Since the last update we passed the midpoint of the year and so I listed the Best Movies of 2019 (So Far), including my favorite discoveries of 2019. I also made a list of the Top 113 Chinese Language Movies of the 2010s.
At the Mubi Notebook I wrote about The Metrograph’s Shaw Sisters series, Jeffrey Lau and Stephen Chow’s A Chinese Odyssey, Herman Yau’s The White Storm 2: Drug Lords, Zhang Yimou’s Shadow, and New King of Comedy & Hidden Man, by Stephen Chow and Jiang Wen, respectively. I also wrote about the New York Asian Film Festival and Japan Cuts.
At InReview Online I contributed a review of Suzhou River to their look at Lou Ye, and at Frame.land I revised my old timeline of Shaolin related movies into The Shaolin Cinematic Universe. At Seattle Screen Scene, I reviewed Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Chasing the Dragon II: Wild Wild Bunch, Savage, and Suburban Birds. And as part of our coverage of the Seattle International Film Festival, I wrote about Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool, Storm in My Heart, and Lynch: A History. We also discussed a number of other SIFF movies on an episode of The Frances Farmer Show.
At The Chinese Cinema, I wrote about a few films from the Austin Asian American Film Festival (Girls Always Happy, Chinese Portrait, House of Hummingbird and The Third Wife). And I also finally finished re-editing and reformatting all my old writings on Chinese film. The Index is now up to date, and I can get to work filling in all the massive blind spots I still have, after years and years and hundreds of movies watched.
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 months, and where they place on my year-by-year rankings.
City Lights (Charles Chaplin) – 1, 1931
Gold Diggers of 1933 (Mervyn LeRoy) – 5, 1933
To Be or Not To Be (Ernst Lubitsch) – 8, 1942
Between the Lines (Joan Micklin Silver) – 10, 1977
All that Jazz (Bob Fosse) – 1, 1979
The Secret (Ann Hui) – 14, 1979
The Spooky Bunch (Ann Hui) – 25, 1980
The Story of Woo Viet (Ann Hui) – 9, 1981
Buddha’s Palm (Taylor Wong) – 22, 1982
Love in a Fallen City (Ann Hui) – 16, 1984
The Siamese Twins (Angela Mak) – 38, 1984
My Name Ain’t Suzie (Angie Chen) – 12, 1985
The Illegal Immigrant (Mabel Cheung) – 23, 1985
Legend of the Stardust Brothers (Makoto Tezuka) – 28, 1985
Puppy Love (So Jing-man) – 42, 1985
Howard the Duck (Willard Huyck) – 49, 1986
An Autumn’s Tale (Mabel Cheung) – 18, 1987
The Romance of Book and Sword/Princess Fragrance (Ann Hui) – 20, 1987
My Neighbor Totoro (Hayao Miyazaki) – 1, 1988
Starry is the Night (Ann Hui) – 27, 1988
The Twin Bracelets (Huang Yu-shan) – 28, 1991
Don’t Fool Me (Herman Yau) – 61, 1991
Iron Monkey (Yuen Woo-ping) – 5, 1993
Taxi Hunter (Herman Yau) – 22, 1993
The Untold Story (Herman Yau) – 30, 1993
The Eagle-Shooting Heroes (Jeffrey Lau) – 54, 1993
A Chinese Odyssey: Pandora’s Box/Cinderella (Jeffrey Lau) – 13, 1995
Bullet Ballet (Shinya Tsukamoto) – 20, 1998
Troublesome Night 3 (Herman Yau) – 23, 1998
The Untold Story III (Herman Yau) – 22, 1999
Suzhou River (Lou Ye) – 13, 2000
From the Queen to the Chief Executive (Herman Yau) – 14, 2001
Spider-Man (Sam Raimi) – 33, 2002
Face to Face (Casey Chan) – 40, 2002
The Mindscape of Alan Moore (Dez Vylenz) – 34, 2003
Spider-Man 2 (Sam Raimi) – 31, 2004
Mean Girls (Mark Waters) – 34, 2004
Spider-Man 3 (Sam Raimi) – 24, 2007
Speed Racer (Lana & Lilly Wachowski) – 2, 2008
Happiness is a Warm Blanket, Charlie Brown (Andrew Beall & Frank Molieri) – 14, 2011
K-On! the Movie (Naoko Yamada) – 18, 2011
The White Storm (Benny Chan) – 71, 2013
See You Tomorrow (Zhang Jiajia) – 90, 2016
Liz and the Blue Bird (Naoko Yamada) – 4, 2018
The Crossing (Bai Xue) – 26, 2018
Classical Period (Ted Fendt) – 32, 2018
Suburban Birds (Qiu Sheng) – 40, 2018
Chinese Portrait (Wang Xiaoshuai) – 43, 2018
The Kamagasaki Cauldron War (Leo Sato) – 46, 2018
A Star is Born (Bradley Cooper) – 49, 2018
Shadow (Zhang Yimou) – 64, 2018
And Your Bird Can Sing (Sho Miyake) – 77, 2018
Killing (Shinya Tsukamoto) – 82, 2018
The Third Wife (Ash Mayfair) – 85, 2018
House of Hummingbird (Kim Bora) – 86, 2018
Storm in My Heart (Mark Cousins) – 92, 2018
Song Lang (Leon Le) – 100, 2018
Jam (Sabu) – 114, 2018
Savage (Cui Siwei) – 124, 2018
Hard-Core (Nobuhiro Yamashita) – 130, 2018
Barbara Rubin & the Exploding NY Underground (Chuck Smith) – 135, 2018
Invest in Failure (Notes on Film 06-C, Monologue 03) (Norbert Pfaffenbichler) – 155, 2018
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (Quentin Tarantino) -1, 2019
A Home with a View (Herman Yau) – 2, 2019
Lynch: A History (David Shields) – 3, 2019
The Dead Don’t Die (Jim Jarmusch) – 4, 2019
Rolling Thunder Revue (Martin Scorsese) – 5, 2019
Deadwood: The Movie (Daniel Minahan) – 6, 2019
Jeux de plage (Aimi Natsuto) – 8, 2019
The White Storm 2: Drug Lords (Herman Yau) – 11, 2019
White Snake (Amp Wong & Zhao Ji) – 15, 2019
Booksmart (Olivia Wilde) – 16, 2019
Demolition Girl (Genta Matsugami) – 17,2019
Toy Story 4 (Josh Cooley) – 19, 2019
John Wick 3: Parabellum (Chad Stahelski) – 20, 2019
Spider-Man: Far from Home (Jon Watts) – 21, 2019
Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool (Stanley Nelson, Jr) – 23, 2019
Blue Hour (Yuko Hakota) – 25, 2019
Always By My Maybe (Nahnatchka Khan) – 26, 2019
Chasing the Dragon II: Wild Wild Bunch (Wong Jing & Jason Kwan) – 28, 2019
The Journalist (Michihito Fujii) – 2019
Dark Phoenix (Simon Kinberg) – 2019
The End of Cinema 