One thing I forgot to mention in the last rankings update was that a thing I wrote for the website The Vulgar Cinema got published a while back. It was written to go along with a series of essays on Lau Kar-leung, which I guess didn’t materialize, but it’s a kind of timeline of Shaolin-related stories, mapping all the films I could think of into a generational chronology, from San Te and the 36th Chamber through the destruction of the Shaolin Temple, the spread of its various disciples and their fighting styles throughout Southern China, folk heroes like Fong Sai-yuk, Wong Fei-hung, Wing Chun up to Lau himself.

Some other reviews since the last update include the next step in the Running Out of Karma Johnnie To chronology, All About Ah-Long, and over st Seattle Screen Scene: The Coen Brothers’s new film Hail, Caesar!, the pair of Ip Man 3 and Monster Hunt, Charlie Kaufman’s Anomalisa and Michael Bay’s 13 Hours. As well anticipation is building for the 2015 Endy Awards. Nominations are up now, winners to be announced on Oscar Night at the end of this month. I’ve finished reformatting all the past Endy Awards posts for the new website, and I’ve also been cleaning up the Running Out of Karma, Review and Podcast Indices.

On The George Sanders Show, we’ve talked about Donnie Yen in Iron Monkey and Mismatched Couples and The Bad Sleep Well and Bastards.

These are the movies I’ve watched or rewatched over the last few weeks, and where they place on my year-by-year rankings.

So Dark the Night (Joseph H. Lewis) – 19, 1946
The Bad Sleep Well (Akira Kurosawa) – 14, 1960
Cracked Actor (Alan Yentob) – 20, 1975
Mismatched Couples (Yuen Woo-ping) – 38, 1985
Labyrinth (Jim Henson) – 27, 1986

All About Ah-Long (Johnnie To) – 13, 1989
Iron Monkey (Yuen Woo-ping) – 5, 1993
The Clone Wars (Dave Filoni) – 64, 2008
Bastards (Claire Denis) – 20, 2013
Top Five (Chris Rock) – 65, 2014

La La La at Rock Bottom (Nobuhiro Yamashita) – 16, 2015
Bring Me the Head of Tim Horton (Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson, & Galen Johnson) – 21, 2015
No No Sleep (Tsai Ming-liang) – 33, 2015
O Kadhal Kanmani (Mani Ratnam) – 37, 2015
Junun (Paul Thomas Anderson) – 42, 2015

In the Shadow of Women (Philippe Garrel) – 47, 2015
Anomalisa (Charlie Kaufman & Duke Johnson) – 53, 2015
2015 Rolling (Apichatpong Weerasethakul) – 82, 2015
Xiao Kang (Tsai Ming-liang) – 84, 2015
Ip Man 3 (Wilson Yip) – 87, 2015

Monster Hunt (Raman Hui) – 90, 2015
The Big Short (Adam McKay) – 95, 2015
Straight Outta Compton (F. Gary Gray) – 98, 2015
Delusional Mandala (Lu Yang) – 105, 2015
From Vegas to Macau II (Wong Jing) – 109, 2015

Hail, Caesar! (The Coen Brothers) – 1, 2016
13 Hours (Michael Bay) – 2, 2016
The Monkey King 2 (Soi Cheang) – 3, 2016