Simultaneously more and less than meets the eye, Jia Zhangke's chronicle of a state-run military factory complex being demolished to erect luxury apartments amounts to a subversive take on the talking-head documentary and how we've taken its conventions of authoritativeness for granted. Nine first-person recollections involving octagenarians and teenagers alike collectively account for the life and death of the communist dream in China. The stories allude to major events, such as the forced migrations of the populace during the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, while specific memories are flavored with precise period details like TV shows, movies and, above all, songs (the soundtrack by itself serves an aural history of Chinese pop culture). Delivered in a seemingly nondescript television documentary style, the stories aren't as dramatically compelling as, say, your average hour of This American Life; viewers not particularly interested in learning about China's recent history are likely to be lulled to sleep, and may not even notice the formalist coup being performed on the documentary format.  Kevin Lee