Great Buddha
1 Like
- A City of Sadness
- A Time to Live and a Time to Die
- Dust in the Wind
2 Likes
Your Spiritual Temple Sucks
8.1 stars, movie by Director John Hsu, comedy about Taoism tradition
Top 10 Taiwanese New Wave according to someone.
- A Brighter Summer Day, 1991
- A Time to Live and A Time to Die, 1985
- Rebels of the Neon God, 1992
- A Borrowed Life, 1994
- Growing Up, 1983
- Kuei-Mei, A Woman, 1985
- The Peach Blossom Land, 1992
- Strawman, 1987
- Tropical Fish, 1995
- In Our Time, 1982
4 Likes
These movies are almost all historical dramas about life after war when CKS came to Taiwan, life under Japanese rule, autobiographical from people’s childhoods growing up in those times, etc.
A Brighter Summer Day
Taiwan movie, 1991, ~4 hours long, story set around 1960, very nice cinematography, story mostly form school kids life under martial law, long movie, somewhat repetitive with gangs fighting.
Worth a watch for historical perspective if you have free time. I would not call it a great movie.
2 Likes
I liked Help Me Eros.
2 Likes
The Wayward Cloud, Taiwanese movie, 2005, some famous Taiwan director
Thought it was going to be artistic cinema as advertised but turned into weird adult oriented supposedly artistic cinema somewhat disgusting, uniquely bizarre movie with odd sex scenes, won some international artistic awards, thankfully I could fast-forward through the long slow artistic scenes, I’ll never think about watermelon the same again.
Looking through this old thread… talk about getting movies at Blockbuster or going to theater for NT$70.
What Time Is It There?
Supposed to be artistic cinema, but barely resembles a movie, first 4 minutes watching and old man smoke a cigarette, very little dialogue and lots of long continuous scenes with nothing happening like someone sitting in a chair or laying in bed.
Your Name Engraved Heriein
I remember I watched that trilogy. When you want to like something, and it has something special-weird to it, but…
What did you expect? It’s directed by Tsai Ming-liang! 
Guy
1 Like
A Sun
Haven’t seen a Taiwanese film this good since Edward Yang’s “A One and a Two.” Brought me to tears several times as I watched. Highly recommend it.
3 Likes
I am very interested in this film.
Watch it. It’s on the long side, but it was time well spent, and I plan to watch it again. For someone living in Taipei, it was interesting to recognize places. I was blown away by the performances by everyone in the cast. The cinematography was outstanding too.
3 Likes
Cracking movie.
Also as a Taipei-ite it’s fun to spot the locational discontinuities. I.e. when the action segues from one location to another and watching you go, weren’t they just in xizhi how come they’re suddenly in downtown Taipei?
5 Likes
And that’s why it won best film editing at the Golden Horse Awards, in addition to best film, director and leading actor. There were several shots of empty streets of Taipei in broad daylight (Ximending, the MRT line over Fuxing, etc). The streets are never that empty. The effect must have been done in post production.
1 Like
Yeah, reminded me of the opening of Vanilla Sky.
Taipei Story
Gets great reviews. Maybe it was good for it’s time, but I found it not so great, and lots of dead time with no one doing anything except sitting or standing and not talking. Maybe supposed to be reflective. Sad people living a sad life, couples, not enough money, cheating on each other… same old story.
Not a lot of city scenes to see old Taipei.
1 Like