Chinese movies that represented the best of art in 2015

Huba from Monster Hunt. [Photo/Mtime]

Monster Hunt, a family film in the fantasy genre, set a new box-office record at 2.4 billion yuan. It was bankrolled by Bill Kong, of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon fame, and directed by first-timer Raman Hui, who has Hollywood experience.

Monkey King: Hero Is Back was the sleeper hit of the year when it became the best-selling animated film in the Middle Kingdom.

Although the subject matter was from the classical novel, which has always been a treasure trove for adaptations, the treatment was more inspired by Hollywood.

Pancake Man and Goodbye, Mr. Loser are the twin winners with Internet genetics. The screwball comedies feature newcomers who are more plugged into the sensibilities of the millennials than the practices of the film community.

Their boffo success (1.16 billion and 1.44 billion yuan respectively) marks the emergence of the new filmmaker generation, who may hail from anywhere but the film academy.

Lost in Thailand, at 1.62 billion yuan, was about the only franchise movie that climbed over the billion-yuan bench. That, of course, is not counting Mojin: The Lost Legend, directed by Wuershan, which is hot in release and has just exceeded the billion-yuan benchmark by the time this article goes to print.

Mojin is adapted from the eight-volume Internet best-seller, which has a huge built-in fan base. The first four volumes were sold to another director, Lu Chuan, whose Chronicles of the Ghostly Tribe debuted just three months earlier to 680 million yuan and general critical panning.

It is worth noting that 2015's best-selling movies received mostly decent (if not stellar) reviews while the terrible movies that made lots of money, in terms of return on investment, tended to fall into the range of 100 million to 500 million yuan.

An uptick in maturity for Chinese cinema can be detected from the commercial side of the business, with more diverse genres and higher production values. But for the time being, artistically ambitious fare is still swimming in the danger zone of the sharks.