A cab driver and an assassin cross paths in Mann’s nocturnal crime escapade—it may stray into incredulity in its final act, but it accrues just enough stylistic points and storytelling rhythm to power all the way through.
Wong’s expanded version of his short for the ‘Eros’ anthology is more erotic and fatalistic than usual, and also an aesthetic and thematic extension of the world he created with ‘In the Mood for Love’.
This may be minor Spielberg, but its wholeheartedness makes it worth the trip to the JFK airport in New York where an Eastern European man is stuck without citizenship, played with earnest charm by Tom Hanks.
Farhadi’s second feature is, in hindsight, a companion piece to A Hero—while it lacks the nuance of his later works, one can already witness his penchant for telling intricately-plotted dramas about morality.
Told in five chapters in reverse chronological order, Ozon charts the disintegration of a marriage in this well-acted bittersweet film.
Bewildering yet contemplative in true Apichatpong Weerasethakul style, this is a challenging work of art.
There’s a lot of filmmaking artistry to appreciate, and so is the sizzling chemistry between Tony Leung and Zhang Ziyi in this follow-up to In the Mood for Love (2000).
Slightly overlong and its offbeat humour doesn’t always work, but this is one of Wes Anderson’s most strangely enigmatic of screen adventures.
An artistic attempt at expressing and exorcising the ghosts of childishness in adulthood, but Gomes’ feature debut left me cold and unbothered.
Zhang Yimou’s best film of the 2000s decade, this is a drama-cum-tragedy that is never uncomfortable to reveal its sentimentalism amid stunning action set-pieces.
Eternality Tan 