Top 5 Wong Kar Wai films?

In the Mood for Love
The Follow
My Blueberry Nights
The Grandmaster

Yes, I think it is. Although it's hard to really quantify the reason why. I guess it all comes down to how it makes me feel.

Do it asap

1. Happy Together
2. 2046
3. In the Mood For Love
4. Days of Being Wild
5. As Tears Go By

My Blueberry Nights IS worth watching. It looks nice (of course) Strathairn is doing god tier work, there's other nice stuff from Norah Jones, Cat Power, Jude Law minus his accent. But there's a lot of bad stuff too, Natalie Portman is not good, Rachel Weisz is embarrassing, it moves slower than any of his others for me, is ridiculously episodic to almost amateurish degrees... It's a mixed bag, but if you're a fan you should for sure check it out.

I'm the foremost man on all things Wong. One of my first favorite directors..... I remember liking Tarantino, Hitchcock, Wong, Sofia Coppola, and Mann the most during the first 2-3 years.

Of course, he feels like a memory as distant as that train in 2046 now, but I still know everything about the dude.   I can teach a course on him.


1. 2046 - 9 (always been my favorite...... rewatched it several times through the years and it really doesn't do it for me anymore. I'm out of that soap starry-eyed romance phase, but still.... I can see how it distinguishes itself against his other films.)

2. Chungking Express - 9 (these days, this is my favorite. I remember it gaining the most traction upon a rewatch. I don't know which film of his suits my current state of mind though. I guess....none?

3. In the Mood for Love - 9 (Most of the love for this comes from objective film fans.  And highly rigid film evaluators.  But true WKW fans probably have a more meaningful relationship with his other films, but I can definitely see the signature in this.)

4. Happy Together - 8.5 (probably his most humanely engaging film, or at least....personally the most entertaining in its rough, harsh reality. Reminds me Scorsese. Of course Wong was heavily influenced by early Scorsese, he just lacked any ability to create a crime film or setting, so there's no Goodfellas in his filmography. Or anything as brutal as Raging Bull. The best example for me... is City of God. I have a similar reaction from this as I get from that film.)

5. Days of Being Wild - 8 (some undertones of treating women badly, stuff I don't necessarily care for or would like to ever think about, this film is as free as it gets for Wong. It's certainly nothing new for him, but then.... depending on how you look at it, that's a good thing to see him in his mode. And depending on how you look at it, you may find it pathetic when compared to some of his more career culmination films like 2046.)

6. Fallen Angels - 8 (you can argue it's aimless. It's unrestrained, but a good thing to some people. I can like the randomness, and it doesn't have the usual soap romance or the "joie de vivre" trademark of Chungking Express)

7. My Blueberry Nights - 7.5 (good, blues-y recreation. Puts you back in college, and the days of listening to indie rock. But again, it feels far away from my current state of mind, especially when looking at relationships, which Wong always has a way of severely portraying from both sides. Portraying sadness of love is often overstated in his films, and there's a sense of severity in both the ways he portrays sadness of love, and the passionate romantic side of it.)

8. Eros - 7 (Kind of a cold rumination; Gong Li is fantastic)

9. Ashes of Time - 7 (don't much care for it, I mostly just remember that blind girl and the mule she tries to pay the samurai with.  But I like the setting a lot, and I can see the production values tried to create a solid era depiction.)

10. The Grandmaster - 6 (it's been a while. I'll pay it a rewatch, but it's the film in his filmography that has the least people giving a shit about. It's barely ever mentioned or evaluated in film circles. We'll see.)

11. As Tears Go By - 5 (Average film. But I do hear some people talk about this. Or maybe it's just... "I've seen the last Wong film." But I guess most people consider it like Ashes of Time.... weaker or minor, but still decent.)