2025

There were 90 posts published in 2025 (this is page 5 of 13).

Criterion Month Day 25: Executioners

Executioners (1993)

Merely seven months after their first adventure, the heroic trio of Maggie Cheung, Anita Mui, and Michelle Yeoh return Executioners. And if you thought things were bleak before, let me tell you, this one starts with a bang! Nuclear war has poisoned the world and the survivors are forced to grovel at the feet of anyone who can provide clean water. Hong Kong’s president (Kwan Shan) is desperately trying to keep the government on top while a masked, disfigured maniac (Anthony Wong) pulls the strings from the shadows. This is a world that needs heroes more than ever before, so where are they?

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Criterion Month Day 24: My Own Private Idaho

My Own Private Idaho (1991)

It is to my great surprise that I am once again reviewing a movie where the third act twist is our traveling heroes stumble upon a house occupied by a lone Italian woman who one of them instantly falls for. Yes, Gus Van Sant’s My Own Private Idaho is, like Down By Law, a story about an unusual friendship, but more than that it’s an unique gay road movie set all over the Pacific Northwest. And more than that, it’s an unlikely, loose take on Shakespeare’s three-play Henriad. So Midnight Cowboy meets Chimes at Midnight? Sign me up!

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Criterion Month Day 22: The Unbearable Lightness of Being

The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1988)

Between this and Betty Blue, this has been the hardest stretch of Criterion Month so far, two movies I watched back-to-back with a combined runtime of 356 minutes. But at least Betty Blue looked nice, was funny at times, and straightforward. The Unbearable Lightness of Being (they got the ‘Unbearable’ part right) is a slow crawl through dense political machinations.

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Criterion Month Day 21: Down By Law

Down by Law (1986)

Director Jim Jarmusch has made a lot of movies that you could describe as being “of a place” and Down by Law is no exception. Here we get a miserable, film noir-inspired version of the Louisiana bayou country that Jarmusch conceived of before he even arrived to make this movie. The story begins in New Orleans and it’s portrayed as a moody, rundown, desolate, rotting carcass of a city, populated only by the damned and the pitiful. And then we go to jail. Shot in Jarmusch’s signature black and white, on the surface, Down by Law seems like it might as well have been called “abandon all hope, ye who enter here.” But, more than my now-missed posting deadline, there was something to this story about three misfits which inspired me to keep watching.

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Criterion Month Day 19: Taipei Story

Taipei Story (1985)

After reviewing 2000’s Yi Yi and 1991’s A Brighter Summer Day, I seem to be working my way backward through Edward Yang’s brief filmography in leaps and bounds. He’s the type of filmmaker who I’ve had a hard time wanting to seek out outside of Criterion Month, just because they’re not exactly joyous affairs, but also are relatively watchable as far as observant character-driven films go. Anyways, I’m glad that Criterion Month has given me a vehicle to discover more of Yang’s films, as the way they reveal the layers of melancholy beneath modern urban life really gels with me, and this one in particular felt relatable in its story of childless adults in their 30s drifting through middle-class life. Continue reading →