Rating: 
Summary: ...nothing more important than feelings...
Review: i have to admit that my concept/experience/knowledge about movies is so so little that i wouldn't dare to write a review on films like Fallen Angels. however, what's important is my feeling towards this film. whether one sees this contention as subjective or not (or even objective) is what i don't care at all. as always, Wong Kar-Wai's film is a kind of "love it" or "hate it" type of movie. and because of the commercial implications by using Hong Kong best actors/actress and pop idols in all his movies, 'art' film critics might cynically condemn his non-independent filmmaking spirit while the mainstream would see Wong's film as 'crap' due to his use of motion, colour, plots, narratives, etc. but for me, it is the naturalness of his characters' interaction/exchange that i really love. though, Fallen Angels is more constructed/composed in terms of continuity and narration compared to Chungking Express, Fallen Angels' visual imagery is absolutely fabulous if one is really into some kind of abstract painting by Mark Rothko or Jason Pollock; or, in terms of music, if one is into drones and abstract atmospheric music, one will find Fallen Angels lovely forever. well, what's central to Wong's films is the investigation of human relationship. if anyone could feel or sense the isolation of living in a cosmopolitan society (i mean isolation is not a new concept), let me elaborate a bit. if one has a habit or like to talks to oneself in an imaginary public sector, then one will find Fallen Angels so heartbreaking due to its prominent use of voice-over. its use of voice-over view point reveal and investigate the human psyche and isolation which will deeply resonate any individuals' feeling of hope and lost if being an individual means isolation. whether Wong's film is a critique of a post-colonial space is out of my interest, what's vital to me is that Fallen Angels gives me a sense of joy, resonance, isolation, sadness, happiness, reflection, narcissism and cosmopolitan myth all at the same time. because of this, what's great about Fallen Angels, unlike other 'art' films or 'good' commercial movies, is that it invokes/stimulates our personal meditation on life, particularly our everyday life. and this meditation is done through a manner in which we are just like walking on the street and 'accidentally' find ourselves mucking around with and sharing our private stories with the not so 'strange' strangers...
Rating: 
Summary: Some Points of Understanding
Review: I'm a big fan of Kar-wai's films. He represents what is really the best of Hong Kong's current scene. All his films focus on the takeover by miainland China, but not in any way outwardly stated, but conveyed by the sense of Anticipation, of Dread, and of Wonder which encompass these films. "Fallen Angels," what was once to be the third vignette of "Chunking Express" (a film well worth seeing in its own right, and I should say also helpful in grasping "Fallen Angels"), was put on hold and then expanded into its own film. Others have commented on the lack of narrative. This is a stylistic choice I like: it lends a chilling force to the feelings of Apprehension and Anticipation that are the centre of this film. Kar-wai further exemplifies his themes by the achronicity of his films: You can never follow the progression until the end, when, if you've been paying attention, it can all become clear. The roads of life are many and tangled along the way, perhaps is his point, but at the end we look back and see only the way we took behind us. Only four stars because "Chunking Express" was better, and "Happy Together" is his best.
Rating:
Summary: A truly great film from Wong Kar-Wai.
Review: I'm sorry, I have not seen this DVD, but I have seen this film a number of times. The director of Chungking Express and Days of Being Wild has done it again! This is a perfect example of exactly what American audiences are being deprived of by the Hollywood studios. This film is all heart, all style, all meaning. If you feel suckered or otherwise cornered by Hollywood romanticized garbage and glorified violence, this movie will open your eyes to what real filmmaking is all about!
Rating:
Summary: Watch it if you love art film
Review: In a gloomy urban setting of Hong Kong, Wong Chi-Ming, a lethargic contract killer, has become emotionally attached to his agent. His notion of the affair is that it jeopardizes the professional atmosphere. Wong breaks his attachment with his agent, which leads to an emotional void that he seeks to fill elsewhere. Through his attempts to fill the hollowness within, he stumbles across a number of interesting individuals with similar problems. Fallen Angles is a poignant cinematic experience that elicits a wide array of feelings.
Rating:
Summary: Fallen Angels Wanders in Limbo...
Review: In a gloomy urban setting of Hong Kong, Wong Chi-Ming, a lethargic contract killer, has become emotionally attached to his agent. His notion of the affair is that it jeopardizes the professional atmosphere. Wong breaks his attachment with his agent, which leads to an emotional void that he seeks to fill elsewhere. Through his attempts to fill the hollowness within, he stumbles across a number of interesting individuals with similar problems. Fallen Angles is a poignant cinematic experience that elicits a wide array of feelings.
Rating:
Summary: Film of the Month
Review: Is Wong Kar-Wai the world's most exciting film-maker? Fallen Angels, his fifth feature and the follow-up to Chungking Express, constitutes strong evidence in his favor. With enough manic energy to fuel ten ordinary films, Wong has created a sublime, freewheeling, melancholy action-romance which switches and subverts genres in the blink of an eye. One second it's an all-guns-blazing John Woo homage, the nexts it's a goofball slapstick, the next it's a hymn to lost or hoped for love. Plotwise the film is just as unsettled, with numerous plots and characters careening through the neon-blurred Hong Kong night. Singer Leon Lai is Killer, a gun-for-hire who has an unconsummatable crush on Agent, the partner he has never met (played by former Miss HK Michelle Reis). In the same orbit circulates ex-con Ho (Chungking's Takeshi Kanashiro), a mute who earns his living by breaking into places of business by night and forcing his services upon unwitting 'customers'. Wong sets these characters up and then cuts them loose, allowing them to be propelled through the film by the kineticism of their own thoughts, schemes and dreams. Cinematographer Chris Doyle and editor/production designer William Chang help Wong create a film that looks, feels and moves like no other; quite literally reconfiguring cinematic time and space with spastic yet graceful narrative structure, rule-breaking, arrhythmic editing, forced perspectives and smeared action scenes. It's a dizzying, disorienting experience, shot almost entirely hand-held with a wide-angle lens and often in extreme close-up. Strip away the flash, however, and Wong's vision remains compelling; it's easy to relate to his dreamers, loners and misfits, wandering rainy streets and haunting dark bars looking for people with which they can connect and places where they can belong. Funny, stylish, sensual and ultimately very moving, Fallen Angels leaves you in no doubt that, yes, Wong Kar-Wai is the world's most exciting film-maker.
Rating:
Summary: One-way love.
Review: It is easy to barricade our lives from cruelty and meanness, but love is a trojan horse. In Wong's "Fallen Angels", a dual narrative involving a one-way love as a central theme, the professional hitman seeks a change in life-direction as his partner whom he has never met realizes she is falling in love with him. She often shares the same space, but only when he's not there, rummaging through his garbage to get a 'sense' of who he is. In a parallel narrative, an emotionally troubled son of a widowed father operates an after-hour stores by trespassing various shops and markets at night. Unsuspecting customers looking for a late-night snack or service are forced to buy things which he has decided to "will" them to buy. Their rejections are in vain as he won't be rejected for the second time. As the narrative cuts and pastes the character's past and present, we encounters even more troubled nocturnal inhabitant's of Wong's world. Wong knows that the dangers of love is that, when it comes, we open our gates completely despite ourselves. And no matter how we promise to avoid such error, we know the only antidote to love's poison is love itself. A schizophrenic narrative charged with neurotic characters, this is a one to watch when you keep staring at a picture of an ex- even though you know it is all over. In Wong's world where feelings matter the most, the often fragmented narrative delivers the schizophrenic nature of being in an one-way love.
Rating:
Summary: leon is so handsome
Review: leon is the most cool star in asi
Rating: 
Summary: Wong Kar-wai: He So Crazy.
Review: Like an overzealous gourmand of the French New Wave Wong Kar-wai has greedily shoved down his cinematic gullet the worst examples of Godardian excess and has been forcedly regurgitating it in movie after movie ever since. Now, I've never been to Hong Kong but I have more than a vague feeling that Hong Kong T.V. ads probably look a lot like Wong Kar-wai movies: brooding Orientals wallowing in overbearingly dated French-chic. If all there is to making movies is conjuring up a couple of wacky characters doing wacky things for no rhyme or reason then I guess anyone could do it. Strike that. Only Wong Kar-wai is this contrived. Let's just hope his own worthlessness finally dawns on him before he vomits up more bad ideas.
Rating:
Summary: An exciting piece of existentialist storytelling from Asia.
Review: Not only oddly endearing and enormously entertaining, Wang Kar-Wai's work is an important insight into what the next generation of filmmakers is up to. This is a fine blend of genres. Brooding and poetic performances counterpoint dazzling editing, camera-work, compositions and color: Nothing less than human existence, itself - well worth the experience.
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