To Each His Cinema, part 1 (2007)
A program of shorts that played at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival to mark its 60th anniversary. Pretty terrific bunch of 3-5 minute shorts by possibly the best group of directors ever assembled… worth...
View ArticleFlight of the Red Balloon (2007, Hou Hsiao-Hsien)
My third feature by the celebrated Hou. I only half enjoyed/understood the other two, Goodbye South, Goodbye and Flowers of Shanghai, both seen on video, but I appreciated his short The Electric...
View ArticleThree Times (2005, Hou Hsiao-hsien)
Three love stories with the same actors in different eras. Can’t think of an apt comparison to another film (haven’t seen Resnais’ Smoking/No Smoking) but it’s sort of the opposite of Hal Hartley’s...
View ArticleCity of Sadness (1989, Hou Hsiao-hsien)
After false-starts with Flowers of Shanghai and Goodbye South, Goodbye, I figured out how to get on Hou’s wavelength with his Red Balloon and Three Times, so now trying something from his acclaimed...
View ArticleThe Puppetmaster (1993, Hou Hsiao-hsien)
Sometimes called In The Hands of a Puppetmaster, presumably to distinguish it from the terrible Donald Sutherland movie The Puppet Masters and Full Moon’s Puppet Master series. Another...
View ArticleThe Assassin (2015, Hou Hsiao-hsien)
Movie #1 of my Hors Money Assasatan Crisis Trilogy, where I watched critically-acclaimed art films that I was absolutely guaranteed to love, and loved none of them, and I don’t know what’s wrong with...
View ArticleMillennium Mambo (2001, Hou Hsiao-hsien)
The opposite of what I just said about Undine (“thought the overall structure of the movie only kinda worked, but moment-to-moment I was quite thrilled to be watching it”) – in this case I didn’t...
View ArticleCafe Lumiere (2003, Hou Hsiao-hsien)
Hou is weirdly good at capturing technology in transition. Lead character Yoko has a cellphone in this, but there are pay phones around, and you could still call a bar and ask to speak with a customer....
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