Time Still Turns the Pages (2023) User Reviews

Tissue warning!!!

[justinovoo · 9/10 · 2 December 2023]

Please don't begrudge your time to listen and care for the people around you. This action can save him or her, and it can also save yourself.

The writing is very detailed, and through a suicide note, it tells the protagonist's story, inner regret and sadness, and reveals the mental health problems that everyone may have caused by school or family or even interpersonal relationships. I'm sure we've all been through this. The film makes good use of reverse chronology to make the characters and themes more three-dimensional and touching.

After In Broad Daylight, this is another movie worth watching.

Pages of past and future life.

[donmurray29 · 8/10 · 28 November 2023]

Giving this an 8/10 rating

The screening for this and all the weeks showing were all sold out, and for a good reason, the poster said IMDB rating of 7.8, that is a mistake, it sit is a 8, minimum for this.

Writer and director Nick Cheuk mast have experience on the subject matter dealt in this film, that, there is no doubt, as they themes os suicide, peer pressure at school, domestic abuse, all very tough subjects and need to be handled with care, and that is the case here.

Chun Yip Lo, brilliantly plays the lead in this terrible but extremely engaging story of his grief from childhood and the effect on his life, that an event in his job, brings the past back, which no one wants. His family is a complete mess, and as the film flows back and forth, you see the effects of decisions that have and you can relate to them.

Ronald Cheng, Charm Man Chan, Hanna Chan is just splendid, Yee Chun Jessica Chan is super, more of her character would of been nice, but the main stand out actors who have real work cut out for them are Henick Chou, Pak-Lim Curtis Ho, Sean Wong works real hard too.

This film is another great Chinese film, with so many out there, this one shines brightly, even if if is a tough watch.

... not to mention the clever twist...

[fundaquayman · 7/10 · 1 December 2023]

If A GUILTY CONSCIENCE (2023) is the biggest box-office hit in HK cinema history, and likely the front-runner at next year's HKFA for Best Picture, then Time Still Turns The Pages (2023) is likely its strongest competition next spring and definitely the best HK film for the second half of 2023. The understated performance director turned actor Lo Chun-Yip brings to his role is the highlight of the film - along with Rosa Maria Velasco, one of the most under-utilized acting talents in HK cinema at the moment who is great both on stage and screen - these two manage to deliver captivating performances to the audience and be the glue that keep every scene they appear in solid, whether alone or as part of the ensemble. While singer-actor Ronald Cheng is supposed to be the main, top-bill headliner, but in every shot and every beat he acts with his fellow cast, he shows to be at least a couple of notches below them - especially in the crucial hospital scenes with Lo Chun-Yip and Rachael Leung (who was nominated for Best Supporting Actress at this year's Golden Horse Awards for her strong performance as a mentally-challenged teenager in the film IN BROAD DAYLIGHT, which is constantly being compared to TIME STILL TURNS THE PAGES due to both films' social commentary-driven stories).

There are a good number of Asian films from recent years that deal with bullying, domestic abuse, and their related dysfunctions (be it society, circumstances, or family), with Koreeda Hirokazu's KAIBATSU (2023) being one of the most notable examples of late. Director Nick Cheuk, who also wrote the screenplay, knocked it out of the park with his feature film debut, and TIME STILL TURNS THE PAGES (2023) is worthy of discussion in the topic of filmic depictions of bullying, dysfunctions in parenting and the education system, in the same class as KAIBATSU (2023). As a first-time feature-film director, he had a great ensemble cast (not forgetting the key child actors, and those who were cast to play the leads' teenage versions), and behind the camera he was flanked by a great crew, including Exec Producer Derek Yee (who is also the EP for IN BROAD DAYLIGHT, the other Indy-budget film driven by a Social Commentary premise), and Meteor Cheung as DP (Cheung also was DP to IN BROAD DAYLIGHT). This is the kind of story director Koreeda Hirokazu would have loved to be able to helm, and in spite of all the rants about HK's Film industry can no longer sustain without co-prod with north-bound cross-market appeal, these films (along with the recent indy documentary TO BE CONTINUED... (2023)) really help exemplify the fighting spirit of HK movies from past to present - Producer Derek Yee proudly exclaimed that while big budget films are getting harder to finance without co-prod and cross-market selling points integrated into the film/story, low budget films are where miracles can happen - the reason why he would produce a film with an inexperienced director is so the film can benefit from the passion and innocence of these talents who don't see the hard work as just work for next to nothing in pay, and they are willing to give everything they have to make sure their story is told well, as they may not get to do it again if it fails. Whether films made in HK for the Hong Kong audience can survive remains to be seen (yet this story will definitely resonate across markets beyond north of the border), as not every one of these passion-driven projects work, but the ones that work do give us hope, and that's the fighting spirit that helped to make the mark for HK films in the past and will continue to drive Hong Kong cinema forward.

made an account just to rate this movie all the stars it deserves

[tpvggtzh · 10/10 · 4 December 2023]

My god. As a survivor of abuse and depression i wasn't expecting much from this because directors always get it wrong. Nobody is truly able to capture the pain of a life like that. But this may be the first movie to do so. This film made me cry several times in the cinema because of the pain i felt for eli and his story and it made me appreciate that i survived my past because as this movie shows, not everyone does. Eli may not be real but children like him exist, and this film does their stories justice. It does my story justice. Definitely one of the best films i've ever watched, no doubt about it.

Every East Asian kids might think that before

[yuisummli-13373 · 10/10 · 21 April 2024]

In Eli's favorite manga "Pirate," there is a line that says, "You can surely become the adult you want to be in the future." Eli took this sentence as a belief, but the person who committed suicide by jumping off a building. The bubble of "growing up"burst in his mind.

The lengthy 95 minutes are like a microcosm of countless East Asian children's fantasies. Piano, math class, feather dusters, parents shouting about divorce, classmates who are always better than you. "It would be better if I were dead," who hasn't thought that? Puzzles of different shapes come together to form a strikingly similar us.

Tragedy

[ryanmo-35178 · 8/10 · 6 December 2023]

Supported HK movie recently and went to watch this movie with my kids. The story is about a teacher who found a letter in his class whom wishes to commit suicide and he needs to find out who. Then there are scenes that was his childhood with his brother (I think most of us would think that he is the older one as he is more clever). Although he tried hard, he still could not fulfill the expectation from his family and the bigger brother finally killed himself, which made whole cinema cry. When the time back to nowadays, the teacher found out it is hard to face the death of the family member and his wife, and he finally found out who wrote the letter and settle the issue. Pls prepare tissue if u want to watch.