Eight Taels of Gold 八両金 1989 // Hong Kong // Mabel Cheung 張婉婷 Letterboxd (LINK) The beautiful cinematography has rendered the rural, undeveloped China landscape into a love song, where the authoritarian oppression had been slightly loosened after the end of the atrocious Cultural Revolution in 1989, only in the same year the Tiananmen Massacre occurred… Continue reading Eight Taels of Gold 八両金 (Mabel Cheung 張婉婷, 1989)
#990 Where Is the Friend’s House? 1987 // Iran // Abbas Kiarostami Criterion Collection (LINK) / Letterboxd (LINK) Imbued with affection and humanity, Iranian artist Abbas Kiarostami‘s film, WHERE IS THE FRIEND’S HOUSE? rendered a mundane children adventure story, which has the ultimate goal of returning a classmate’s notebook, into an insightful and gentle exploration of… Continue reading #990 Where Is the Friend’s House? (Abbas Kiarostami, 1987)
Homework 1989 // Iran // Abbas Kiarostami Letterboxd (LINK) A meta-documentary in which not only the interviewees, mostly the second-grade students and a couple of adults, were directly facing the camera, but also the cameraman and the interviewer, that is Abbas Kiarostami himself, were shown intermittently. It blurred the delicate line between documentary and fiction, emphasizing… Continue reading Homework (Abbas Kiarostami, 1989)
#97 Do the Right Thing 1989 // USA // Spike Lee Criterion Collection (LINK) / Letterboxd (LINK) If you told me DO THE RIGHT THING is a new release this year, I would believe you without a doubt. Its messages are still socially and politically relevant today, if not more than it had evoked thirty… Continue reading #97 Do the Right Thing (Spike Lee, 1989)
#984 Nineteen Eighty-Four 1984 // UK // Michael Radford Criterion Collection (LINK) / Letterboxd (LINK) I have read the novel in college, not as an assignment but my reading at leisure, I found the political and philosophical contexts still haunting me even today. Watching Michael Radford‘s 1984 film adaptation of the novel by George Orwell for the… Continue reading #984 Nineteen Eighty-Four (Michael Radford, 1984)
#206 Lola 1981 // West Germany // Rainer Werner Fassbinder Criterion Collection (LINK) / Letterboxd (LINK) LOLA came as the last instalment of the “BRD” Trilogy, though chronologically it was the second film released. Intriguingly, it has a ‘happy’ ending which is a rarity in Fassbinder’s cinema oeuvre, despite the happiness is accompanied by compromise… Continue reading #206 Lola (Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1981)
#205 Veronika Voss 1982 // West Germany // Rainer Werner Fassbinder Criterion Collection (LINK) / Letterboxd (LINK) Rainer Werner Fassbinder‘s penultimate film and the last one that was released before his death, VERONIKA VOSS ironically features an eponymous character of a similar fate to Fassbinder himself. Indeed the film is pervaded by a sense of… Continue reading #205 Veronika Voss (Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1982)
Kung-Fu Master! 1988 // France // Agnès Varda Letterboxd (LINK) A 40-year-old woman falling in love with a 14-year-old boy is the taboo subject matter in Agnès Varda‘s empathetic KUNG-FU MASTER. This doomed intergenerational love is rendered into an innocent urge of affection and attention invoked from a lonely divorced mother, Mary-Jane (Jane Birkin), and a sexually… Continue reading Kung-Fu Master! & Jane B. by Agnès V.(Agnès Varda, 1988)
#74 Vagabond 1985 // France // Agnès Varda Criterion Collection (LINK) / Letterboxd (LINK) It’s regrettable that Agnès Varda‘s masterpiece VAGABOND fails to resonate with me as much as I anticipated. It has nothing to be with the film’s misstep, if there’s any; instead its the fundamental distancing nature of the ‘puzzle portrait’ Varda imparts… Continue reading #74 Vagabond (Agnès Varda, 1985)
#977 Blue Velvet 1986 // USA // David Lynch Criterion Collection (LINK) / Letterboxd (LINK) I have to contend that I like David Lynch more as an artist than a storyteller. Sometimes these two roles emerged in one unity quite harmoniously in the case of Andrei Tarkovsky and Stanley Kubrick; other times the side of storytelling… Continue reading #977 Blue Velvet (David Lynch, 1986)
The Films in My Life (OnCriterion) 