As Tears Go By (1988)

It’s the height of the Hong Kong film industry and screenwriter Wong Kar-wai has been given his first chance at directing a feature. Thanks to John Woo, gangster movies are all the rage and Wong has an idea that will make his picture unique: he’ll focus on young, unaccomplished gangsters instead of grizzled badasses. A story about a young man who’s caught between a blossoming romance and his hotheaded partner. Basically he’s remaking Mean Streets but that’s not important right now. What you need to know is that, for a while, As Tears Go By doesn’t feel particularly remarkable. And then, at about the halfway point, this happens:

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Wings of Desire (1987)

Wings of Desire is a low-key metaphysical meditation on urban loneliness that kept surprising me. Not because of its novel storytelling or its “stunning tapestry of sounds and images” (thanks official Criterion description) but little funny things that I probably should have known about going in. For instance, Peter Falk is in this as himself. An actor shows up on a movie set in Berlin and people call him Colombo and yep, that’s Peter Falk. Later, we find out that Peter Falk, the real human actor who lived in our world from 1927 to 2011, is a former angel who decided to become a mortal man. That’s a big swing! And just one more thing, Wings of Desire ends on a “To be continued.” Did you know this? I’ve always known there was an America remake that inexplicably pairs up Nicolas Cage and Meg Ryan, but somehow I never noticed that Wim Wenders made a sequel in 1993 called Faraway, So Close! We live in a joyous world full of discoveries to make.

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After Hours (1985)

It’s satisfying to find any connective tissue that exists between our Criterion Month selections, especially well after we’ve drafted them. So imagine my delight when a very particular line in the middle of After Hours triggered me, and I went on Wikipedia and found, against all odds, that one of the inspirations for this movie was The Trial by Franz Kafka, the film adaption of which I just posted about. You see, in After Hours there’s a scene where Paul (Griffin Dunne) is trying to get into a club and its bouncer (Clarence Felder) won’t tell him why he’s not being allowed in. Paul offers the bouncer a bribe and he takes it but claims its only because he doesn’t want Paul to feel he “left anything untried.” That is a direct reference to “Before the Law” from The Trial (and specifically the wording from Welles’ version), a reference Scorsese included because he believed Kafka’s parable reflected his own frustration with trying to get The Last Temptation of Christ made. Fuckin’ A, right?

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Ebirah, Horror of the Deep (1966)

The only HOTD I’m interested in this summer is Ebirah, Horror of the Deep! That wasn’t always the title to the seventh film in the Godzilla franchise, which is known in Japan as “Godzilla, Ebirah, Mothra: Big Duel in the South Seas.” But you might know it better as “Godzilla vs. the Sea Monster,” the American version of the movie from 1968. It’s that release that eventually became an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000, the only time Big Green got the MST3K treatment. Which makes sense, Godzilla fighting a giant lobster doesn’t sound as interesting as a three-headed dragon or a very large moth. But does this HOTD warrant a second look? Or is it just see-food?

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The Trial (1962)

Hello and welcome to my annual attempt at contributing to Criterion Month! This year, not only did I have the advantage of an extra month to prepare but also I drafted way more recent movies than Colin and John on average, so I had a light load to begin the month too. And yet… I still didn’t finish watching my first movie until just about midnight on the day I was supposed to post about it. What can I say at this point? You can’t teach an old dog new tricks?

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