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Reviews
Fa yeung nin wah (2000)
The best film about longing ever made.
Countless films have been made about love, whether it's being in love, losing love, or even the feeling of love itself. However despite its title, "In the Mood for Love" isn't about love at all, it's about desire and longing. These are feelings most of us know better than love because people usually want more than they eventually get. It's easier to make films about being in love because it's a universal feeling, and watching people fall in love on screen can be fun and heartwarming. Making a film about longing is much harder, since though it's just as universal as love it's neither as heartwarming nor as easy to convey, and directors tend to avoid the unrequited love scenarios so common in real life.
As you've probably already guessed from my summary title I consider this film to be the best movie ever made about longing. While there may few movies to compare it to it's an unqualified success nonetheless. The plot, what little of it there is to speak of, involves two neighbors who find out their spouses are having affairs, and two main characters trying to decide whether to conduct one of their own. However the film isn't about the plot, it's about the characters, the music, and probably most of all the absolutely gorgeous visuals. Out of the literally thousands of films I've seen this is one of the most visually stunning ever created.
Wong Kar Wai is probably the single most erotic director working today, and while this film doesn't have the amazingly passionate kiss of its sequel, 2046, nor the breathtakingly erotic airplane scene of Chunking Express, it manages to create an amazing sense of eroticism with no nudity or sex. Again it's a matter of longing over love, or in this case desire for physical contact over achieving it. Since the characters can only dream we're left in the same state, and this creates a sense of understanding and mutual longing the audience wouldn't get otherwise. In the absence of revealing outfits or sex scenes Maggie Cheung's various colorful silk dresses become objects of desire, proving nudity or even revealing clothes isn't a necessity to provoke arousal.
Overall definitely a 4 star effort, one of the better works of one of the best living directors.
Police Beat (2005)
Interesting, if extremely flawed, location film.
Police beat falls into the category of somewhat guilty pleasure for me, though certainly in a different way than most films typically relegated to that category.
It's a pleasure because being a Seattleite it's refreshing to see some of the cities lesser known but quite beautiful locations (gasworks park, for instance) shot beautifully on film for the first time. In addition I have to say that while an argument could be made that the African language narration was pretentious I found it fascinating, if for no other reason than that I always thought the idea of shooting an English language film with an abundance of subtitles would be an amusing experiment. There are also some rather funny scenes scattered throughout the movie, some of which work beautifully and others of which fail.
However it's a guilty one because plot wise it's thoroughly aimless and more than a bit pointless, acting wise it's very inconsistent, and overall it's a weak film. I have to admit a bit of a bias since I'm a volunteer at the place that produced and financed the film (nw film forum) and everyone around here worked on it in some way. The other reviewer's comment that just about everyone in the Seattle film scene worked on this movie isn't an exaggeration. In any case if you get a chance to see it I'd recommend you take it, if for no other reason than to see some beautiful Seattle scenery, a couple hilarious scenes, and more than anything a film experience I can guarantee you won't have had before.