These are the 2018 Endy Awards, wherein I pretend to give out maneki-neko statues to the best movies, performances, etc of that year in film. Awards for many other years can be found in the Rankings & Awards Index. Eligibility is determined by imdb date and by whether or not I’ve seen the movie in question. And the Endy goes to. . .
This Week in Rankings
Since the last rankings update I wrote about Bi Gan’s Long Day’s Journey into Night over at The Chinese Cinema and Shunji Iwai’s Last Letter at Mubi. Over at Seattle Screen Scene I reviewed Frederick Wiseman’s Monrovia, Indiana, Naoko Yamada’s Liz and the Blue Bird, Kim Sunghoon’s Rampant, John Carpenter’s The Fog, and RaMell Ross’s Hale County This Morning, This Evening. Over at Frame.land I contributed a review of Raymond Bernard’s Wooden Crosses.
If you like what I do here or at Seattle Screen Scene, The Chinese Cinema, or anywhere else, please consider donating at my kofi page. Every little bit helps.
These are the movies I’ve watched or rewatched over the last few weeks, and where they place on my year-by-year rankings.
Wooden Crosses (Raymond Bernard) – 4, 1932
The Road to Glory (Howard Hawks) – 17, 1936
It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown (Bill Melendez) – 4, 1966
A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving (Bill Melendez & Phil Roman) – 37, 1973
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (Tobe Hooper) – 7, 1974
Halloween (John Carpenter) – 7, 1978
The Fog (John Carpenter) – 11, 1980
Fireworks, Should We See It from the Side or the Bottom? (Shunji Iwai) – 27, 1993
The Nightmare Before Christmas (Henry Selick) – 30, 1993
City Hunter (Wong Jing) – 56, 1993
Love Letter (Shunji Iwai) – 11, 1995
All About Lily Chou-chou (Shunji Iwai) – 10, 2001
Hana and Alice (Shunji Iwai) – 6, 2004
Little Forest: Summer/Autumn (Junichi Mori) – 36, 2014
Kaili Blues (Bi Gan) – 11, 2015
Little Forest: Winter/Spring (Junichi Mori) – 41, 2015
The Rider (Chloé Zhao) – 51, 2017
Let the Corpses Tan (Hélène Cattet & Bruno Forzani) – 75, 2017
First Reformed (Paul Schrader) – 85, 2017
You Were Never Really Here (Lynne Ramsay) – 97, 2017
Liz and the Blue Bird (Naoko Yamada) – 6, 2018
The Other Side of the Wind (Orson Welles) – 10, 2018
Long Day’s Journey Into Night (Bi Gan) – 11, 2018
Last Letter (Shunji Iwai) – 12, 2018
Monrovia, Indiana (Frederick Wiseman) – 15, 2018
The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (Joel & Ethan Coen) – 17, 2018
Hale County This Morning, This Evening (RaMell Ross) – 21, 2018
Madeline’s Madeline (Josephine Decker) – 22, 2018
Minding the Gap (Bing Liu) – 23, 2018
Shirkers (Sandi Tan) – 24, 2018
A Star is Born (Bradley Cooper) – 25, 2018
Shoot the Moon Right Between the Eyes (Graham Carter) – 34, 2018
Burning (Lee Changdong) – 39, 2018
Destination Wedding (Victor Levin) – 50,2018
Hereditary (Ari Aster) – 51, 2018
The Gilligan Manifesto (Cekin Soling) – 53, 2018
Eighth Grade (Bo Burnham) – 54, 2018
Cam (Daniel Goldhaber) – 55, 2018
They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead (Morgan Neville) – 57, 2018
Suspiria (Luca Guadagnino) – 65, 2018
To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before (Susan Johnson) – 66, 2018
The Great Buster (Peter Bogdanovich) – 67, 2018
Can You Ever Forgive Me? (Marielle Hunter) – 81, 2018
Widows (Steve McQueen) – 85, 2018
Won’t You be My Neighbor? (Morgan Neville) – 92, 2018
Illang: the Wolf Brigade (Kim Jiwoon) – 93, 2018
Bohemian Rhapsody (Bryan Singer) – 94, 2018
The Nutcracker and the Four Realms (Lasse Hallström & Joe Johnston) – 100, 2018
Rampant (Kim Sunghoon) – 104, 2018
Crazy Rich Asians (Jon Chu) – 105, 2018
This Week in Rankings
Since the last rankings update, I’ve been to the Vancouver Film Festival, where I saw a whole lot of movies and wrote about a few of them: Mirai, Asako I & II, Diamantino, Spice It Up; and talked about a few more on The Frances Farmer Show. Also at Seattle Screen Scene I’ve written about Bisbee ’17, Golden Job, The Great Battle, In the Intense Now, Cielo, and Big Brother. Here at The End I posted my annual Top 100 Films of All-Time list.
Over at The Chinese Cinema, I wrote about Hong Sangsoo’s short film List, and A City of Sadness and the Hou Hsiao-hsien series that played in Austin. At Mubi I wrote about the Shaw Brothers Horror series playing at the Metrograph. At InReview Online I’m contributing to their retrospective on the career of Hong Sangsoo, with my look at On the Occasion of Remembering the Turning Gate up already and a couple more (on Our Sunhi and Claire’s Camera) going up in the next few days.
If you like what I do here or at Seattle Screen Scene, The Chinese Cinema, or anywhere else, please consider donating at my kofi page. Every little bit helps.
These are the movies I’ve watched or rewatched over the last few weeks, and where they place on my year-by-year rankings.
Attack on a China Mission (James Williamson) – 1, 1900
Black Magic (Ho Meng-hua) – 24, 1975
Black Magic II (Ho Meng-hua) – 32, 1976
The Ghost Story (Li Han-hsiang) – 31, 1979
Bewitched (Kuei Chih-hung) – 25, 1981
Human Lanterns (Sun Chung) – 33, 1982
Centipede Horror (Keith Li) – 38, 1982
The Boxer’s Omen (Kuei Chih-hung) – 14, 1983
Seeding of a Ghost (Richard Yeung Kuen) – 29, 1983
A City of Sadness (Hou Hsiao-hsien) – 3, 1989
Cabin Boy (Adam Resnick) – 17, 1994
The Matrix (Lana & Lilly Wachowski) – 3, 1999
The Matrix Reloaded (Lana & Lilly Wachowski) – 14, 2003
The Matrix Revolutions (Lana & Lilly Wachowski) – 30, 2003
List (Hong Sangsoo) – 8, 2011
Boundless (Ferris Lin) – 35, 2013
Maybe If It Were a Nice Room (Alicia Harris) – 149, 2016
Pumpkin Movie (Sophy Romvari) – 29, 2017
One Cut of the Dead (Shinichirou Ueda) – 46, 2017
The Running Actress (Moon Sori) – 51, 2017
In the Intense Now (João Moreira Salles) – 59, 2017
Cielo (Alison McAlpine) – 87, 2017
Ash is Purest White (Jia Zhangke) – 1, 2018
Asako I & II (Ryusūke Hamaguchi) – 2, 2018
Blackkklansman (Spike Lee) – 5, 2018
Transit (Christian Petzold) – 6, 2018
Cold War (Pawel Pawlikowski) – 7, 2018
The Grand Bizarre (Jodie Mack) – 8, 2018
Long Day’s Journey into Night (Bi Gan) – 9, 2018
What You Gonna Do When the World’s on Fire? (Roberto Minervini) – 10, 2018
Bisbee ’17 (Robert Greene) – 11, 2018
A Simple Favor (Paul Feig) – 13, 2018
John McEnroe: In the Realm of Perfection (Julien Faraut) – 15, 2018
Non-Fiction (Olivier Assayas) – 16, 2018
Mirai (Mamoru Hosada) – 20, 2018
La cartographe (Nathan Douglas) – 21, 2018
Hotel by the River (Hong Sangsoo) – 22, 2018
Veslemøy’s Song (Sofia Bohdanowicz) – 23, 2018
No. 1 Chung Ying Street (Derek Chiu) – 24, 2018
Norman Norman (Sophy Romvari) – 25, 2018
Where (Sofia Bohdanowicz) – 26, 2018
The Eyes of Orson Welles (Mark Cousins) – 27, 2018
The Image Book (Jean-Luc Godard) – 28, 2018
Spice It Up (Lev Lewis, Yonah Lewis & Calvin Thomas) – 29, 2018
Roy Thomson (Sofia Bohdanowicz) – 30, 2018
Diamantino (Gabriel Abrantes & Daniel Schmidt) – 32, 2018
Mangoshake (Terry Chiu) – 33, 2018
Shoplifters (Koreeda Hirokazu) – 34, 2018
A Land Imagined (Siew Hua Yeo) – 35, 2018
The Wolf House (Cristóbal León & Joaquín Cociña) – 36, 2018
Turbine (Alex Boya) – 46, 2018
The Wild Pear Tree (Nuri Bilge Ceylan) – 47, 2018
Lush Reeds (Yang Yishu) – 49, 2018
Manta Ray (Phuttiphong Aroonpheng) – 50, 2018
Hole (G. Goletski) – 52, 2018
A Family Tour (Ying Liang) – 53, 2018
The Old Man & the Gun (David Lowery) – 55, 2018
The Great Battle (Kim Kwangsik) – 63, 2018
The Darling (Lee Seungyup) – 66, 2018
From Across the Street and Through Two Sets of Windows (Steven McCarthy) – 68, 2018
The Soft Space (Sofia Bohdanowicz) – 70, 2018
Waiting for April (Olivier Godin) – 71, 2018
Shadow (Zhang Yimou) – 72, 2018
Set It Up (Claire Scanlon) – 73, 2018
Golden Job (Chin Ka-lok) – 77, 2018
Big Brother (Kam Ka-wai) – 78, 2018
7A (Zachary Russell) – 79, 2018
Seder-Masochism (Nina Paley) – 83, 2018
Paddock (Michel Kandinsky) – 84, 2018
A Top 100 Films of All-Time
It is time once again for a Top 100 Films of All-Time list. As I’ve done for the last few years, the first ten spots on the list comprise a hypothetical Sight & Sound-style ballot. We had an on-going project related to this on The George Sanders Show, that will now be based at Seattle Screen Scene. This top ten is presented here in chronological order. The remaining 90 films were randomly selected from a consideration set of 446 films, which excluded films that made my Top Tens in 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2017.
1. Morocco (Josef von Sternberg, 1930)
2. Bringing Up Baby (Howard Hawks, 1938)
3. A Canterbury Tale (Michael Powell & Emeric Presburger, 1944)
4. Johnny Guitar (Nicholas Ray, 1954)
5. I am Cuba (Mikhail Kalatozov, 1964)
6. Police Story (Jackie Chan, 1985)
7. Kiki’s Delivery Service (Hayao Miyazaki, 1989)
8. A Brighter Summer Day (Edward Yang, 1991)
9. The Matrix (Lana & Lilly Wachowski, 1999)
10. Kung Fu Hustle (Stephen Chow, 2004)
11. Histoire(s) du cinéma (Jean-Luc Godard, 1988-1998)
12. The Color of Pomegranates (Sergei Parajanov, 1969)
13. Lonesome (Paul Fejos, 1928)
14. Romancing in Thin Air (Johnnie To, 2012)
15. Heaven’s Gate (Michael Cimino, 1980)
16. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (John Ford, 1962)
17. Applause (Rouben Mamoulian, 1929)
18. Do the Right Thing (Spike Lee, 1989)
19. I’m Not There (Todd Haynes, 2007)
20. The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (Joseph Sargent, 1974)
21. La danse (Frederick Wiseman, 2009)
22. The Philadelphia Story (George Cukor, 1940)
23. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (Tobe Hooper, 1974)
24. In a Lonely Place (Nicholas Ray, 1950)
25. Red Cliff (John Woo, 2008)
26. Don’t Look Back (DA Pennebaker, 1967)
27. The Good, the Bad & the Ugly (Sergio Leone, 1966)
28. Raining in the Mountain (King Hu, 1979)
29. Love Exposure (Sion Sono, 2008)
30. Japanese Girls at the Harbor (Hiroshi Shimizu, 1933)
31. The Royal Tenenbaums (Wes Anderson, 2001)
32. Starship Troopers (Paul Verhoeven, 1997)
33. One Week (Buster Keaton & Edward F. Cline, 1920)
34. A Better Tomorrow (John Woo, 1986)
35. How Green Was My Valley (John Ford, 1941)
36. Battleship Potemkin (Sergei Eisenstein, 1925)
37. The Contract (Michael Hui, 1978)
38. The Bellboy (Jerry Lewis, 1960)
39. The Mirror (Jafar Panahi, 1997)
40. PTU (Johnnie To, 2003)
41. M. Hulot’s Holiday (Jacques Tati, 1953)
42. Throw Down (Johnnie To, 2004)
43. The Third Man (Carol Reed, 1949)
44. Goodfellas (Martin Scorsese, 1990)
45. High School (Frederick Wiseman, 1968)
46. The Battle of Algiers (Gillo Pontecorvo, 1966)
47. The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (Wes Anderson, 2004)
48. Bound for the Fields, the Mountains and the Seacoast (Nobuhiko Obayashi, 1986)
49. Meek’s Cutoff (Kelly Reichardt, 2010)
50. Les amants du Pont-Neuf (Leos Carax, 1991)
51. To Live and Die in LA (William Friedkin, 1985)
52. The Mission (Johnnie To, 1999)
53. Sleeping Beauty (Clyde Geronimi, Wolfgang Reitherman & Les Clark, 1959)
54. Monty Python & the Holy Grail (Terry Gilliam & Terry Jones, 1975)
55. Cat People (Jacques Tourneur, 1942)
56. Vampyr (Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1932)
57. Seventh Heaven (Frank Borzage, 1927)
58. Window Water Baby Moving (Stan Brakhage, 1959)
59. Mulholland Dr. (David Lynch, 2001)
60. Pulp Fiction (Quentin Tarantino, 1994)
61. The Dream of a Rarebit Fiend (Edwin S. Porter, 1906)
62. Choose Me (Alan Rudolph, 1984)
63. Shanghai Express (Josef von Sternberg, 1932)
64. Only Angels Have Wings (Howard Hawks, 1939)
65. Dazed and Confused (Richard Linklater, 1993)
66. The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (Jacques Demy, 1964)
67. The Awful Truth (Leo McCarey, 1937)
68. Canyon Passage (Jacques Tourneur, 1946)
69. Prospero’s Books (Peter Greenaway, 1991)
70. Under the Roofs of Paris (René Clair, 1930)
71. The Lady Eve (Preston Sturges, 1941)
72. City Girl (FW Murnau, 1930)
73. L’Eclisse (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1962)
74. Wanda (Barbara Loden, 1970)
75. It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown (Bill Melendez, 1966)
76. Night Across the Street (Raúl Ruiz, 2012)
77. Aliens (James Cameron, 1986)
78. Barton Fink (Joel & Ethan Coen, 1991)
79. The Rink (Charles Chaplin, 1916)
80. A Trip to the Moon (Georges Méliès, 1902)
81. Au hasard Balthazar (Robert Bresson, 1966)
82. The Tale of the Princess Kaguya (Isao Takahata, 2013)
83. The Last Movie (Dennis Hopper, 1971)
84. The French Connection (William Friedkin, 1971)
85. The Gold Rush (Charles Chaplin, 1925)
86. The Manchurian Candidate (John Frankenheimer, 1962)
87. The Piano (Jane Campion, 1993)
88. Syndromes and a Century (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2006)
89. Moonrise Kingdom (Wes Anderson, 2012)
90. Awaara (Raj Kapoor, 1951)
91. Trouble in Paradise (Ernst Lubitsch, 1932)
92. Star Wars (George Lucas, 1977)
93. When Harry Met Sally. . . (Rob Reiner, 1989)
94. The Big Parade (King Vidor, 1925)
95. Dangerous Liaisons (Stephen Frears, 1988)
96. The Pan-American Exposition by Night (Edwin S. Porter, 1901)
97. The Fate of Lee Khan (King Hu, 1973)
98. The Missing Picture (Rithy Panh, 2013)
99. Airplane! (David Zucker, Jim Abrahams & Jerry Zucker, 1980)
100. Wolf Children (Mamoru Hosada, 2012)
This Week in Rankings
Since the last update I wrote about Lau Kar-leung on the occasion of his retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art, and also about the Japan Cuts festival at the Japan Society in New York. Also at Mubi my July column was on Tsui Hark’s Detective Dee: Four Heavenly Kings, at Seattle Screen Scene I wrote about Huang Bo’s The Island, and at Frame.land I contributed a brief review of Fruit Chan’s The Longest Summer. At InReview Online, I have brief reviews as part of their coverage of Japan Cuts and the NYAFF, on Ramen Shop and Men on the Dragon, respectively. Here at The End, I posted my annual look at The Year in Film (So Far).
If you like what I do here or at Seattle Screen Scene, The Chinese Cinema, or anywhere else, please consider donating at my kofi page. Every little bit helps.
These are the movies I’ve watched or rewatched over the last few weeks, and where they place on my year-by-year rankings.
The Elusive Pimpernel (Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger) – 31, 1950
Wanda (Barbara Loden) – 1, 1970
Challenge of the Masters (Lau Kar-leung) – 16, 1976
The 36th Chamber of Shaolin (Lau Kar-leung) – 2, 1978
Dirty Ho (Lau Kar-leung) – 5, 1979
Mad Monkey Kung Fu (Lau Kar-leung) – 24, 1979
Nine to Five (Colin Higgins) – 11, 1980
Return to the 36th Chamber (Lau Kar-leung) – 28, 1980
Raiders of the Lost Ark (Steven Spielberg) – 1, 1981
My Young Auntie (Lau Kar-leung) – 12, 1981
Martial Club (Lau Kar-leung) – 15, 1981
Masked Avengers (Chang Cheh) – 29, 1981
Legendary Weapons of China (Lau Kar-leung) – 25, 1982
The Eight-Diagram Pole Fighter (Lau Kar-leung) – 6, 1984
Abnormal Family: Older Brother’s Bride (Masayuki Suo) – 52, 1984
Clue (Jonathan Lynn) – 15, 1985
Bound for the Mountains, the Fields, and the Seacoast (Nobuhiko Obayashi) – 4, 1986
Big Trouble in Little China (John Carpenter) – 10, 1986
Martial Arts of Shaolin (Lau Kar-leung) – 34, 1986
Die Hard (John McTiernan) – 6, 1988
The Longest Summer (Fruit Chan) – 8, 1998
Mind Game (Masaaki Yuasa) – 17, 2004
Constantine (Francis Lawrence) – 25, 2005
The Devil Wears Prada (David Frankel) – 35, 2006
Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame (Tsui Hark) – 31, 2010
GLOW: The Story of the Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling (Brett Whitcomb) – 78, 2012
Young Detective Dee: Rise of the Sea Dragon (Tsui Hark) – 23, 2013
Man of Steel (Zack Snyder) – 35, 2013
Batman v Super: Dawn of Justice (Zack Snyder) – 88, 2016
Night is Short, Walk on Girl (Masaaki Yuasa) – 12, 2017
Hanagatami (Nobuhiko Obayashi) – 13, 2017
Tremble All You Want (Akiko Ohku) – 18, 2017
Amiko (Yoko Yamanaka) – 89, 2017
Justice League (Zack Snyder) – 102, 2017
Support the Girls (Andrew Bujalski) – 2, 2018
Sorry to Bother You (Boots Riley) – 3, 2018
Detective Dee: The Four Heavenly Kings (Tsui Hark) – 5, 2018
Tourism (Daisuke Miyazaki) – 7, 2018
The Island (Huang Bo) – 13, 2018
Teen Titans Go! to the Movies (Peter Rida Michail & Aaron Horvath) – 15, 2018
Skate Kitchen (Crystal Moselle) – 16, 2018
Ant-Man and the Wasp (Peyton Reed) – 20, 2018
Ramen Shop (Eric Khoo) – 25, 2018
Mission: Impossible – Fallout (Christopher McQuarrie) – 30, 2018
Men on the Dragon (Sunny Chan) – 36, 2018
The Best Movies of 2018 (So Far)
We are now halfway through the year and as has become an annual tradition here at The End, it’s time to look back at the best movies of the year so far. As I discussed in the 2013 halfway post, the consensus movie-dating system is nonsensical and posits New York as the center of the universe. Far more logical (and much easier to use) is a system reliant on imdb’s dating system, which locates a film in whatever year it first played for an audience. That’s what we use here for all Rankings & Awards as it’s the most fair to all eras and areas. (A dating system reliant on playing in a certain locality I think can be valuable for a publication that is geographically specific, like a local newspaper or website. But here at The End, we have a global reach.)
A by-product of the system is that a number of films that first go into wide-release in any given year actually had their premiere in the year before. A number of the films on many critics’ halfway-point lists will include these films, films that find their proper home here on my 2017 list. And so here we have two lists: the Best Movies of 2018, following the strict imdb dating system, and the Best 2017 Movies of 2018, which includes those films from last year that you might find on a more chronologically-illogical list. I also have a third list, Best Unreleased Movies of 2017, of last year’s films that have yet to see a New York release and therefore don’t (yet) exist by the standards of most critics. And a fourth list, a halfway version of my annual Best Older Movies list, counting the top movies I saw for the first time this year that are more than a few years old.
The Best Movies of 2018 (So Far)
1. Grass (Hong Sangsoo)
2. Little Forest (Yim Soonrye)
3. Dead Pigs (Cathy Yan)
4. The 15:17 to Paris (Clint Eastwood)
5. Matangi/Maya/MIA (Steven Loveridge)
6. Operation Red Sea (Dante Lam)
7. The Monkey King 3 (Soi Cheang)
8. Avengers: Infinity War (Anthony & Joe Russo)
9. Isle of Dogs (Wes Anderson)
10. Black Panther (Ryan Coogler)
11. La cartographe (Nathan Douglas)
12. Girls Always Happy (Yang Mingming)
13. How Long Will I Love U (Su Lun)
14. Detective Chinatown 2 (Chen Sicheng)
15. The Widowed Witch (Cai Chengjie)
16. The Commuter (Jaume Collet-Serra)
The Best 2017 Movies of 2018 (So Far)
1. Claire’s Camera (Hong Sangsoo)
2. 24 Frames (Abbas Kiarostami)
3. The Green Fog (Guy Maddin, Evan & Galen Johnson)
4. Let the Sunshine In (Claire Denis)
5. Angels Wear White (Vivian Qu)
6. The Day After (Hong Sangsoo)
7. 1987: When the Day Comes (Jang Joonhwan)
8. Before We Vanish (Kiyoshi Kurosawa)
9. Western (Valeska Grisebach)
10. Zama (Lucrecia Martel)
11. The Death of Stalin (Armando Iannucci)
12. Ismael’s Ghosts (Arnaud Desplechin)
13. Did You Wonder Who Fired the Gun? (Travis Wilkerson)
14. Lu Over the Wall (Masaaki Yuasa)
The Best Unreleased Films of 2017 (So Far)
1. Maison du bonheur (Sofia Bohdanowicz)
2. Bad Genius (Nattawut Poonpiriya)
3. Love and Goodbye in Hawaii (Shingo Matsumura)
4. The Village of No Return (Chen Yu-hsun)
5. 77 Heartbreaks (Herman Yau)
6. The Burden of Other People’s Thoughts (Don Hertzfeldt)
7. Fail to Appear (Antoine Bourges)
8. Hit the Night (Jeong Gayoung)
9. Love Education (Sylvia Chang)
10. Pumpkin Movie (Sophy Romvari)
11. SPL: Paradox (Wilson Yip)
12. Prototype (Blake Williams)
13. Sekigahara (Masato Harada)
14. Chang-Ok’s Letter (Shunji Iwai)
15. Wrath of Silence (Xin Yukun)
16. The Great Buddha+ (Huang Hsin-yao)
17. Wasteland No. 1: Ardent Verdant (Jodie Mack)
18. Mr. Long (Sabu)
19. From Nine to Nine (Neil Bahadur)
20. Scaffold (Kazik Radwanski)
21. Manhunt (John Woo)
2018 Discoveries (So Far)
1. Kamikaze Taxi (Masato Harada, 1995)
2. Long Arm of the Law (Johnny Mak, 1984)
3. Final Victory (Patrick Tam, 1987)
4. Lost in the Mountains (Hong Sangsoo, 2009)
5. That Day, On the Beach (Edward Yang, 1983)
6. Dream Lovers (Tony Au, 1986)
7. Love Unto Waste (Stanley Kwan, 1986)
8. Cops and Robbers (Alex Cheung, 1979)
9. Princess D (Sylvia Chang, 2002)
10. Tonight Nobody Goes Home (Sylvia Chang, 1996)
11. Crime Story (Kirk Wong, 1993)
12. Duel to the Death (Ching Siu-tung, 1983)
13. Siao Yu (Sylvia Chang, 1995)
14. Women (Stanley Kwan, 1985)
15. Passion (Sylvia Chang, 1986)
16. Hit Team (Dante Lam, 2001)
17. Clan of the White Lotus (Lo Lieh, 1980)
This Week in Rankings
Since the last update quite a few film festivals have come and gone. Over at Mubi I wrote about retrospectives on Sylvia Chang and Chang Cheh, as well as the New York Asian Film Festival and the Chinese film program at the Seattle International Film Festival. We also covered SIFF at Seattle Screen Scene, where I had brief reviews of Freaks and Geeks: The Documentary, Matangi/Maya/MIA, People’s Republic of Desire, Girls Always Happy and The Widowed Witch, along with longer reviews of Dead Pigs and The Bold, the Corrupt and the Beautiful and non-SIFF titles Solo, Manhunt, How Long Will I Love U, Ocean’s 8 and Lu Over the Wall. We also recorded an episode of The Frances Farmer Show, devoted to this year’s SIFF. At The Chinese Cinema I posted a bibliography of the various sources I’ve used over the years.
If you like what I do here or at Seattle Screen Scene, The Chinese Cinema, or anywhere else, please consider donating at my kofi page. Every little bit helps.
These are the movies I’ve watched or rewatched over the last few weeks, and where they place on my year-by-year rankings.
Charlie Brown’s All-Stars (Bill Melendez) – 28, 1966
The Water Margin (Chang Cheh, Wu Ma & Pao Hsueh-li) – 18, 1972
Shaolin Temple (Chang Cheh) – 15, 1976
The Dream of the Red Chamber (Li Han-hsiang) – 9, 1977
The Brave Archer (Chang Cheh) – 20, 1977
Crippled Avengers (Chang Cheh) – 8, 1978
ET: The Extra-Terrestrial (Steven Spielberg) – 3, 1982
House of Traps (Chang Cheh) – 36, 1982
That Day, On the Beach (Edward Yang) – 5, 1983
Passion (Sylvia Chang) – 21, 1986
Sisters of the World Unite (Sylvia Chang & Maisy Tsui) – 39, 1991
Mary from Beijing (Sylvia Chang) – 42, 1992
Eat Drink Man Woman (Ang Lee) – 21, 1994
Kamikaze Taxi (Masato Harada) – 10, 1995
Siao Yu (Sylvia Chang) – 33, 1995
Tonight Nobody Goes Home (Sylvia Chang) – 20, 1996
Tempting Heart (Sylvia Chang) – 8, 1999
Tears of the Black Tiger (Wisit Sasanatieng) – 10, 2000
20 30 40 (Sylvia Chang) – 9, 2004
Beast Stalker (Dante Lam ) – 38, 2008
Run Papa Run (Sylvia Chang) – 55, 2008
Tig (Kristina Goolsby & Ashley York) – 65, 2015
Phantom Thread (Paul Thomas Anderson) – 13, 2017
Let the Sunshine In (Claire Denis) – 17, 2017
Angels Wear White (Vivian Qu) – 21, 2017
Hit the Night (Jeong Gayoung) – 28, 2017
1987: When the Day Comes (Jang Joonhwan) – 33, 2017
Sekigahara (Masato Harada) – 37, 2017
Wrath of Silence (Xin Yukun) – 42, 2017
Lu Over the Wall (Masaaki Yuasa) – 57, 2017
Microhabitat (Jeon Gowoon) – 64, 2017
The Third Murder (Kore-eda Hirokazu) – 67, 2017
The Looming Storm (Dong Yue) – 87, 2017
The Brink (Jonathan Li) – 97, 2017
The Bold, the Corrupt, and the Beautiful (Yang Ya-che) – 120, 2017
Little Fiorest (Yim Soonrye) – 2, 2018
Dead Pigs (Cathy Yan) – 3, 2018
Matangi/Maya/MIA (Steven Loveridge) – 5, 2018
Avengers: Infinity War (Anthony & Joe Russo) – 8, 2018
La cartographe (Nathan Douglas) – 11, 2018
Girls Always Happy (Yang Mingming) – 12, 2018
The Widowed Witch (Cai Chengjie) – 14, 018
Solo (Ron Howard) – 16, 2018
People’s Republic of Desire (Hao Wu) – 18, 2018
Ready Player One (Steven Spielberg) – 19, 2018
Game Night (John Francis Daley & Jonathan Goldstein) – 20, 2018
Freaks and Geeks: the Documentary (Brent Hodge) – 23, 2018
Ocean’s 8 (Gary Ross) – 24, 2018
House of the Rising Sons (Antony Chan) – 25, 2018
This Week in Rankings
It’s been quite awhile since the last update. Since then, I wrote about this year’s crop of Lunar New Year movies for my Contemporary Chinese Cinema column at Mubi, where I also wrote about Jackie Chan’s Police Story. At Seattle Screen Scene, I reviewed Lucrecia Martel’s Zama, Bruno Dumont’s Jeannette, Travis Wilkerson’s Did You Wonder Who Fired the Gun?, Armando Iannucci’s The Death of Stalin, Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Before We Vanish, and Alex Garland’s Annihilation, and discussed Hong Sangsoo’s Grass. And here at The End, I handed out the 2017 Endy Awards.
Over at the Chinese Cinema I’ve been hard at work revising a bunch of old reviews, and I’ve completed the following director categories: The Pantheon, The Far Side of Paradise, Expressive Esoterica, Fringe Benefits, Less Than Meets the Eye, Lightly Likable, and Strained Seriousness. I also wrote new reviews for Johnnie To’s The Mission and Patrick Tam’s Final Victory, along with a preview of this year’s Hong Kong Film Awards.
If you like what I do here or at Seattle Screen Scene, The Chinese Cinema, or anywhere else, please consider donating at my kofi page. Every little bit helps.
These are the movies I’ve watched or rewatched over the last few weeks, and where they place on my year-by-year rankings.
Casablanca (Michael Curtiz) – 1, 1942
Cops and Robbers (Alex Cheung) – 15, 1979
Aces Go Places (Eric Tsang) – 36, 1982
Duel to the Death (Ching Siu-tung) – 25, 1983
Police Story (Jackie Chan) – 3, 1985
A Room with a View (James Ivory) – 11, 1985
Women (Stanley Kwan) – 19, 1985
Righting Wrongs (Corey Yuen) – 9, 1986
Dream Lovers (Tony Au) – 11, 1986
Love Unto Waste (Stanley Kwan) – 15, 1986
Armour of God (Jackie Chan) – 32, 1986
Final Victory (Patrick Tam) – 13, 1987
Police Story 2 (Jackie Chan) – 31, 1988
Full Moon in New York (Stanley Kwan) – 23, 1989
Armour of God II: Operation Condor (Jackie Chan) – 65, 1991
Police Story 3: Supercop (Stanley Tong) – 16, 1992
Chungking Express (Wong Kar-wai) – 1, 1994
Rumble in the Bronx (Stanley Tong) – 24, 1995
A Chinese Odyssey Part One: Pandora’s Box (Jeffrey Lau) – 25, 1995
A Chinese Odyssey Part Two: Cinderella (Jeffrey Lau) – 29, 1995
Forbidden City Cop (Stephen Chow & Vincent Kok) – 53, 1996
Police Story 4: First Strike (Stanley Tong) – 77, 1996
The Mission (Johnnie To) – 2, 1999
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (Ang Lee) – 4, 2000
Hit Team (Dante Lam) – 29, 2001
Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (Peter Weir) – 8, 2003
Exiled (Johnnie To) – 4, 2006
Speed Racer (Lana & Lilly Wachowski) – 3, 2008
Oxhide II (Liu Jiayin) – 1, 2009
Fantastic Mr. Fox (Wes Anderson) – 4, 2009
Vengance (Johnnie To) – 23, 2009
Vamps (Amy Heckerling) – 37, 2012
Thor: The Dark World (Alan Taylor) – 70, 2013
Avengers: Age of Ultron (Joss Whedon) – 126, 2015
The Last Poems Trilogy (Sophia Bohdanowicz) – 15, 2016
Never Eat Alone (Sophia Bohdanowicz) – 45, 2016
Captain America: Civil War (Joe & Anthony Russo) – 108, 2016
Claire’s Camera (Hong Sangsoo) – 6, 2017
Maison du bonheur (Sophia Bohdanowicz) – 10, 2017
The Green Fog (Guy Maddin) – 15, 2017
The Last Jedi (Rian Johnson) – 18, 2017
Get Out (Jordan Peele) – 19, 2017
Love Education (Sylvia Chang) – 28, 2017
Before We Vanish (Kiyoshi Kurosawa) – 34, 2017
Zama (Lucrecia Martel) – 38, 2017
The Death of Stalin (Armando Iannucci) – 47, 2017
The Empty Hands (Chapman To) – 51, 2017
Did You Wonder Who Fired the Gun? (Travis Wilkerson) – 52, 2017
Thor: Ragnarok (Taika Waititi) – 56, 2017
Spider-man: Homecoming (Jon Watts) – 61, 2017
Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 2 (James Gunn) – 64, 2017
Our House (Yui Kiohara) – 70, 2017
Jeannette: The Childhood of Joan of Arc (Bruno Dumont) – 88, 2017
Chasing the Dragon (Jason Kwan & Wong Jing) – 106, 2017
Grass (Hong Sangsoo) – 1, 2018
Operation Red Sea (Dante Lam) – 3, 2018
Isle of Dogs (Wes Anderson) – 5, 2018
Black Panther (Ryan Coogler) – 6, 2018
Detective Chinatown 2 (Chen Sicheng) – 7, 2018
Annihilation (Alex Garland) – 9, 2018
Predictions for the 90th Annual Academy Awards
These are my Oscar predictions. During the ceremony tomorrow night, as I’ve done for the past couple of years, I’ll be live-tweeting the winners of the 2017 Endy Awards, the nominees for which can be found here. Follow along on twitter @TheEndofCinema.
BEST PICTURE
Call Me by Your Name
Darkest Hour
Dunkirk
The Florida Project
Get Out
I, Tonya
Lady Bird
The Post
The Shape of Water
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
BEST DIRECTOR
Dunkirk, Christopher Nolan
Get Out, Jordan Peele
Lady Bird, Greta Gerwig
Phantom Thread, Paul Thomas Anderson
The Shape of Water, Guillermo del Toro
BEST ACTOR
Timothée Chalamet, Call Me by Your Name
Daniel Day-Lewis, Phantom Thread
Daniel Kaluuya, Get Out
Gary Oldman, Darkest Hour
Denzel Washington, Roman J. Israel, Esq.
BEST ACTRESS
Sally Hawkins, The Shape of Water
Frances McDormand, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
Margot Robbie, I, Tonya
Saoirse Ronan, Lady Bird
Meryl Streep, The Post
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
Willem Dafoe, The Florida Project
Woody Harrelson, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
Richard Jenkins, The Shape of Water
Christopher Plummer, All the Money in the World
Sam Rockwell, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Mary J. Blige, Mudbound
Allison Janney, I, Tonya
Lesley Manville, Phantom Thread
Laurie Metcalf, Lady Bird
Octavia Spencer, The Shape of Water
BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
The Big Sick
Get Out
Lady Bird
The Shape of Water
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
Call Me by Your Name
The Disaster Artist
Logan
Molly’s Game
Mudbound
BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY
Blade Runner 2049
Darkest Hour
Dunkirk
Mudbound
The Shape of Water
BEST FILM EDITING
Baby Driver
Dunkirk
I, Tonya
The Shape of Water
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
BEST VISUAL EFFECTS
Blade Runner 2049
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
Kong: Skull Island
Star Wars: The Last Jedi
War for the Planet of the Apes
BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN
Beauty and the Beast
Blade Runner 2049
The Darkest Hour
Dunkirk
The Shape of Water
BEST COSTUME DESIGN
Beauty and the Beast
Darkest Hour
Phantom Thread
The Shape of Water
Victoria & Abdul
BEST MAKEUP & HAIRSTYLING
Darkest Hour
Victoria & Abdul
Wonder
BEST ORIGINAL SCORE
Dunkirk
Phantom Thread
The Shape of Water
Star Wars: The Last Jedi
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
BEST ORIGINAL SONG
“Mighty River,” Mudbound
“Mystery of Love,” Call Me by Your Name
“Remember Me,” Coco
“Stand Up for Something,” Marshall
“This is Me,” The Greatest Showman
BEST SOUND EDITING
Baby Driver
Blade Runner 2049
Dunkirk
The Shape of Water
Star Wars: The Last Jedi
BEST SOUND MIXING
Baby Driver
Blade Runner 2049
Dunkirk
The Shape of Water
Star Wars: The Last Jedi
BEST ANIMATED FEATURE
The Boss Baby
Breadwinner
Coco
Ferdinand
Loving Vincent
BEST DOCUMENTARY
Abacus: Small Enough to Jail
Faces Places
Icarus
Last Men In Aleppo
Strong Island
BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM
A Fantastic Woman
The Insult
Loveless
On Body and Soul
The Square
BEST DOCUMENTARY SHORT SUBJECT
Edith+Eddie
Heaven is a Traffic Jam on the 405
Heroin(e)
Knife Skills
Traffic Stop
BEST LIVE ACTION SHORT
DeKalb Elementary
The Eleven O’Clock
The Silent Child
All of Us
My Nephew Emmett
BEST ANIMATED SHORT
Dear Basketball
Garden Party
Negative Space
Lou
Revolting Rhymes
This Week in Rankings
Since the last update I finished rewatching (almost) all of Hong Sangsoo’s films for an article about his career that I wrote for frame.land. I also wrote about most of the films as I watched them, the reviews that went up after the last update are: Woman on the Beach, Night and Day, Like You Know It All, Hahaha, The Day He Arrives, Our Sunhi, and The Day After. Those and all my older Hong reviews (all now freshly revised), along with several new shorter reviews, are indexed at The Chinese Cinema.
Also at The Chinese Cinema I finished revising and reformatting all my reviews for Pantheon Directors along with half of the Far Side of Paradise category, along with Fellow Traveller Apichatpong Weerasethakul. I also have a new review of Johnny Mak’s Long Arm of the Law and Soi Cheang’s The Monkey King 3.
The Monkey King review is also at Seattle Screen Scene, where I also wrote about Clint Eastwood’s The 15:17 to Paris, the documentary The Paris Opera and Hiromasa Yonebayashi’s animated Mary and the Witch’s Flower.
For Mubi I reviewed the new restoration of King Hu’s Legend of the Mountain, and my February Contemporary Chinese Cinema column was on A Better Tomorrow 2018.
If you like what I do here or at Seattle Screen Scene, The Chinese Cinema, or anywhere else, please consider donating at my kofi page. Every little bit helps.
These are the movies I’ve watched or rewatched over the last few weeks, and where they place on my year-by-year rankings.
Bringing Up Baby (Howard Hawks) – 1, 1938
The Clan of the White Lotus (Lo Lieh) – 32, 1980
The Long Arm of the Law (Johnny Mak) – 14, 1984
The Killer (John Woo) – 2, 1989
Hard-Boiled (John Woo) – 4, 1992
Full Contact (Ringo Lam) – 15, 1992
Crime Story (Kirk Wong) – 32, 1993
Needing You… (Johnnie To & Wai Ka-fai) – 16, 2000
Wu Yen (Johnnie To & Wai Ka-fai) – 27, 2001
Fat Choi Spirit (Johnnie To & Wai Ka-fai) – 11, 2002
Princess D (Sylvia Chang) – 17, 2002
Woman on the Beach (Hong Sangsoo) -24, 2006
Night and Day (Hong Sangsoo) – 12, 2008
Like You Know It All (Hong Sangsoo) – 12, 2009
Lost in the Mountains (Hong Sangsoo) – 18, 2009
Oki’s Movie (Hong Sangsoo) – 1, 2010
Hahaha (Hong Sangsoo) – 12, 2010
Gallants (Derek Kwok & Clement Cheng) – 25, 2010
The Day He Arrives (Hong Sangsoo) – 5, 2011
In Another Country (Hong Sangsoo) – 13, 2012
Our Sunhi (Hong Sangsoo) – 12, 2013
The Grandmaster (Wong Kar-wai) – 13, 2013
Nobody’s Daughter Haewon (Hong Sangsoo) – 17, 2013
50:50 (Hong Sangsoo) – 38, 2013
Hill of Freedom (Hong Sangsoo) – 7, 2014
The Monkey King (Soi Cheang) – 100, 2014
Detective Chinatown (Chen Sicheng) – 27, 2015
Right Now, Wrong Then (Hong Sangsoo) – 31, 2015
Yourself and Yours (Hong Sangsoo) – 2, 2016
The Monkey King 2 (Soi Cheang) – 55, 2016
On the Beach at Night Alone (Hong Sangsoo) – 4, 2017
The Day After (Hong Sangsoo) – 27, 2017
Pumpkin Movie (Sophy Romvari) – 33, 2017
Manhunt (John Woo) – 43, 2017
The Shape of Water (Guillermo del Toro) – 65, 2017
Mary and the Witch’s Flower (Hiromasa Yonebayashi) – 69, 2017
The Greatest Showman (Michael Gracey) – 85, 2017
The Paris Opera (Jean-Stéphane Bron) – 91, 2017
The 15:17 to Paris (Clint Eastwood) – 1, 2018
The Monkey King 3 (Soi Cheang) – 2, 2018
The Commuter (Jaume Collet-Serra) – 3, 2018
A Better Tomorrow (Ding Sheng) – 4, 2018
Monster Hunt 2 (Raman Hui) – 5, 2018
The Cloverfield Paradox (Julius Onah) – 6, 2018
The End of Cinema 