New 4K Restoration
Critics' Pics: Selections from AFI and Sight & Sound
The whiplash, double-pronged Chungking Express is one of the defining works of '90s cinema and the film that made director Wong Kar-Wai an instant icon. 30th anniversary screening.
Two heartsick Hong Kong cops (Takeshi Kaneshiro and Tony Leung), both jilted by ex-lovers, cross paths at the Midnight Express take-out restaurant stand where the ethereal pixie waitress Faye (Faye Wong) works. Anything goes in Wong Kar-Wai’s gloriously shot and utterly unexpected charmer, which cemented the sex appeal of its gorgeous stars and forever turned canned pineapple and the Mamas and the Papas’ “California Dreamin’” into tokens of romantic longing. This 4K restoration returns the film to its original theatrical aspect ratio and adds newly retooled surround sound. [102 min; comedy, crime, drama; English, Cantonese, Japanese, Hindi, Mandarin, Punjabi, and Urdu with English subtitles]
"Chungking Express ravishingly, seductively exudes the immediacy of everyday life as its spins its classically timeless tales of love lost and almost regained." — Kevin Thomas, L.A. Times
"[Wong's] hypnotic images of love and loss finally wear down your resistance as seemingly discordant sights and sounds coalesce into a radiant, crazy quilt." — Peter Travers, Rolling Stone
"A minor miracle of modern cinema, a sweet-hearted lightheaded meditation of the ups and down of romantic love that should leave any audience walking on air." — Eddie Harrison, Film Authority
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