginning of the movie they march and raise the flag, I grew up in S. America and we used to do this every Monday as well as sing the national anthem, just like in the movie. That part reminded me of back home.
