Continue reading →Signaling what was then a more mature approach to his filmmaking, Hou’s deeply personal recollection of childhood transforms memory into quietly profound cinema, finding extraordinary emotional resonance in the unadorned moments of everyday family life.
Despite its conspicuous melodrama and emotional manipulation, this highly popular Teochew film transcends its shortcomings through the deeply resonating power of qiaopi, diaspora, and the enduring historical pull of Nanyang.
As per tradition, I will give out imaginary awards to the films that I love most or hold in high regard from the preceding year.
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A Diola village is forced to “volunteer” their young men for the French army, while women are asked to give up tonnes of rice in Sembene’s urgent, spiritually defiant WWII work of anti-colonial resistance.
‘Exploring’ features the filmographies of filmmakers that I’ve largely completed and celebrates them on the week of their birthdays.
A transcendent, mosaic-like interpretation of an age-old myth, Nolan’s staggering spectacle finds new meaning in fragments of memory, imagination, and legend—an accessible epic whose audience extends well beyond self-declared Homerists.
Continue reading →A fantastic achievement as a temporal commentary on Taiwan’s historical sacrifices and the emptiness of present freedoms, this underrated third film in Hou’s “historical” trilogy is layered, complex and possesses extraordinary cinematic power.
Defying genre classification, Cox’s cult debut feature is a grungy, spontaneous burst of punk energy—funny, strange, highly quotable, and ultimately asking pointed questions about the fizzling out of the American Dream under Reagan.
A gnarly, maximalist work of burlesque absurdism, this Cannes Palme d’Or-winning arthouse sensation of epic proportions is filled with rowdy energy, visionary filmmaking and fictive mythologising, all of which outweigh its somewhat exhausting excesses.
Though narratively simplistic and less radical than its African contemporaries, Ouedraogo’s debut feature finds hope in self-determination, presenting a prospective vision of a people carving out their own future, away from Western aid and “framings”.
