Fallen Angels

If Quentin Tarantino was on vacation in Hong Kong in 1995 and he had a dream about Nouvelle Vague cinema, then it might end up looking something like Wong Kar Wai's "Fallen Angels."

Crystal clear? Good.

I'm a huge Wong Kar Wai fan. I've got two more flicks to see and then I would have seen his filmography. I need to see his debut and Ashes of Time. I'll watch em both this year. Maybe I should watch all of them in order in 2012. That sounds like a grand plan!

Anyway, not only does he write the most compelling stories, but much like Tarantino, he uses a select group of actors and artists to craft his movies time after time. What will the next Tarantino film be like now that his long-time editor, Sally Menke, has passed away? She was so key to his visual style. In the same way Sally was crucial to Quentin's output, Christopher Doyle seems like a cornerstone in Wong Kar Wai's jigsaw puzzle. He is an incredible cinematographer who has an instantly recognizable style. He bathes his films in a beautiful wash of deep light. You know the scene in Vertigo when the neon sign of the hotel outside the apartment is glowing red and casting a rich hue across the room? That's like the predecessor to Christopher Doyle right there. It's like his films are deep oil paintings but somehow rendered with watercolor.

I haven't really touched on Fallen Angels in particular, though. It's cool. It's about a hitman and lost love. It's slow and kind of dream-like. It has a couple different plots that loosely connect to one another. They're firmly connected thematically, though. There's a good amount of shoot-em-up action. Great soundtrack. The 'partner' is super hot.

Wong Kar Wai is like a romanticized, self-mutilating, art-fag Quentin Tarantino. And I mean that in the highest regard to both men. They're the two greatest directors on Earth right now, in my humble opinion.

Having said that, if I were new to Wong Kar Wai then Fallen Angels wouldn't be my first choice for an introduction. Or even second or third. I would start with his greatest achievement, In the Mood for Love. Then go to Days of Being Wild, then Chungking Express, then 2046, and then Fallen Angels, Happy Together and My Blueberry Nights (his only film in English, and unfortunately upon seeing it in the theatre in Thailand I wasn't very impressed. I'll definitely watch it again this year, though). I can't comment on As Tears Go By or Ashes of Time as I haven't seen either yet.

By the way, I want to mention that I actually sat down to stream NEDS tonight but once it came on I realized that it was fucking subtitled. It's in English for fuck's sake. I don't need subtitles to watch something in English!!! It really pisses me off that just because it's shot in Scotland it defaults to subtitles. If you can't understand them, then get tae fuck, ya wee prick. So I'll have to get the disc so I can watch it as it should be seen.

Rant over. Wong Kari Wai is as close to god as you or I will ever know.

Watch my movies, motherfucker.