a blog about a lot of things

As always, a giant list. The first 10 can be pretty much interchangeable depending on my mood. 21.  John Wick (2014) - Directed by  Chad Stalehski . Written by  Derek Kolstad.   Keanu Reeves already had experience as the face of an action franchise but it's possible in the future that we remember more for John Wick than as Neo. A film that came out of almost nowhere and managed to simultaneously be a homage and a way forward for action movies. Building off of an extensive source of knowledge of the films of John Woo, Jean Pierre Melville, anime and spaghetti westerns, it's the closest anyone has come to replicating the Gun-Fu Hong Kong classics. The well crafted world of John Wick keeps expanding too, with even more additions to the series in the works. Long may it continue. 22.  Blade Runner 2049 (2017) - Directed by  Denis Villeneuve . Written by  Michael Green  and  Hampton Fancher.   A sequel to one of the mos...

As always, a giant list. The first 10 can be pretty much interchangeable depending on my mood but the ones below are pretty fixed. Open for debate, of course 31.  Udaan (2010) -   Directed by  Vikramaditya Motwane . Written by V ikramaditya Motwane and Anurag Kashyap.  A debut out of immense quality and a film that sticks with you long after you've seen it. The subject matter of father-son relationships could easily go into the overdone or heavily dramatic in a bad way. While remaining a serious and dramatic film, the control over the storyline without allowing any slippage into melodrama is magnificent. The story is not a new one, with the tale of an over-controlling father and a sensitive child, but the performances and the script make it possible to have a fresh feel. 32.  Nostalgia For the Light (2010) - Directed and written by  Patricio Guzman . A very poetic film telling a story about the past, both the recent past and the past so his...

  A Land Imagined Despite my general appreciation for the cinema of Asia, Singaporean films are not my area of expertise. In fact, I think I haven’t seen any at all (at least that I can recall as explicitly Singaporean, though some Indian crime films have had scenes set there when the gangsters are in exile and possibly Crazy Rich Asians ) before I watched “A Land Imagined”. This was a film I was inclined to like and have heavy bias towards because it fit into many categories I appreciate. A film about immigration embedded into a noir mystery, set in a city I have a lot of appreciation for, it was always likely I’d enjoy the film. In the end, my bias didn’t matter because A Land Imagined turned out to be one of the better films I’ve seen this year. It’s a film that starts out with a conventional enough narrative of a detective, world weary and aged, looking for a missing person and having to go to the seedier parts of the city to get information. The story could ha...

Project Gutenberg The thing about Hong Kong crime movies that are filled with action is that I have a hard time being objective about them. Like many people who are in their thirties now (and even older), I grew up watching a steady diet of Hong Kong cinema. For much of my childhood I was convinced Hong Kong was one of the most dangerous places in the world (mostly the fault of Johnnie To and John Woo’s films). I have never tired of the Hong Kong gangster film, much as I have never tired of the Western. And the fairly recent resurgence of quality crime movies coming out of Hong Kong has been something I didn’t even realized I missed until the revival and so I’m even inclined to let a few bad movies slide. However, Project Gutenberg isn’t one of the movies that needs to get a bye since it’s a thoroughly enjoyable two hour ride into the world of counterfeit money creation. With a cast frontline of Chow Yun Fat and Aaron Kwok, the film already comes with classic actors of ...

Have a Nice Day (Hao Ji Le) Some of the best movies are the ones that feel familiar while telling new stories. Goodfellas is thoroughly distinct from any other mafia film but by including familiar themes about “made men”, it allows us to approach the film from a feeling of familiarity. Revionist Westerns also set new interpretations of stories within a familiar setting. And, of course, it’s even possible to take a fairly similar story and place it within an entirely new landscape (such as Avatar). Have a Nice Day is one of those films that seem as though you’ve seen it before and also, remains like nothing you’ve ever seen before. With a storyline that seems to have been heavily influenced by Tarantino ( Reservoir Dogs, in particular) and an animated style that brings to mind Waltz with Bashir, this is a movie that certainly springs out of familiar territory. But influences are only tangential, and the final product is wholly original. It’s a film set in a bleak ind...