The Best Old Movies on a Big Screen This Week: NYC Repertory Cinema Picks, March 1-7
Chungking Express (1994)
Directed by Wong Kar-wai
It’s no surprise that Quentin Tarantino was an early champion of Chungking Express. Like Pulp Fiction, also released in 1994, the film juggles multiple plot lines and characters in a densely packed global city, and its use of jump cuts, freeze frames, and montages resembles the early work of Godard, also a huge influence for Tarantino. What is surprising about the film is that all its melding of cross-cultural influences and cinematic rule-breaking actually works and does so in exhilarating fashion. The first half, which plays like a gangster thriller, is infused with an unexpected romantic longing, while the second half shifts effortlessly into a rom-com that balances slapstick with a deeply felt melancholy. Perhaps this is just another case of style over substance, but Wong’s masterpiece might be one of the few films in which style begets substance. A.J. Serrano (March 4, 9:15pm; March 5, 3:15pm at the Metrograph)