MOVIE REVIEW
24 City (2008)
MK2 International
Perhaps shamefully, this was the first film of Jia Zhangke’s I’d ever watched all the way through; my only previous experience of his work being approximately half of “Unknown Pleasures.” I have probably always held a slight suspicion that he’s one of those extensively garlanded East Asian minimalists who owes a good portion of his reputation to the articulate patronage of the evangelizing critic Tony Rayns. I should probably reassess this reductive preconception because I enjoyed “24 City” very much, even though I get the impression it’s one of Mr. Jia’s minor works.