For those of us interested in contemporary Confucianism not being able to see the Confucius movie is a bit of a drag (How are they portraying him?  Does it work as a movie?).  We have to rely, for now, on the reviews of others.  And one that I have been waiting for is that of Daniel Bell, who writes a great deal about Confucianism in China today.  The China Beat is on the case and today they have a brief exchange between Daniel and Alec Ash.  Daniel seems unimpressed by the movie:

Daniel A. Bell: The film is not an effort to accurately present the history of Confucius’s life. As Annping Chin notes in her book The Authentic Confucius,
he had only a weak link to the powerful men of his time and a minor
role in their political adventures. As such he was rarely mentioned in
their records. Yet he is presented in the movie as a major military
commander. There is even less known about his marriage – early sources
were written three hundred years after the events, and they simply say
his marriage ended in divorce. So the scenes with his wife are mainly
fabrication (or imagination). The Analects of Confucius is of
course the work most closely associated with him, and it was compiled
within the hundred years or so after Confucius’ death. The work does
provide telling insights of the relationship between Confucius and his
students, so the second part of the film on Confucian teaching may be
closer to historical reality. I did like the part about dancing and
drinking with his students. If it were up to me, I’d have made the
whole movie about Confucius and his students. There’s a lot in the Analects
about Confucius’s most talented and virtuous student Yan Hui and it’s
certainly true that Confucius was deeply moved and affected by his
death. But the movie doesn’t really build up their relationship, and
when Yan Hui dies trying to retrieve scrolls from icy waters, it’s hard
to be moved.

Too bad.  Maybe we need to try another Confucius movie with Johnny Depp as the Sage (on the advice of my sixteen year old daughter), directed by James Cameron, and maybe with Megan Fox, too….