Friday, April 17, 2015

This Week in Rankings


The past several weeks saw the Hou Hsiao-hsien Retrospective come and go in Seattle, and I covered it in detail over at Seattle Screen Scene (I also was lucky enough to be invited to introduce a handful of shows as well, which was fun). Over there I wrote lengthy reviews of The Boys from Fengkuei, The Time to Live, The Time to Die, Dust in the Wind, Flowers from Shanghai, Millennium Mambo and Café Lumière. I also covered the Seattle releases of Abel Ferrera's Welcome to New York, Hal Hartley's Ned Rifle and Lisandro Alonso's Jauja.

I also submitted an annotated list of Underrated 1985 Films to Rupert Pupkin Speaks. And I don't think I've mentioned it yet, but I also have a thing on my favorite Film Discoveries of 2014 over there too.

Over here at the end, I wrote about Chang Cheh's Masked Avengers, part of my Running Out of Karma series, the index for which is fully updated. I'm closing in on 200 Chinese language films seen as part of the series, which is surely some kind of a milestone. Especially since I still pretty much hate the series's title. My other indices are up-to-date as well: the Review Index as well as the Index of Essays and Podcasts.

These are the movies I've watched and rewatched over the last few weeks, and where they place on my year-by-year rankings.

Red Line 7000 (Howard Hawks) - 11, 1965
The Boys in the Band (William Friedkin) - 19, 1970
Cute Girl (Hou Hsiao-hsien) - 27, 1980
Masked Avengers (Chang Cheh) - 28, 1981
Three Crowns of the Sailor (Raoul Ruiz) - 8, 1983

The Boys from Fengkuei (Hou Hsiao-hsien) - 9, 1983
The Time to Live, The Time to Die (Hou Hsiao-hsien) - 2, 1985
Taipei Story (Edward Yang) - 7, 1985
Yes, Madam (Corey Yuen) - 9, 1985
The Terrorizers (Edward Yang) - 6, 1986

Dust in the Wind (Hou Hsiao-hsien) - 11, 1986
Project A 2 (Jackie Chan) - 18, 1987
Days of Thunder (Tony Scott) - 40, 1990
Only Yesterday (Isao Takahata) - 2, 1991
Twin Dragons (Tsui Hark & Ringo Lam) - 24, 1992

A Borrowed Life (Wu Nien-jen) - 11, 1994
Henry Fool (Hal Hartley) - 12, 1997
Flowers of Shanghai (Hou Hsiao-hsien) - 6, 1998
Millennium Mambo (Hou Hsiao-hsien) - 1, 2001
Fay Grim (Hal Hartley) - 19, 2006

It Felt Like a Kiss (Adam Curtis) - 2, 2009
All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace (Adam Curtis) - 23, 2011
Save the Date (Michael Mohan) - 82, 2012
Jauja (Lisandro Alonso) - 4, 2014
Approaching the Elephant (Amanda Wilder) - 31, 2014

Ned Rifle (Hal Hartley) - 53, 2014
World of Tomorrow (Don Hertzfeld) - 2, 2015
Bitter Lake (Adam Curtis) - 4, 2015
Furious 7 (James Wan) - 5, 2015