A Chinese romance directed by Wong Kar-wai, starring Leslie Cheung, Andy Lau, Maggie Cheung, Carina Lau and Jacky Cheung.
3 men have relationship problems with 3 women. One of the men is adopted, dislikes his adopted mother and wants to find his real parents.
Muddy plot. I watched an hour of it, then read the plot on Wikipedia and turned it off. It just doesn't make sense to me. If my understanding of the plot is correct, it's a whole lot of nothing, so why even bother making the movie? Everyone else online seems to think it's great though. Something is wrong here. I rate this shit in accordance with my turn off policy. Do not watch! ...or listen to everyone else and watch it. I don't care.
A Chinese romance directed by Wong Kar-wai, starring Tony Leung Chiu-wai, Gong Li, Carina Lau, Chang Chen and Maggie Cheung.
A writer lives in a small hotel and dates women. He is writing a science fiction story about secrets and uses the room number of a woman he met there as a year or place to set his story.
Very pretty, but pretty boring. Apparently, this is the sequel to 2 of Wong Kar-wai's other films which I haven't watched yet because of my alphabetical order. I think that the writing was what did this in for me. The camera-work was absolutely beautiful. Framing, composition and creative angles were all present and top shelf. Depth of field and something I can only term "item stacking" were great. Shots were arranged in a way which put people behind people, in front of doorways, between cutrains, etc. The plot and characters just could not hold my attention. In stark contrast to the last film I watched, Nymphomaniac (2013), this had me hoping for longer than usual credits so that it would just be done. I rate this poor because of unbalanced production that its visual beauty could not save.
A Chinese wuxia directed by Tsui Hark, starring Andy Lau, Carina Lau and Tony Leung Ka-fai.
Government officials are spontaneously combusting. The empress brings a former detective out of prison to solve the case.
This is what one would expect from a modern wuxia film. The plot was slightly convoluted, but that may have come from presentation rather than writing. The few main characters stood out and I think Detective Dee came across correctly. The dialogue and acting were very much what I would expect from the date and genre. There really weren't any surprises. Obviously, the sets looked expensive and authentic. There were also some CG shots of large portions of the city. I could tell because they looked too clean and repetitive. The camera-work and editing follow in the same style as New Dragon Gate Inn. Lots of close-ups, quick editing cuts and lots of camera movement. Fighting and special effects may as well be commented on as the same item. What sticks in my memory most is the underground fight in the water area where logs came up out of the water and were used as ground to walk on as well as for weapons. This is another film in which there were lots of impossible jumps and acrobatics, but no real flying. The audio was in Chinese and the version that I got had hard-coded English subtitles. Dialogue, music and sound effects were mixed correctly. IMDb lists a rating of 6.6/10 and Rotten Tomatoes lists 80% Tomatometer with 62% Audience Score for an average of 69.3%. I rate it o.k. because it was predictable. I knew exactly what it would be before watching it.
