"It's just a great old wild ride at the movies." Matt Brunson of Creative Loafing felt that the film was a poor reflection of director Zhang Yimou's acclaimed previous works. Bruce Westbrook of The Houston Chronicle though praising the film's spectacular visuals, stated "Visuals alone can't make a story soar, and too often this one becomes bogged down by spectacle..." Kirk Honeycutt of The Hollywood Reporter wrote the film is "A disappointing misfire from a great director." Gene Seymour of Newsweek said: "Curse of the Golden Flower is to the feudal costumed adventure what Nicholas Ray's Johnny Guitar is to the Western. Both bend their genres to the extremes of operatic grandeur with such force as to pull up just below the level of High Camp." However Seymour wrote that the film was overly melodramatic and ludicrous to absorb. The film received a score of 70 out of 100 from 32 film critics according to the review aggregator Metacritic, indicating "generally favorable reviews" and holds an average rating of 65% by 127 film critics on the review ranking site Rotten Tomatoes, and an average rating of 6.42/10. The website's critical consensus states, "Melodrama, swordplay, and CG armies -- fans of martial arts epic will get what they bargain for, though the baroque art direction can be both mesmerizing and exhaustively excessive". Soundtrack Besides starring in the film, Jay Chou has also recorded two songs to accompany the film, one titled "Chrysanthemum Terrace" (), released on his seventh studio album Still Fantasy and one included in his Curse of the Golden Flower (EP). The EP includes his song "Golden Armor" (). Awards and nominations Curse of the Golden Flower won four awards out of 14 nominations from the 26th Hong Kong Film Awards in 2007. See also List of most expensive non-English-language films References External links Curse of the Golden Flower at LoveHKFilm.com Curse of the Golden Flower at MonkeyPeaches Official Website Official Chinese Website (Man cheng jin dai huang jin jia) UK DVD review at DVD Reviewer Curse of the Golden Flower (2006) at Box Office Mojo 2006 films Films set in the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period Chinese epic films Films directed by Zhang Yimou Incest in film 2006 romantic drama films Sony Pictures Classics films Universal Pictures films Wuxia films Films scored by Shigeru Umebayashi Chinese romantic drama films Chinese historical films