Tag: Crime
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Exiled (2006)
Exiled (2006) is Hong Kong director Johnnie To’s tribute to the spaghetti western embedded within a contemporary gangster film. The opening sequence sets the tone. An apartment where a woman, Jin (Josie Ho) feeds a baby, waiting for her partner, Wo (Nick Cheung). She is visited by two sets of men. One duo – Blaze… Read.
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Winter Kills (1979)
Winter Kills (1979) is the absurdist extension of the conspiracy thriller in vogue during the 1970s. Imagine The Parallax View, a riff on imagined counter narratives to the official record of the JFK assassination, but exaggerated with a strange comedy, not quite spoof or parody. Each scene in Winter Kills is eventually marked by a… Read.
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Kids Return (1996)
Kids Return (1996) is a title I remember because it would always be programmed on SBS. I was aware of Takeshi Kitano as a teenager, mainly when Fireworks was released and received praise from critics like Margaret and David on The Movie Show. There’s a power and beauty to Fireworks with the subplot of the… Read.
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Mike’s Murder (1984)
We don’t see the murder. Director and writer James Bridges apparently filmed one, and it was part of the negative test screenings that forced him to re-edit and structurally rearrange Mike’s Murder (1984) before its release. The original intention with Mike’s Murder was a film that was subjective with dream sequences and flashbacks; what was… Read.
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Sparrow (2008)
Movies in love with the movies. Hong Kong director Johnnie To began making Sparrow (2008) over three years in between other projects, most of them crime movies about cops and/or gangsters like Election and Exiled. There’s an element where it feels like Sparrow was another lane to escape to, and even though it is still… Read.
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