Since the last update, 2024 ended and I listed my favorite books of the year as well as my favorite older movies I saw for the first time. I also handed out the Endy Awards for the year.

I dusted off Seattle Screen Scene in order to review Paul WS Anderson’s In the Lost Lands. Over at InReview Online I reviewed a couple of films for the International Film Festival Rotterdam (Miike Takashi’s Blazing Fists and Anselm Chan’s The Last Dance), Rendez-vous with French Cinema (Rithy Panh’s Rendez-vous avec Pol Pot), and First Look ’25 (Yamanaka Yoko’s Desert of Namibia).

At The Chinese Cinema, I continued to explore the emergent iQIYI cinema with a look at seven films starring Raquel Xu Dongdong (The Raquel Report) and two starring Muqi Miya (The MIYA Memo), as well as two adaptations of Louis Cha’s Condor Heroes series (More Condors, More Heroes). The latter of those coincided with the release of Tsui Hark’s theatrical adaptation, Legends of the Condor Heroes: The Gallants.

Speaking of legendary filmmakers, I also reviewed Kitano Takeshi’s Broken Rage, Kuei Chih-hung’s Killer Constable, Donnie Yen’s The Prosecutor, and Ram Gopal Varma’s Enter the Girl Dragon, and saw a martial arts triple feature at the now-homeless Grand Illusion Cinema which included films by Chang Cheh and Lau Kar-leung. Finally, I started what I hope will be an extended exploration of Shanghai Cinema with a pair of Li Li-li movies: Fei Mu’s Blood on Wolf Mountain and National Customs, the final film made by actress Ruan Lingyu.

You can get all those reviews and much much more by subscribing to The Chinese Cinema today for the low price of only $1/month or $10/year.

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

National Customs (Zhu Shilin & Luo Mingyou) – 13, 1935
Blood on Wolf Mountain (Fei Mu) – 8, 1936
The Old Mill (Wilfred Jackson & Graham Heid) – 6, 1937
Confucius (Fei Mu) – 21, 940
Citizen Kane (Orson Welles) – 1, 1941

Bugs and Thugs (Friz Freleng) – 34, 1954
Funny Face (Stanley Donen) – 1, 1957
The Godfather (Francis Ford Coppola) – 3, 1972
Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid (Sam Peckinpah) – 7, 1973
Enter the Dragon (Robert Clouse) – 11, 1973

The Brave Archer (Chang Cheh) – 24, 1977
The 36th Chamber of Shaolin (Lau Kar-leung) – 2, 1978
Crippled Avengers (Chang Cheh) – 7, 1978
Killer Constable (Kuei Chih-hung) – 9, 1980
The Clones of Bruce Lee (Joseph Kong Hung & Nam Ki-nam) – 42, 1980
Revenge of the Ninja (Sam Firstenberg) – 47, 1983

Silverado (Lawrence Kasdan) – 23, 1985
Blue Velvet (David Lynch) – 6, 1986
Die Hard (John McTiernan) – 8, 1988
Young Guns (Christopher Cain) – 55, 1988
Cocktail (Roger Donaldson) – 69, 1988
Wild at Heart (David Lynch) – 11, 1990

Chungking Express (Wong Kar-wai) – 1, 1994
Ricky Jay and His 52 Assistants (David Mamet) – 25, 1996
The Rock (Michael Bay) – 31, 1996
Fat Choi Spirit (Johnnie To & Wai Ka-fai) – 6, 2002

The Hours (Stephen Daldry) – 47, 2002
The Stepford Wives (Franz Oz) – 62, 2004
David Lynch: The Art Life (Jon Nguyen, Rick Barnes, & Olivia Neergaard-Holm) – 148, 2016
Ash is Purest White (Jia Zhangke) – 1, 2018
The Dead Don’t Die (Jim Jarmusch) – 23, 2019

Miss Agent (Zeng Li) – 61, 2020
Queen of Triads (Venus Keung & Wong Jing) – 39, 2021
The Sniper (Chris Huo) – 46, 2021
The Legend of the Condor Heroes: The Dragon Tamer (Zhu Lingfeng & Yu Diao) – 81, 2021
Enter the Girl Dragon (Ram Gopal Varma) – 62, 2022

Lynch/Oz (Alexandre O. Philippe) – 65, 2022
Female Special Police Officer (Zhang Zhen) – 71, 2022
Queen of Triads 2 (Venus Keung & Wong Jing) – 87, 2022
Queen of Triads 3 (Kam Ka-wai) – 87, 2023

Broken Rage (Kitano Takeshi) – 7, 2024
Rendez-vous avec Pol Pot (Rithy Panh) – 22, 2024
Desert of Namibia (Yamanaka Yoko) – 27, 2024
The Last Dance (Anselm Chan) – 46, 2024
The Prosecutor (Donnie Yen) – 55, 2024

Wild Agent 2: Peach Assassination (Huang He) – 57, 2024
The Art of the Calendar (Kier-La Janisse) – 58, 2024
Shell Girl (Wang Xia) – 61, 2024
Sniper 2 (Shen Zhaoqing) – 65, 2024
Cunk on Life (Al Campbell) – 67, 2024

Blazing Fists (Miike Takashi) – 1, 2025
Legends of the Condor Heroes: The Gallants (Tsui Hark) – 2, 2025
In the Lost Lands (Paul WS Anderson) – 3, 2025
Den of Thieves 2: Pantera (Christian Gudegast) – 4, 2025
The Legend of Condor Hero: What is love (Lin Zhenzhao) – 5, 2025
We Beat the Dream Team (Michael Tolajian) – 6, 2025