Since the last update I wrote the liner notes essay for Vinegar Syndrome’s release of Johnnie To’s Lifeline. I’ve got a couple of other essays in the works, expected announcements for those in the next couple of months. In the meantime, I’ve been covering film festivals. At InReview Online, I wrote about Guan Yu’s Black Dog, which played Cannes, and for the New York Asian Film festival I covered Baby Assassins: Nice Days, Customs Frontline, and The Lyricist Wannabe. I covered Japan Cuts over at my own site, with reviews of Shin Godzilla: Orthochromatic, Kubi, Kyrie, Between the White Key and the Black Key, Sayonara Girls, Shadow of Fire, Mermaid Legend, August in the Water, and Moving.

Also over at The Chinese Cinema, I wrote about Only the River Flows, Beijing Watermelon, July Rhapsody, Nothing Can’t Be Undone by a Hotpot, The Valiant Ones, and three movies called Once a Thief.

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

Baseball Bugs (Friz Freleng) – 10, 1946
Pickpocket (Robert Bresson) – 7, 1959
The World of Suzie Wong (Richard Quine) – 21, 1960
Topkapi (Jules Dassin) – 21, 1964

Once a Thief (Ralph Nelson) – 32, 1965
Le Samouraï (Jean-Pierre Melville) – 5, 1967
The Thomas Crown Affair (Norman Jewison) – 16, 1968
Le cercle rouge (Jean-Pierre Melville) – 5, 1970

Harry in Your Pocket (Bruce Geller) – 31, 1973
The Valiant Ones (King Hu) – 7, 1975
Carry On Pickpocket (Sammo Hung) – 22, 1982
Fantasy Mission Force (Kevin Chu Yen-ping) – 34, 1983

Mermaid Legend (Ikeda Toshiharu) – 16, 1984
The Killing Fields (Roland Joffé) – 38, 1984
Beverly Hills Cop (Martin Brest) – 48, 1984
Typhoon Club (Somai Shinji) – 6, 1985
Rambo: First Blood Part II (George P. Cosmatos) – 45, 1985

Golden Eighties (Chantal Akerman) – 14, 1986
Eastern Condors (Sammo Hung) – 10, 1987
Beverly Hills Cops II (Tony Scott) – 51, 1987
Beijing Watermelon (Obayashi Nobuhiko) – 6, 1989
Field of Dreams (Phil Alden Robinson) – 23, 1989

She Shoots Straight (Corey Yuen) – 36, 1990
Once a Thief (John Woo) – 26, 1991
The Raid (Tsui Hark) – 43, 1991
Moving (Somai Shinji) – 4, 1993
August in the Water (Ishii Gakuryu) – 40, 1995

Once a Thief (John Woo) – 90, 1996
Can’t Hardly Wait (Deborah Kaplan & Harry Elfont) – 69, 1998
Go (Doug Limon) – 56, 1999
July Rhapsody (Ann Hui) – 18, 2002

Yesterday Once More (Johnnie To) – 17, 2004
Sparrow (Johnnie To) – 2, 2008
Linger (Johnnie To) – 41, 2008
Open City (Lee Sang-gi) – 81, 2008

Shin Godzilla (Anno Hideaki & Higuchi Shinji) – 8, 2016
Joan Didion: The Center Will Not Hold (Griffin Dunne) – 121, 2017
Destination Wedding (Victor Levin) – 79, 2018
The Booksellers (DW Young) – 100, 2019

Sayonara, Girls. (Shun Nakagawa) – 25, 2022
Kubi (Kitano Takeshi) – 2, 2023
Kyrie (Iwai Shunji) – 14, 2023
Only the River Flows (Wei Shujun) – 24, 2023

Hit Man (Richard Linklater) – 39, 2023
The Lyricist Wannabe (Norris Wong) – 45, 2023
Shadow of Fire (Tsukamoto Shin’ya) – 59, 2023
Between the White Key and the Black Key (Tominaga Masanori) – 76, 2023

Furiosa (George Miller) – 1, 2024
Baby Assassins: Nice Days (Sakamoto Yugo) – 2, 2024
Black Dog (Guan Hu) – 3, 2024
I Saw the TV Glow (Jane Schoenbrun) – 4, 2024
The Spectacular Failure of the Star Wars Hotel (Jenny Nicholson) – 5, 2024
Reform! (Jon Bois) – 6, 2024
That’s Not Entirely Accurate (Jon Bois) – 7, 2024
Nothing Can’t Be Undone by a Hotpot (Ding Sheng) – 10, 2024

The History of Slipping on Banana Peels (Jon Bois) – 11, 2024
Twisters (Lee Isaac Chung) – 12, 2024
Customs Frontline (Herman Yau) – 13, 2024
Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F (Mark Molloy) – 15, 2024
Jim Henson Idea Man (Ron Howard) – 17, 2024
Brats (Andrew McCarthy) – 18, 2024