Popular reviews

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  Review by Jacob ★★★★½ 10

  me, after california dreamin' plays for the 400th time: "PLAY IT AGAIN WONG"

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  Review by DirkH ★★★★★ 28

  I love the stupidity of holding on to what has moved on.

  I love the smallness of the biggest emotion we know.

  I love the pain that doesn't seem to leave but you know somehow it will.

  I love seeing love.

  And I love how Wong Kar-Wai manages to capture all of the above and mold it into a piece of visual poetry, instilled with the melancholy, pain, joy, frivolity and promise our species' most powerful four letter word possesses.

  Even in isolation, Wong Kar-Wai manages to find love in two completely different tales, that pass within 0,01 cm of each other briefly giving the other a glance of desperate recognition. Chungking Express is about our need for companionship, the…

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  Review by Brendan 5

  I always love films about people feeling...lost. It reminds me of who I am. There's this feeling of trying to find a connection to something but there's a struggle as you don't know how to work that connection. That's what I think Wong Kar-Wai pulls off so well with this film. He creates these parallel stories of people who want to connect but are too lost to do anything about it. This is the true work of a master and I can already tell Wong Kar-Wai will be a great director to explore in the future. I kind of adore this movie if you haven't already realized.

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  Review by iana ★★★★★ 1

  sometimes i feel like a can of expired pineapples

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  Review by Willow Maclay 14

  I have this idea of "Shoegaze Cinema". It's filmmaking evocative of the same type of mood that music from bands like My Bloody Valentine created. This is exactly the sort of thing that comes to mind when I ponder the idea of that genre existing in cinema

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  Review by ˗ˏˋ Liam ˊˎ˗ ★★★★ 4

  all the leaves are brown ᵃˡˡ ᵗʰᵉ ˡᵉᵃᵛᵉˢ ᵃʳᵉ ᵇʳᵒʷⁿ
  and the sky is grey ᵃⁿᵈ ᵗʰᵉ ˢᵏʸ ᶦˢ ᵍʳᵉʸ

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  Review by Karsten Runquist ★★★ 15

  I wanted to like it....so badly....but I didn’t care about anything that was happening.

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  Review by josh lewis ★★★★★ 2

  you never know if it's going to rain or be sunny. one of the all-time great Vibes movies

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  Review by davidehrlich ★★★★½

  “We’re all unlucky in love sometimes.”

  Frustrated by the interminable post-production of “Ashes of Time” and itching to get out of the editing room, Wong Kar Wai hit the streets of Hong Kong and — in a blitz of pent-up creativity — slapped together one of the most earthshaking movies of its decade in less than two months. No wonder it moves in such a hurry. Is any other film so captivating so fast?

  Lightning in a bottle, “Chungking Express” bolts out of the darkness to the queasy sounds of Michael Galasso’s organ-grinder soundtrack. A blonde-wigged Brigitte Lin speeds through the bowels of Kowloon’s Chungking Mansions, the world streaking around her, life always in media res. By the time the…

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  Review by maria ★★★★ 7

  finally some good fucking food and not the expired canned pineapples kind

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  Review by Jonathan White ★★★★★ 16

  I first saw Chunking Express a year or so ago. It was my first Wong Kar-Wai. While I liked it, particularly the second story, I wasn’t blown away. Shortly after that I saw 2046, and fell in love with Wong Kar-Wai. Going through the Days of Being Wild / In the Mood for Love / 2046 trilogy only cemented this emotion. My wife bought the Criterion Blu of Chunking, so, we thought we’d give it a re-watch before further exploring the Wong filmography.

  What can I say, I was giddy with happiness. What didn’t impress or move me the first time certainly did on this re-watch. I felt absolutely transfixed.

  What I noticed in this viewing was the emphasis on…

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  Review by Wes ★★★★★ 29

  for my 22nd birthday, i knew i had to watch something that changed everything; myself, my perspective of the world around me, how i view cinema, the kinds of films i only dream of making in terms of quality...few, if any, have rattled me like Chungking Express. its why i found the idea of a rewatch so incredibly daunting. its all so much. i cry at every little thing in this movie. every single time california dreamin plays. when He Qiwu is watching movies in the hotel room with the woman whos asleep. the water stained boarding pass. the way dreams by the cranberries kicks off the ending. i hope every film lover has that special director for them that seems to fundamentally understand you.

  anyways, that was corny (but i meant it) and this was just as painful as it was that first summer. but its nice to feel things again for my birthday.