Hong Kong Cinema: In the Mood for Love and Chungking Express Review

Wong Kar-wai's films are cult classics of 90's Hong Kong Cinema. Here I discuss Chungking Express and In the Mood for Love after watching them recently.

Chungking Express stars Takeshi Kaneshiro and Tony Leung as two lovelorn Hong Kong police officers. They encounter two very different women, Brigette Lin's mysterious sunglasses and trenchcoat-wearing femme fatale and Faye Wong's Manic Pixie Dream Girl snack bar worker Faye.

In the Mood for Love stars Maggie Cheung and Tony Leung as neighbours Mrs Chan a secretary and Mr Chow a journalist, as they try to figure out how and why their respective spouses started cheating on them with each other. Feelings soon creep up, and romance blossoms between the two.

Let me know in the comments section whether you have seen these films and if you have what you thought?

Also if you know where to get a hold of DVD’s of Fallen Angels and Happy Together without having to break the bank here in the UK please let me know as I can’t quite stomach buying a DVD second hand for £50!!! And the rather stunning blu-ray boxset of Wong Kar-wai’s films is a hefty £149 currently and some people are saying there is an error on some of the discs!!!

Transit Film Review

Transit is a film of many layers, it’s about immigration, fascism, the transience of time and the nightmare of bureaucracy. It is Petzold’s final film in his unofficial ‘love in the time of oppression’ trilogy (Barbara and Phoenix being the other two). Transit stars Franz Rogowski and Paula Beer as spectral immigrants trying to flee France before it is overtaken by Fascism.

Petzold fascinatingly uses Anna Seghers novel of the same name but transposes it to the modern-day rather than the ’40s, creating an anachronistic film that belongs simultaneously in the past and the present, like ghosts if you will. The novel is very symbolic for the director as he was introduced to it many years ago by his friend, mentor and collaborator Harun Farocki and while I haven’t read the novel just yet (I will for sure after seeing the movie twice!) I can tell that his interpretation of the novel is respectful.

“Wer vergisst schneller? Der Verlassene oder die, die ihn verlassen hat?“

"Who forgets faster? The abandoned or the one who left him?”

Many of Petzold’s films deal with transit, he has his characters often on physical journeys that lead them to moments of self-discovery, but perhaps Transit is his most literal and obvious mediation on the idea. Characters are stuck between freedom and certain destruction and as such, they drift around the port city of Marseille like spectres and perhaps non more so than Paula Beer’s Marie Weidel.

She is a woman searching for her writer husband that she abandoned, but out of guilt (and to get a ticket out of there!), she starts looking for him. She rushes around the city always wearing the same coat and very similar clothes almost as if she herself is haunting the place, that she is already beyond the realm of the living. Rogowski’s Georg encounters her several times, often because she has mistaken him as her husband, which is ironic because he has stolen her husband’s identity after the writer committed suicide. What occurs is a cycle of guilt for both characters and they slowly grow closer over the three weeks they are stuck in limbo at Marseille, but there is always a barrier between them.

I watched the film twice in close succession and I definitely found I preferred it on the re-watch, everything including subtext and symbolism sunk in just that little bit more on the second time around. I wonder if it will get even better with the third watch…

screen caps from the film Transit by Christian Petzold showing actors Franz Rogowski and Paula Beer

October Wrap Up: Books, TV Shows and Movies

Did I watch Squid Game? Yes, like the rest of the universe, I'm sure even our alien neighbours in Alpha Centauri sat down and binged the Netflix drama. Let me know in the comments whether you're the only human on earth not to have watched it!

I also talk about the books I read, the TV shows that got me through the month and whether or not Denis Villeneuve’s Dune lived up to my expectations or not as a book reader - click here to read my full Dune Book Review.

September Wrap Up: Books, Movies and TV Shows

Welcome back for another wrap up, in the video I’ll talk about all the books I read (including a semi savage discussion on Sally Rooney’s new book) and my Film and TV highlights of the month of September.

5 reasons why Denis Villeneuve's Dune could be the greatest book to film adaptation ever made

Usually, book-to-film adaptations get a bad rep. Fans of the source material are prone to finickity nit-picking, and more often than not, the screenplay never quite captures the full essence of the story because, in most cases, there’s just not enough time to cover it all.

Of course, there's the odd good one, and the occasional great one, many of which we can thank the late great Mr Stanley Kubrick for. Yes, even The Shinning that Stephen King notoriously hated.

But 9 times out of 10, the consensus is always that the book is better than the movie. But Denis Villeneuve could quite possibly change that when his cinematic blockbuster adaptation of Dune hits theatres in October. 

Here are 5 reasons why Denis Villeneuve’s Dune will blow us away  

He's a fan of the book – and I mean a fan

Villeneuve has read Frank Herbert's epic space fantasy novel many times over; he has an undeniable passion for the material. When Denis made Blade Runner 2049, he took the DNA of Ridley Scott's movie and ran with it, he was loyal but also creative with the world, and that's exactly what Dune needs. Someone who loves it and wants it to be Dune but is willing to make it mainstream in a clever way.

He's done a Book to Movie adaptation before, and it was fantastic

The sophisticated and utterly classy 2016 film Arrival is based on a short story by Ted Chiang, and well, it was unarguably one of the best films of the year. This film cemented Villeneuve’s status as a certified Sci-fi wizard as he turned a rather intriguing and very short story into a mind-blowing theatrical experience that only gets better on re-watches.

It's a timeless look for a timeless book

From the looks of the trailer, we are getting a believable Dune. A much more palatable cinematic version, unlike the kitsch campiness of David Lynch's oh so 80's it hurts adaptation from 1984. If anything, there are some major operatic and Shakespearean vibes to the production. The scope of Dune is immense, and the political intrigue is Game of Thrones-level stuff, and that’s exactly what Denis is delivering.

It's woke

Climate crisis, Colonialism, whitewashing, white saviours – all terms that are very much in our verbal lexicon nowadays and this adaptation of Dune tackles them all.

Colonisers ravish Arrakis, for it is the only place where you can acquire the priceless spice Melange. Paul is part of the problem or, at best, a White Saviour, and if you look at Lynch’s 1984 movie it really was rather too white for an intergalactic society hundreds of years in the future.

For a book published in 1965, Dune is still very much contemporary, its issues are our issues, and really this is the perfect time for Dune to be hitting our screens. It’s pure sci-fi epicness with a gut-wrenching punch behind it. Dune is essential viewing.

In Denis Villeneuve, we trust

Going into a Denis Villeneuve movie is a safe thing; he’s a director you can trust. It’s like walking into a Christopher Nolan movie and knowing something about Time will be in the plot or into a Marvel movie and knowing it’s going to be a fun and formulaic blast.

With Villeneuve, you know you’re going to get great visuals, great stories and above all, you know there will be stellar performances. Timothee Chalamet is the perfect casting choice for Paul Atreides; not only is he one of Hollywood’s hottest talents under 30 right now he has the perfect sad boy vibe that just screams an epic coming-of-age story; I feel like he’s going to play Paul as a sort of space Hamlet, to be emperor or not to be emperor that is the question!