I've been lazy with reviewing films recently, so once again I'll just recap a lot of them at once.
In the Mood for Love (Wong Kar-wai, 2000)
The theme of unrequited love was explored in Chungking Express, and is revisited here, this time in Hong Kong of 1960s. The handheld camerawork and low production values are replaced with more static shots, but in a lot of ways it displays Wong's maturity as a director – his control of space and framing is masterful, reminding me a lot of Edward Yang's Yi Yi in that aspect. A simple yet effectual drama, that much like Chungking Express, just works. 9/10
Guilty of Romance (Sion Sono, 2011)
Coming from being very impressed by Love Exposure, I found this one to be quite a disappointment. In many ways it's just as silly, but being framed in sort of a horror story it takes itself a lot more seriously, and as a consequence is a lot less self-aware and I feel it lacks the purpose in its absurdity that Love Exposure had. It's basically live-action anime, really. 6/10
Three Times (Hsiao-Hsien Hou, 2005)
Three short films set in three different time periods. Much like Edward Yang, another Taiwanese contemporary, Hou displays an affinity for engimatic and restrained narratives, but in the format of short films it feels like his stories don't have the time come out fully fleshed out. His directing style is impressive, however, with shots having a distinct style and control of space matching the time periods of each of the three stories. All in all, a little disappointing, but nonetheless promising first look into this director's work. 6/10
Still Life (Jia Zhangke, 2006)
I'm not entirely sure how I feel about this one. I expected a romantic drama, but the narrative seems to only frame the almost documentarian look into the construction of Three Gorges Dam and the destruction it left in its wake. The visuals are fantastic: grand natural vistas are juxtaposed with urban decay in long panning shots. The narrative is incredibly low-key; I can understand what they were going for, but it feels restrained almost to a fault, and that's why I'm a little on the fence on this one. 7/10
Gummo (Harmony Korine, 1997)
A fascinating look into the lives of poor white Midwestern trash. It's essentially a collection of vignettes, accentuated by off-camera recordings of locals and VHS-quality footage. Brutally honest and coming across as almost hyperrealistic and surreal, it's constantly on the line of being insulting in its portrayal of poor America, but it's nonetheless very sincere. 9/10
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (Andrew Dominik, 2007)
An expertly made docu-drama, with the plot outline conveniently covered in its verbose title. It seems to suffer a fair bit from ”adaptation syndrome”, in that a lot of its narrative is accomplished through compromise; there are a lot of expositionary scenes that wouldn't be out of place in a book, but in a film format cause the pacing to feel a little erratic and make the running time a bit too long, and the narration seems to only serve to purpose of filling narrative gaps and feels often completely unnecessary. I don't want to fault the film too much for it, because there's a lot to love about it. It's expertly shot, the script is solid, and Casey Affleck provides an amazing performance as the titular young coward. With a little bit of restraint used in editing, this film could have perhaps been amazing, but as it is I'll only go as far as to call it great. 8/10