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With Taste of Things out, can’t recommend this earlier film by Tran Anh Hung enough. Co-starring the coolest cat around Tony Leung, CYCLO is like Tsai Ming-liang meets Martin Scorsese.
Feb 14, 2024
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Masterpiece of 90’s cinema. Airs of Wong Kar-wai and Scorsese, but with youthful abandon turned up to 11. Beautiful
Apr 2, 2025
Wong Kar-wai is a Hong Kong filmmaker and most of his movies are beautiful romances. He makes movies about flashing city lights and Cantonese people smoking cigarettes and somehow makes you feel like romance is the only thing in the whole world. My favorite of his is Chungking Express (1994) about two policemen in Hong Kong with parallel romances: one with a mysterious criminal, the other with a mysterious waitress.
Another great one, and his most widely acclaimed film, is In The Mood For Love (2000) about two neighbors in 1960s Hong Kong who suspect that their spouses are cheating on them with each other’s spouse, so they set out to explore how this romance could’ve began, and come to fall in love themselves.
Another one that is more dark and seedy is Fallen Angels (1995) where a hitman tries to escape his career and navigate his relationship with his underworld employer who is secretly in love with him.
Mar 12, 2025
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A streaming goldmine for cinephiles, Criterion Channel is the antidote to superhero fatigue. I may not like everything but I always learn something and very often fall in love with cinema all over again. Some Favorites: In the Mood for Love starring the impossibly beautiful Maggie Cheung; Jean-Luc Godard on the Dick Cavett show; and Everybody Rides the Carousel, a trippy animated film by John and Faith Hubley. The film is based on the psychologist Erik Erikson’s theories of human development from birth to death. The hand painted watercolors are a feast for the eyes. The mostly jazz score features the legends Dizzy Gilespie and Benny Carter. It has some of the best voice acting I’ve ever heard in a film. In fact, I think I’m going to watch it again tonight. (I have to h/t my daughter Mathilda for introducing me to the film.)
Mar 5, 2024
Top Recs from @barryegan
This documentary on street kids in Seattle plays like a fiction film co-directed by Terrance Malick and Harmony Korine. Such naked vulnerability has rarely been photographed.
Feb 15, 2024
A four part doc series that starts as true crime and then becomes much more, a journey into the rabbit hole of conspiracy, three letter agencies, and the nature of truth itself.
(FULL DISCLOSURE: I was one of the editors, but am so proud of this series, and would watch it immediately if I didn’t help make it)
Feb 28, 2024