Ranking All Of Director Jia Zhangke’s Movies
“What are Jia Zhangke’s Best Movies?” We looked at all of Zhangke’s directed filmography and ranked them against one another to answer that very question!
We took all of the movies directed by Jia Zhangke’s and looked at their Rotten Tomato Critic, Rotten Tomato User, Metacritic, Metacritic User, IMDB, and Letterboxd scores, ranking them against one another to see which movies came out on top. The movies are ranked in our list below based on which movies have the highest overall score between all 6 review sites in comparison with all of the other movies by the same director. The process is all very scientific with no flaws at all.
The full ranking chart is also included below the countdown on the bottom of the page. We will update the article if/when a new movie by Zhangke Jia is released. Although it probably won’t be immediate so the scores on each site have time to settle and aren’t overly influenced by the early, usually much more opinionated, users.
Happy Viewing!
The Top Film’s Of Jia Zhangke
12 ) Xiaoshan Going Home (1995)
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 10
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 12
- Metacritc Critic Score: 8
- Metacritic User Score: 8
- IMDB User Review Score: 12
- Letterboxd User Score: 12
Xiao Shan, a temporary worker at the Hongyuan Restaurant, has just been fired by his boss Zhao Guoqing. Deciding to leave Beijing and returns to his home in Anyang, he goes to see a series of people from his hometown who have also been living in Beijing-construction workers, train ticket scalpers, university students, attendant, prostitutes-but no one wants to go back with him. Dispirited and confused, he searches out one after another of his old friends who are still in Beijing. Finally he leaves his wild long hair, the symbol of his life in the city, at a roadside barber stand as his offering to Beijing.
11 ) Dong (2006)
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 10
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 11
- Metacritc Critic Score: 8
- Metacritic User Score: 8
- IMDB User Review Score: 11
- Letterboxd User Score: 10
China’s greatest living filmmaker Jia Zhangke (Platform, The World) travels with acclaimed painter Liu Xiaodong from China to Thailand as they as they meet everyday workers in the throes of social turmoil. Liu Xiaodong is well-known for his monumental canvases, particularly those inspired by China’s Three Gorges Dam project. In DONG, Jia Zhangke visits Liu on the banks of Fengjie, a city about to be swallowed up by the Yangtze River. The area is in the process of being “de-constructed” by armies of shirtless male workers who form the subject of Liu’s paintings. Liu and Jia next travel to Bangkok, where Liu paints Thai sex workers languishing in brothels. The two sets of paintings are united in their subjects’ shared sense of malaise in the face of the dehumanizing labor afforded them.
10 ) Useless (2007)
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 7
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 6
- Metacritc Critic Score: 8
- Metacritic User Score: 8
- IMDB User Review Score: 10
- Letterboxd User Score: 11
Observations of three varied corners of China’s garment industry: workers in a large-scale production line factory; a designer who rallies against the mass-machine-production of clothes and has created the eponymous hand-made collection called ‘Useless’ (Wuyong) for Paris Fashion Week; and finally the simple life of increasingly out-of-work tailors in small town Fengdang.
9 ) Unknown Pleasures (2002)
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 9
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 8
- Metacritc Critic Score: 7
- Metacritic User Score: 5
- IMDB User Review Score: 8
- Letterboxd User Score: 6
Three disaffected youths live in Datong in 2001, part of the new “Birth Control” generation. Fed on a steady diet of popular culture, both Western and Chinese, the characters of Unknown Pleasures represent a new breed in the People’s Republic of China, one detached from reality through the screen of media and the internet.
8 ) I Wish I Knew (2010)
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 1
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 4
- Metacritc Critic Score: 8
- Metacritic User Score: 8
- IMDB User Review Score: 7
- Letterboxd User Score: 9
Focuses on the people, their stories and architecture spanning from the mid-1800s, when Shanghai was opened as a trading port, to the present day.
7 ) Mountains May Depart (2015)
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 3
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 9
- Metacritc Critic Score: 3
- Metacritic User Score: 6
- IMDB User Review Score: 9
- Letterboxd User Score: 6
The life of Tao, and those close to her, is explored in three different time periods: 1999, 2014, and 2025.
6 ) The World (2004)
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 8
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 10
- Metacritc Critic Score: 1
- Metacritic User Score: 3
- IMDB User Review Score: 4
- Letterboxd User Score: 4
“The World” is a theme park on the outskirts of Beijing, sixteen kilometers from the Chinese capital, designed around scaled representations of the world’s famous landmarks such as the Eiffel Tower or the Leaning Tower of Pisa.The site is seen here not from the visitors’ point of view but through the eyes of a few of its staff, lonely people, communicating poorly, a bit disillusioned with life, glittering for the tourists but dull and restricted as far as they are concerned.
5 ) Xiao Wu (1997)
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 10
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 1
- Metacritc Critic Score: 8
- Metacritic User Score: 8
- IMDB User Review Score: 1
- Letterboxd User Score: 2
Little pocket thief Wu never got away from the streets like his friends did. He realises that he is alone, as his old buddy doesn’t invite him for his wedding. When he falls in love with a hooker he is forced to think about his future. Can he break with his criminal past?
4 ) 24 City (2008)
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 5
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 7
- Metacritc Critic Score: 6
- Metacritic User Score: 1
- IMDB User Review Score: 4
- Letterboxd User Score: 6
Chengdu nowadays. The state owned factory 420 shuts down to give way to a complex of luxury apartments called “24 CITY”. Three generations, eight characters : old workers, factory executives and yuppies, their stories melt into the History of China.
3 ) A Touch of Sin (2013)
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 2
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 5
- Metacritc Critic Score: 4
- Metacritic User Score: 4
- IMDB User Review Score: 4
- Letterboxd User Score: 4
Four independent stories set in modern China about random acts of violence.
2 ) Platform (2000)
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 6
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 2
- Metacritc Critic Score: 4
- Metacritic User Score: 7
- IMDB User Review Score: 2
- Letterboxd User Score: 1
The movie is set in the remote chinese province of Fenyang, and spans the turbulent 1980s by following four performers in the state-run Peasant Culture Group. We see the group evolve from workers that are restricted to approved revolutionary classics that praise Chairman Mao, through performance of western classics, after china adopts an ‘open door’ policy, and the effects on their lives.
1 ) Still Life (2006)
Review Website Ranks:
- Rotten Tomatoes Critic: 3
- Rotten Tomatoes Users: 2
- Metacritc Critic Score: 1
- Metacritic User Score: 2
- IMDB User Review Score: 3
- Letterboxd User Score: 2
A town in Fengjie county is gradually being demolished and flooded to make way for the Three Gorges Dam. A man and woman visit the town to locate their estranged spouses, and become witness to the societal changes.
Jia Zhangke’s Best Movies
Jia Zhangke Review Website Filmography Rankings
| Film | RT Critic | RT User | MC Critic | MC User | IMDB | Letterboxd | Overal Rank |
| Still Life | 3 | 2 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 2 | 1 |
| Platform | 6 | 2 | 4 | 7 | 2 | 1 | 2 |
| A Touch of Sin | 2 | 5 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 3 |
| 24 City | 5 | 7 | 6 | 1 | 4 | 6 | 4 |
| Xiao Wu | 10 | 1 | 8 | 8 | 1 | 2 | 5 |
| The World | 8 | 10 | 1 | 3 | 4 | 4 | 6 |
| Mountains May Depart | 3 | 9 | 3 | 6 | 9 | 6 | 7 |
| I Wish I Knew | 1 | 4 | 8 | 8 | 7 | 9 | 8 |
| Unknown Pleasures | 9 | 8 | 7 | 5 | 8 | 6 | 9 |
| Useless | 7 | 6 | 8 | 8 | 10 | 11 | 10 |
| Dong | 10 | 11 | 8 | 8 | 11 | 10 | 11 |
| Xiaoshan Going Home | 10 | 12 | 8 | 8 | 12 | 12 | 12 |
