The big movie to see in the Seattle area this week is Johnnie To’s Drug War, playing at the Egyptian on Monday as part of the Seattle International Film Festival. It’s no longer To’s latest film, since his Blind Detective appeared to rave reviews at Cannes a few days ago, but it’s one of the few films with a 2012 date I’m still highly anticipating (along with Alain Resnais’s You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet, which I don’t think has a local release planned yet; the documentary Leviathan, which I missed the two times it played here; and Noah Baumbach’s Frances Ha, which is opening today at one theatre in Seattle and one in Bellevue). Playing at the Grand in Tacoma this week is Christian Petzold’s Barbara, about which I’ve heard nothing but good things and which I might make it out to see. Also, there’s Star Trek.

I made some new director lists over at Letterboxd this week for Richard Linklater, Eric Rohmer and Jean-Luc Godard, and also one for James Stewart on his birthday. Here at The End, I reviewed a couple of Rouben Mamoulian’s early talkies, Applause and Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde, and Sammo Hung’s Vietnam epic Eastern Condors.

Here are the movies I watched and rewatched over the past week, along with where they place on my year-by-year rankings, with links to my comments at Letterboxd.

The Crowd (King Vidor) – 8, 1928
Applause (Rouben Mamoulian) – 2, 1929
Lucky Star (Frank Borzage) – 6, 1929
Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde (Rouben Mamoulian) – 9, 1931

Northwest Passage (King Vidor) – 15, 1940
Le pont du Nord (Jacques Rivette) – 6, 1981
Eastern Condors (Sammo Hung) – 12, 1987
Shanghai Triad (Zhang Yimou) – 25, 1995