toddly6666

I finally just saw Ashes of Time Redux - definitely his best feature film! Here's my grades of all the movies I've seen of his:

C+ There's Only One Sun (short film for HDTV commercial)
C- Ashes of Time Redux
D- In the Mood For Love
F Chungking Express
F My Blueberry Nights

I haven't seen Eros, 2046, Happy Together, Fallen Angels, or Days of Being Wild yet...

Sondheim

Chungking Express - A+
Happy Together - A
In the Mood for Love - B+
2046 - B+
Fallen Angels - B
My Blueberry Nights - D

He's one of my favorite currently working directors (though his most recent did disappoint me quite a lot) - and I definitely intend to see the rest of his films. I'm still upset that I missed seeing "Ashes of Time Redux" when it came to the local arthouse.

Arpeggi

In The Mood for Love A+
2046 A+
Chungking Express A+
Days of Being Wild A
Ashes of Time Redux A
Fallen Angels A
Happy Together A
My Blueberry Nights B
As Tears Go By B

Autotelik

Whoa.... the order changes for me depending on my mood.... but most of the time:

1) In The Mood For Love
2) 2046
3) Chungking Express
4) Fallen Angels
5) Days of Being Wild
6) Happy Together
7) As Tears Go By
8) Ashes of Time

Have not seen My Blueberry Nights

chris_sc77

Chungking Express (B+)
My Blueberry Nights (B+)
In The Mood for Love (F)

slop101

I really like 3 of his movies: Chungking Express, In the Mood for Love and Fallen Angels being my favorite of the three.

The rest of his films are okay, but he does tend to wallow in the same sort of muck over and over - if you've seen one or two of his films, you've seen them all. It'd be nice if he tried something just a little different

PopcornTreeCt

The man does not make bad films. I would never give him anything lower than a B.

toddly6666

For all the people that like Wong Kar Wai in here, is it mainly the visuals, music, editing, and acting that you like about his movies? I could understand it from that perspective. I just can't get past the way he writes dialogue and story. It's as if he's been influenced from Red Shoe Diaries and Tinto Brass soft porn movies. I really wish he would just direct and leave the writing to someone else. The way I feel when watching Wong Kar Wai is the way I felt when watching Miller's The Spirit - beautiful to look at, but empty story and amateurish dialogue. I bet I could appreciate Wong Kar Wai's movies more if they didn't have English subtitles.

If Wong Kar Wai refined his skills (just let someone else write the damn movie) to be more for mainstream audiences, he could be a very good Chinese Ridley Scott-type director.

starseed1981

In The Mood for Love A
2046 B
Chungking Express A
Days of Being Wild B
Ashes of Time Redux C
Fallen Angels A
Happy Together A
My Blueberry Nights C
As Tears Go By C

wendersfan

Chungking Express - A
In the Mood For Love - A-
Happy Together - A-
Fallen Angels - A-
Ashes of Time - B+
2046 - B
Days of Being Wild - B
My Blueberry Nights - C+
As Tears Go By - C

Brian T

Character, first and foremost. Plenty of people love the way he writes characters and especially the way the right actors perform them (it's well known that his filming process allows the actors movements and personal motivations to draw the characters as much as his dialogue, which in part explains the protracted shoots while he searches for just the right takes). The comparison to Tinto Brass is ridiculous, Zalman King moreso; King's an exploitation director with transparent pretensions. Wanting Wong to leave the "damn writing" to someone else hints at a possibl lack of understanding of his films and his approach to character, and a decided inability to see past the visuals (though I'd love to read the explanations for the F's assigned to certain pictures by some good folks here--seriously, F's? Like you'd assign to some no-budget DTV junk by an untalented hack? There are even worse Hong Kong films, surely?). The man's visual sensibility is a foregone conclusion since virtually his first directorial effort, thus it should be easier to enjoy what he does with character with each passing film once you know you're going to be transported into the environment they inhabit with ease. This is NOT fawning praise for everything Wong touches, either. I have difficulties with some of his films, and parts of others--I was strongly disappointed with BLUEBERRY, but in fairness, he had to try and step out of his regional element at least once--but I can't understand how any of them would be deserving of an absolute critical fail. I believe they deserve (and can withstand) a fair amount of scholarly criticism, as has been heaped upon them over the years (and for what reason, I wonder?), but to dismiss them as absolute failures (as suggested by a grade of F) seems disingenuous and superficial. There's a lot more to Wong's films than surface gloss as well. I do wonder if one's age affects the reading.

Wong Kar-wai could never be another Ridley Scott any more than Ridley Scott could be another Wong Kar-wai. They're equals as auteurs; thematically, they're worlds apart.

joefrog91

I thought Chungking Express was great until I saw In the Mood for Love. The feel and visuals of that movie left me breathless. I can't understand how anyone would give it an F grade. To each his own.

Brian T

Character, first and foremost. There are those, and I'm among them, who love the way he writes characters and especially the way the (right) actors perform them. (sadly, subtitles don't always give you the entire story, and neither would dubbing). It's well known that his filming process allows the actors movements and personal motivations to draw the characters as much as his dialogue, which in part explains the protracted shoots while he searches for just the right takes. The comparison to Tinto Brass is ridiculous, Zalman King moreso; King's an exploitation director with transparent pretensions. Wanting Wong to leave the "damn writing" to someone else hints at a possible lack of understanding of his films and his approach to character, and perhaps an inability to see past the visuals (though I'm curious to read the explanations for the F's assigned to certain pictures by some good folks here--seriously, F's? Like you'd assign to some no-budget DTV junk by an untalented hack? There are even worse Hong Kong films, surely?). The man's visual sensibility is a foregone conclusion since virtually his first directorial effort, thus it should be easier to enjoy what he does with character with each passing film once you know you're going to be transported into the environment they inhabit with ease. This is NOT fawning praise for everything Wong touches, either. I have difficulties with some of his films, and with parts of others--I was strongly disappointed with BLUEBERRY, but in fairness, he had to try to step out of his regional element at least once--but I can't understand how any of them would be deserving of an absolute critical fail. I believe they deserve (and can withstand) a fair amount of scholarly criticism, as has been heaped upon them over the years (and for what reason, I wonder?), but to dismiss them as absolute failures (as suggested by a grade of F) seems disingenuous and superficial. There's a lot more to Wong's films than surface gloss as well. I do wonder if one's age affects the reading.

Wong Kar-wai could never be another Ridley Scott any more than Ridley Scott could be another Wong Kar-wai. They're equals as auteurs in my book; thematically, they're worlds apart. And that's a great thing.

Ralph Jenkins

My rankings:

Chungking Express - A+
Fallen Angels - A
Ashes of Time Redux - A
In the Mood for Love - B+
Days of Being Wild - B
As Tears Go By - B
2046 - B-
My Blueberry Nights - C+

For me, his movies are all about mood, character, and emotion. Chungking, Fallen Angels and Ashes of Time are definitely the ones I like the most.

NoirFan

In the Mood for Love: A
Fallen Angels: A-
Chungking Express: B+
Days of Being Wild: B
As Tears Go By: B-

devilshalo

There lies your problem, his films aren't meant for mainstream audiences. I think his films are meant for the senses.. both visual and emotional.

Cosmic Bus

Happy Together A+
Fallen Angels A+
Chungking Express A
In the Mood for Love A
Ashes of Time Redux B+
2046 B
Days of Being Wild B
The Follow (The Hire) B
As Tears Go By B-
The Hand (Eros) B-
My Blueberry Nights F

Brian T

Both well said!

In fact, Wong is about one of three or four Hong Kong filmmakers who persistently don't pander to the masses, and his films are rightly rewarded/dissected/analyzed by critics and film lovers alike. There's nothing whatsoever wrong with mainstream entertainment--especially if you're invested in it--but there needs to be cinema like Wong's that appeals to the intellectual and the artist in all of us, and on a level that can't be expressed in just the dialogue we hear. Wishing he'd go mainstream is wishing him to join the majority just because a minority (of that audience that actually seeks out his films) doesn't understand what he creates.

I'm with those who rate CHUNGKING EXPRESS and IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE as absolute "A" films, though some of his others also earn the grade. Both are textbook examples of his entirely unique approach to character and storytelling; the latter is, I believe, to date, his magnum opus. A beautiful, heartbreaking film that shows far, far more than it says, and a picture that even Wong may have difficulty surpassing as he gets older. But here's hoping . . .

Hokeyboy

IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE is easily in my TOP 20 films of all time. I've never been so wrapped up in a film, its mood, its sensuality, its characters, everything. I love this film more than oxygen, it's like my anti-Hitler.

toddly6666

I didn't say "how can anyone like his films?", I just said "I don't like his films." I can't stand his overall style of filmmaking. I'll still see his movies though out of curiousness. It's not like I'm going to boycott his films just because I don't like him or don't get him.

As a comparison, I sort of feel like Malick's THE NEW WORLD, Arronofsky's THE FOUNTAIN, or Tarsem's THE FALL are A+ masterpieces, while masses don't see them as that. Is that the way people feel about Wong Kar Wai films? Sure, he's appreciated and loved all over the world, but there are tons of well-known critics and "film buffs" that aren't crazy about him. The way I criticize Wong Kar Wai films remind me of the way audiences/critics criticize those three films that I listed above.

But I still believe that Wong Kar Wai gets "extra credit points" just for being different from most other Asian filmmakers. If he was making his movies not in China and with non-Chinese actors, I don't think he would be that well-respected. Especially as we have seen with his painfully, awful My Blueberry Nights.

Look at Ang Lee for example. He's another "unique" director out of China. And he can direct English-speaking actors as well as he can direct Chinese ones...I'm not crazy about Ang Lee either, but he is a good director. Wong Kar Wai, I think, is one of the worst directors in the whole wide world. He's right up there with Uwe Boll, only at the opposite spectrum. Are Vincent Gallo, Hal Hartley, Jim Jarmush, Mathew Barney, and Julien Schnabel mainstream directors or art-house directors? They are all better directors/filmmakers than Wong Kar Wai.

Where does Wong Kar Wai stand? What similar directors would you put him next to? Fassbinder (another respected art-house director who is one of the worst directors in the world)? Warhol?

Brian T

Of course not. You just wish he could be more like a Ridley Scott.


This is a specious argument. The enjoyment of, or disappointment with, all of these films (and Wong's) is entirely subjective, whether you're a respected critic or a internet forum member, but to call Wong one of the worst directors in the "whole wide world" smacks of an ignorance of his processes, but that's alright. You asked for rankings, and then opinions, of Wong's films and you got them, and so far yours are in the minority, at least here. You don't like him. You don't get him (by your own admission). If you don't get him, that says more about you, and possibly your age, than it does about Wong Kar-wai. So why bother? Perhaps you could satisfy your curiosity about these films at a later stage of your life. Film's funny that way.

Incidentally, please link me to the legitimate critics who've compared Wong Kar-Wai to Tinto Brass or Zalman King. Or was that just you?




No he doesn't. People who don't get him think he does, though. They can't justify his success to themselves any other way. "Must be a cult or followers or something . . ." Wong doesn't get "extra credit points" for being different from other Asian filmmakers. He gets those points, if you even believe in such a silly concept, for being a wholly unique filmmaker in his own right. There's no need to compare him against others. He is what he is.



Let me know when Ridley Scott makes a movie in China with an entirely Chinese cast speaking entirely in Mandarin Chinese (that means NO marquee white folks for the international market to have an easy "in") and then we'll compare notes. Whether you or I think he's capable of it is irrelevant, but I would love to see it, and the reaction to it, for better and for worse. Far more populist/commercial Chinese filmmakers have tried their luck outside of Hong Kong and China than the other way around (do your research). Few have had measurable success despite some intriguing misfires. This doesn't mean they are shitty directors. It means they work better in certain environments, but they're at least willing to explore cultures alien to their own using actors who don't speak their mother tongue. But where are the American or European directors brave enough to try the same thing? Few and far between is where. Gondry's segment of TOKYO is a step in the right direction, if a small one.



What the hell does this even mean, actually? Wouldn't the "opposite spectrum" from Uwe Boll be a good thing? I think you're just young, and trying to start something. (seriously, "whole wide world"?? )



No. They're all equal to Wong Kar-wai in their own right, and in their own distinctive ways, just like virtually every other serious contemporary film director working at the professional level, indie or studio. They have voices just like he does. But they're different. You need to stop with these comparisons and start looking deeper at the art they all create.



Brilliant! And thoroughly agreed. Possibly even Top 10 for me.