My Blueberry Nights (The Miriam Collection)
by Kar Wai Wong
from Weinstein Company
Studio: Genius Products Inc Release Date: 01/27/2009 Run time: 95 minutes Rating: Pg13
Bob Dylan's song "Lovesick" could describe every film Wong Kar-Wai has made since 1988's As Tears Go By. My Blueberry Nights, his first English-language feature, continues the Hong Kong helmer's fixation with the concept. Grammy-winning vocalist Norah Jones plays downhearted New Yorker Elizabeth. When her boyfriend takes up with another woman, she drowns her sorrows in the hand-crafted pie served up by sympathetic café proprietor Jeremy (Jude Law in a charming turn). Lizzie appreciates the support, but decides her best plan of attack is to leave town, so she hops a bus to Memphis, where she waitresses while serving as a sounding board for alcoholic police officer Arnie (David Strathairn), who pines for estranged wife Sue Lynne (Rachel Weisz). Later, Lizzie tries her luck in Vegas, where she joins forces with professional poker player Leslie (a brassy Natalie Portman). During her journey, Lizzie sends Jeremy postcards; through her wistful words, he finds himself falling in love. With Ry Cooder's plaintive score (bolstered by tunes from Jones and special guest Chan "Cat Power" Marshall) and golden-hued camera work from Darius Khondji (replacing regular cinematographer Christopher Doyle), My Blueberry Nights reaches for the elegiac tone of Wim Wenders' Paris, Texas as much as Wong's own Chungking Express. It's an odd combination that doesn't always work--the banal dialogue isn't up to the director's usual standards--but lovesickness has rarely been rendered more vividly. --Kathleen C. Fennessy
In the Mood for Love - Criterion Collection
by Kar Wai Wong
from Criterion
Hong kong 1962: chow mo-wan and su li-zhen move into neighboring apartments on the same day. Their polite encounters are tempered by formality until a discovery about their respective spouses sparks an intimate bond between them. Studio: Image Entertainment Release Date: 03/05/2002 Starring: Tony Leung Chiu-wai Maggie Cheung Man-yuk Run time: 98 minutes Rating: Nr Director: Wong Kar-wai
Winner of numerous awards including Best Actor at the 2000 Cannes Film Festival, In the Mood for Love confirmed that Hong Kong director Wong Kar-wai is a major figure in world cinema. As passionate as it is politely discreet, his film takes place in 1962 Hong Kong, where neighboring apartment dwellers Mr. Chow (Tony Leung) and Mrs. Chan (Maggie Cheung) discover that their oft-absent spouses are having an affair. This realization parallels their own mutual attraction, but fidelity and decency ensure that their intimate bond remains unspoken though deeply understood. With a stealthy, eavesdropping camera style and a screenplay created through spontaneous on-set inspiration, Wong Kar-wai crafts an intricate, finely tuned platonic romance, enhancing its ambience with a kaleidoscope of color (most notably in Cheung's dazzling wardrobe of cheongsam dresses) and careful attention to character detail. Deservedly placed on many critics' top 10 lists, this elegant film should not be missed. --Jeff Shannon
Chungking Express
by Kar Wai Wong
from Miramax
Studio: Buena Vista Home Video Release Date: 08/03/2004
Chungking Express tells two stories loosely connected by a Hong Kong snack bar. In one story, a cop who's been recently dumped by his girlfriend becomes obsessed with the expiration dates on cans of pineapple; he's constantly distracted as he tries to track down a drug dealer in a blond wig (played by Brigitte Lin, best known from Swordsman II and The Bride with White Hair). Meanwhile, another cop who's recently been dumped by his girlfriend (Tony Leung Chiu-Wai, from John Woo's Hard-Boiled and A Bullet in the Head) mopes around his apartment, talking to his sponge and other domestic objects. He catches the eye of a shop girl (Hong Kong pop star Faye Wang) who secretly breaks in and cleans his apartment. If you're beginning to suspect that neither of these stories has a conventional plot, you're correct. What Chungking Express does have is loads of energy and a gorgeous visual style that never gets in the way of engaging with the charming characters. The movie was shot on the fly by hip director Wong Kar-Wai (Happy Together, Ashes of Time), using only available lighting and found locations. The movie's loose, improvisational feel is closer to Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless than any recent film--and that's high praise. Quirky, funny, and extremely engaging, Chungking Express manages to be experimental and completely accessible at the same time. --Bret Fetzer
Wong Kar Wai Collection (As Tears Go By / Days of Being Wild / Fallen Angels / Chungking Express / Happy Together)
by Kar Wai Wong
from Kino Video
In the Mood for Love
by Kar Wai Wong
Winner of numerous awards including Best Actor at the 2000 Cannes Film Festival, In the Mood for Love confirmed that Hong Kong director Wong Kar-wai is a major figure in world cinema. As passionate as it is politely discreet, his film takes place in 1962 Hong Kong, where neighboring apartment dwellers Mr. Chow (Tony Leung) and Mrs. Chan (Maggie Cheung) discover that their oft-absent spouses are having an affair. This realization parallels their own mutual attraction, but fidelity and decency ensure that their intimate bond remains unspoken though deeply understood. With a stealthy, eavesdropping camera style and a screenplay created through spontaneous on-set inspiration, Wong Kar-wai crafts an intricate, finely tuned platonic romance, enhancing its ambience with a kaleidoscope of color (most notably in Cheung's dazzling wardrobe of cheongsam dresses) and careful attention to character detail. Deservedly placed on many critics' top 10 lists, this elegant film should not be missed. --Jeff Shannon
Days of Being Wild
by Kar Wai Wong
from Kino Video
Ashes of Time
by Kar Wai Wong
from Cav Distribution
As Tears Go By
by Kar Wai Wong
from Kino International
Happy Together
by Kar Wai Wong
from Kino Video
The expressionistic, stylized visual brilliance (courtesy of Australian cinematographer Christopher Doyle) of Happy Together is so breathtaking and enveloping it nearly detracts from this startling, queasy, despairing glimpse at a gay relationship gone amok. Director Wong Kar-Wai (Chungking Express, Fallen Angels) won the Best Director Prize at Cannes in 1997--surprising many--but on viewing the film it's easy to see why. The subject matter may not be the easiest to swallow--any relationship on the rocks sometimes gets dirty and pathetically disturbing--but there is a universality to Happy Together that rings true and real and less like an edition of The Honeymooners than isolation tinged with the embarrassment of intimacy. Ho (Leslie Cheung) and Lai (Tony Leung) have left Hong Kong for Buenos Aires. The journey is another in Ho's attempts to "start over." But their initial optimism is short-lived, and once they become dislocated strangers in this strange land it only further thrusts the two into their already codependent, caretaking dark love affair. But like all crazy love, the trip through masochistic hell--from violence to apathy--leads to self-enlightenment, and Wong Kar-Wai's gorgeous, grasping film is true, tricky, difficult, and emotionally wrought, aided by Hong Kong superstars Cheung and Leung, who contribute greatly to creating a work that is exceptional--and lump-in-throat brutal--in image, story, and performance. --Paula Nechak
A stunning display of filmmaking style and a fascinating love story evenly mixed into one film. Winner of the Best Director prize at the 1997 Cannes Film Festival, Wong Kar-Wai's "Happy Together" stars Tony Leung and Leslie Cheung as gay lovers living out the waning days of their relationship in this dazzlingly distinctive film.
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