Wong Kar Wai - Feature Films, 1988-2007

It's kinda crazy that in the sixteen years from 88-04 he made As Tears Go By, Days of Being Wild, Ashes of Time, Chungking Express, Fallen Angels, Happy Together, In the Mood for Love and 2046. And in the fourteen years since then he has made My Blueberry Nights and The Grandmaster. Sigh.

Well, whatever he's doing I hope he is happy. He deserves it.

It was a great run, no need to make more. Hb wkw!

Just saw As Tears Go By - a lot of standard crime drama content but I liked its stylishness and its homage to 70s crime films

ok but where's my Amazon series

― the masseduction of lauryn hill (Stevie D(eux)), Tuesday, June 12, 2018 2:48 PM (two months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

not sure what to make of the first appearance of Tony Leung in Days of Being Wild being in a dank low-ceilinged room just at the end of the movie

was Wong Kar-Wai was setting us up for In the Mood for Love a decade later

-2nd was

It's the same character, yeah

didn't hate but also didn't love the comedic aspects of Fallen Angels. it was beautiful though.

like so many auteur films, it's something to watch and ponder again at a later date

I do want to see Chungking Mansions

^ this
The slapstick of the mute guy is so out of tune with the criminal romance

I have worked my way chronologically through Wong Kar-Wai’s films recently, and am up to In the Mood for Love, which again seems like just about the greatest film I’ve ever seen. Every aspect of it has such vibes. And for such a seemingly simple concept it has very dense storytelling. It’s like he had an 8 hour story to tell in 1 hour 39 minutes. I’ve seen this movie three times now, but it still feels like it has a lot more to reveal

The highlights of the movie for me this time were the string of scenes in the middle that included the exploratory conversation in the restaurant where Maggie Cheung and Tony Leung reveal what they know about the infidelities of their spouses, their tentative reenactment of the scenes of betrayal and rehearsal for a confrontation, their subsequent acknowledgement of their feelings and the surreal farewell during the rainstorm, and their missed connection in the hotel room just before he leaves for Singapore

there was also a lot of interesting echoing or presaging of various scenes and replaying of scenes with a different perspective

not to dismiss the cinematography, the costumes (so many different qipaos), and two really great performances I think, portrayals of isolation and the yearning for connection, internalized performances that are apotheoses of the actors’ on-screen personae and which are always the kind I remember the most

(love morbs' description of it "ppl in slow motion w/ same song under it")

I did like how there was sometimes extremely subtle and sometimes not so subtle slowing of the frames

the music was beautiful: Zhou Xuan’s “Hua Yang De Nian Hua”, Nat King Cole’s ”Aquellos Ojos Verdes", "Te Quiero Dijiste", "Quizás, Quizás, Quizás”, and especially Shigeru Umebayashi’s “Yumeji's Theme”

loved the scene where they share two separate meals during their entrapment in his room overnight while his landlord and friends played an epic series of mahjong games. also the repeated foregrounding of the noodle container as a metaphor for desire, the clock as metaphor for constriction/estrangement/distance

"2046" was very complicated - three love stories plus a future fantasy, all told in fragments nonsequentially. I hated it the first time I saw it, but looking at it again a second time I thought it was pretty incredible

Making my way through Days of Being Wild and I think the most crushing scene is when the policeman is waiting by the phone booth waiting for the girl to call - then gives up and walks down the street and I was so sure the phone was going to ring just as he moves out of audible range

that was a great scene

(My Blueberry Nights was not very good, but it was so nice to see Chan Marshall (Cat Power) in the film and to hear "The Greatest" in the soundtrack

I hated it the first time I saw it, but looking at it again a second time I thought it was pretty incredible

― Dan S, Friday, October 19, 2018 5:19 PM (forty-seven minutes ago)

pretty sure someone says something similar upthread (and has some advice for a 3rd rescreen).

well I should definitely see it a third time. Can't think of a film I've had such different reactions to between viewings

though I still think In the Mood for Love is his masterpiece

I'm not sure but was Wong Kar-Wai's mistake with My Blueberry Nights his trying to transpose his aesthetic to NY, Memphis, Las Vegas?

makes me wonder if that that film was just an exploration and if he still has a lot more to reveal to us

I kinda thought My Blueberry Nights was okay, it's just so much worse than anything else he has done. But I'm happy it exists.

My Burberry Nights

My Blueberry Nights is a horrible enough title already.

Chungking Express is available for now on the new Criterion Channel streaming site if you sign up (free to cancel):

https://www.criterionchannel.com/

this movie kicks so much ass

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7Ly030AcwY

has any movie so densely imagined been so light on its feet?

And for such a seemingly simple concept it has very dense storytelling

this is almost every WKW movie-- there's just so much going on.

like little worlds, really.

the moment the 2nd story in this film begins, with Tony Leung walking up the camera, is one of the great movie moments. fun fact: i used to hate "california dreamin" but it's hard to hate it after this movie.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IAH-0GKvIrM

also chef's salads are gross

this movie kicks so much ass

has any movie so densely imagined been so light on its feet?

someone should re-dub that scene where they hit the jukebox and, like, papa roach starts playing.

why was chef's salad handheld and wrapped in tinfoil

I never understood this

i love how wong is such a sensualist, and there's such an attention to food here, but so much of the food is (IMO) unaccountably gross. chef salad? fish and chips? sardines? pineapple? ok, pineapple is fine, but those cans are expired.

something very inspiring about a film that's so rapturous over such mundane food.

imagine some american director getting all moony over a big mac.

Wong Kar-wai announced his new film BLOSSOMS as a part of trilogy with In The Mood For Love and 2046. He said he has prepared the script for last 4 years and he’s ready to shoot in the end of this year or beginning of next year #WKWisback pic.twitter.com/d73Cueo39a

— Hang Lu (@hanglutvd) March 19, 2019

coincidentally 2046 is also when we can expect him to wrap postproduction

I thought it already was a trilogy with Days of Being Wild

so is this Amazon series just not happening?

https://www.screendaily.com/news/filmart-huanxi-releases-details-on-wong-kar-wai-web-series-paradise-guesthouse/5137774.article

Wong was previously attached to Amazon web series, Tong Wars, about Chinese immigrants in the US in the 19th Century. However, an Amazon spokesperson said the project is no longer in active development and the company has relinquished the rights.

oh

oh, that's too bad. it never seemed terribly likely, though.

It is in some ways remarkable how steeply downhill non-mainland Chinese filmmaking went this decade. Tsai Ming-Liang, Hou Hsaio-Hsien, Wong Kar-War, neither of them has made a film in five years, no?

well tsai has said he's going to stop making 'conventional' feature films altogether, and hou and wong haven't been particularly prolific for 20+ years....

Eh, Hou made four films 01-07, Wong three 00-07. It really went off a cliff after that, and nobody else took up the mantle.