Hong Sangsoo Woman on the Beach (Hong Sangsoo, 2006) Coming off of one of his more audacious experiments in repetition, Tale of Cinema, in which the first half of the movie turns out to be a movie the main characters of the second half are watching, Woman on the Beach feels like a step toward conventionality. The two-part form
Hong Sangsoo Hong Sangsoo Capsule Reviews On the Occasion of Remembering the Turning Gate (2002) — May 9, 2013 Is it the remembering of the story of the Turning Gate that leads to re-enacting it, and if so, is it remembering the whole first half of the film that leads to inverting it? What’s the relation
Hong Sangsoo Tale of Cinema (Hong Sangsoo, 2005) A depressed young man talks to himself, narrating his life as he meets up with his brother and then runs into an old classmate on the street. He meets her after she gets off work for dinner, which naturally enough becomes drinks instead. The two resolve to kill themselves, together,
Hong Sangsoo Woman is the Future of Man (Hong Sangsoo, 2004) After finding increasing warmth amidst narrative experimentation and a shearing away of formal adornment, with his fifth film Hong Sangsoo returns to the cruel satire of his debut. A bitter and cruel skewering of the pretensions, hypocrisies and stupid lusts of the modern man, the film is relentlessly bleak, offering
Hong Sangsoo On the Occasion of Remembering the Turning Gate (Hong Sangsoo, 2002) The best of Hong Sangsoo’s early films is this, his fourth feature. Following upon the great leap forward in narrative experimentation that was Virgin Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, with its bifurcated narrative of literal repetition and variation, Turning Gate takes a step toward the abstract. Again the narrative
King Hu King Hu Capsule Reviews The Story of Sue San (1964) — August 4, 2014 King Hu’s directorial debut. He’d been acting and working a variety of other movie jobs (props, writing, etc) since the mid-1950s, and this is for the most part in the vein of his two films as assistant director under
The 36th Chamber King Hu Reviews: Come Drink with Me (1966) — July 10, 2013 Dragon Gate Inn (1967) — July 17, 2013 A Touch of Zen (1971) – March 28, 2021 The Fate of Lee Khan (1973) — April 5, 2019 The Valiant Ones (1975) – May 30, 2024 Legend of the Mountain (1979) — August 7, 2014 Legend of
Hong Sangsoo Virgin Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors (Hong Sangsoo, 2000) Hong Sangsoo’s third feature and his first truly daring experiment in narrative shuffling. While each of the first two films were unconventional, splitting their stories in four and two halves, respectively, they still hewed to most of the basic rules of screenwriting coherence and causality: The Day a Pig
Hong Sangsoo The Power of Kangwon Province (Hong Sangsoo, 1998) Hong Sangsoo’s second feature is much more recognizably his work than his debut. He wrote the screenplay, as he will with all his subsequent films, but did not for The Day a Pig Fell Into the Well. Scenes are for the most part now filmed in static single takes
Hong Sangsoo The Day a Pig Fell Into the Well (Hong Sangsoo, 1996) Hong Sangsoo’s debut is most strikingly different from his later work in its bleakness and formal conventionality[1]. He hasn’t adopted the zoom yet, nor is he rigidly adhering to the master shot aesthetic either: there are insert shots, over the shoulder perspectives, single dinner scenes cut into
Sandra Ng Goldbuster (Sandra Ng, 2017) In her directorial debut, veteran comic actress Sandra Ng gives us a goofy farce, a compendium of horror movie tropes and references, and a sappy tribute to the underdog spirit of Hong Kong’s working class in the days of hyper-capitalism and real estate speculation. She plays a ghostbuster hired
Johnnie To Running on Karma (Johnnie To & Wai Ka-fai, 2003) The first two-thirds play as a fairly typical Johnnie To/Wai Ka-fai cop movie. There are some supernatural elements of course, but it’s very much of a piece with the later Mad Detective and Blind Detective, in which superhuman perception is used to solve crimes long-hidden from the understanding
Evan Yang Sun, Moon, and Star (Evan Yang, 1961) A two-part anti-romantic epic showcasing all the brightest stars of the MP&GI studio. A man, Xu Jianbai (Zhang Yang), looking back on his life, recalls the three women who dominated it, each identified with a celestial object. The first half recounts his years before the war, as he
Chang Cheh Chang Cheh: Visionary of Death “Few in Chinese cinema, or in any other art forms for that matter, dare to ritualize or eulogize death, or see it as the heroic realization and the ultimate expression of life as Chang Cheh did. Death placed on such a lofty height is no longer a tragedy but self-fulfillment
The 36th Chamber Johnnie To Reviews: The Enigmatic Case (1980) — November 14, 2013 Happy Ghost III (1986) — November 26, 2013 Seven Years Itch (1987) — December 2, 2013 The Eighth Happiness (1988) — November 21, 2014 The Big Heat (1988) — January 9, 2015 All About Ah-long (1989) — February 1, 2016 The Fun, the Luck, and the Tycoon
Zhang Yimou Zhang Yimou Capsule Reviews Red Sorghum (1988) — January 14, 2019 “You have red on you.” Ju Dou (1990) — April 24, 2019 Basically a noir in which two young lovers conspire against the woman’s husband. Except they don’t kill him (though they certainly think about it a few times) they just have sex
Jia Zhangke Jia Zhangke Capsule Reviews Xiao Shan Going Home (1995) — January 22, 2019 Soul Asylum! Crash Test Dummies! Man, 1995 was everywhere in 1995. Xiao Wu (1997) — April 1, 2014 Jia Zhangke’s first full-length film is one of his more conventional, but like last year’s A Touch of Sin, Jia in genre mode
It's a Drink, It's a Bomb Zhang Yimou Reviews: Hero (2002) — March 28, 2017 The Great Wall (2016)— February 16, 2016 Shadow (2018) — May 2, 2019 One Second (2020) — September 17, 2021 Snipers (Zhang Yimou & Zhang Mo, 2022) – March 8, 2023 Full River Red (2023) – May 12, 2023 Capsule Reviews: Red Sorghum (1987) — January 14, 2019 Ju
The 36th Chamber Jia Zhangke 14 Ways of Looking at Jia Zhangke — February 5, 2019 Drunk for Life: Music in the Films of Jia Zhangke — March 13, 2019 Reviews: I Wish I Knew (2010) — January 23, 2020 Mountains May Depart (2015) — October 12, 2015 Ash is Purest White (2018) — November 1, 2019 Caught by the
Edward Yang Edward Yang Capsule Reviews In Our Time (1982) — August 23, 2020 Nothing more pure than Edward Yang’s complete and total lack of respect for international copyright law as it pertains to the use of popular music in film. He put two (2!) Beatles songs in his debut short film. Absolute legend. That Day,
The 36th Chamber Edward Yang Reviews: A Brighter Summer Day (1991) — July 27, 2016 A Confucian Confusion (1994) – November 3, 2022 Taiwan Stories: The New Cinema of the 1980s — September 7, 2020 Capsule Reviews: In Our Time (1982)— August 23, 2020 That Day, On the Beach (1983) — May 19, 2018 Taipei Story (1985) — March 15,
Kurosawa Kiyoshi Daguerrotype (Kurosawa Kiyoshi, 2016) Halloween may have passed but it’s always a good time to watch a creepy movie by a great director, and that exactly what Daguerrotype by Kurosawa Kiyoshi is. The artiest of the filmmakers to emerge in the J-Horror boom of the late 90s, or at least the one most
Johnnie To Johnnie To Capsule Reviews A Moment of Romance (1990) — February 22, 2016 As Tears Go By told in the style of the last five minutes of All About Ah-long. Directed by Benny Chan, produced by Johnnie To, Ringo Lam, and Wong Jing (among others), but To claims much of the authorship credit, and he’
Hou Hsiao-hsien Hou Hsiao-hsien Capsule Reviews Cute Girl (1980) — March 18, 2015 Hou Hsiao-hsien’s first film pairs pop stars Kenny Bee and Feng Fei-fei in a totally pleasant and generic romantic comedy. He’s poor, she’s rich, they fall in love anyway. Tsui Hark’s Working Class is a much better version of this
