CHUNGKING EXPRESS: Paranoia Agent

This review was requested by Nate Biagiotti. Many thanks to Nate for supporting Post-Credit Coda through our Patreon.

Director: Kar-Wai Wong
Writer: Kar-Wai Wong
Cast: Brigitte Lin, Tony Chiu-Wai Leung, Faye Wong, Takeshi Kaneshiro, Valerie Chow, Jinquan Chen
Runtime: 102 mins.
1994

Chungking Express is a movie about intimate urban encounters. The ways we brush elbows with entire universes that we will never know. The jittering pace and the frenetic energy of a busy day or an exciting night in the city, manifested by a choppy framerate that blurs pedestrian movement and turns the film's incredible fluorescent light design into sickly rainbow smears. The city is the main character, maybe the only character.

That city is Hong Kong, though it's as much about Every City as it is about the particularities of HK. The movie settles us in with some noir voiceover from our supposed protagonist, known only as Cop 663. Beat cop, lovelorn romantic, a mysterious woman of crime in a blonde wig... Chungking has all the ingredients of a tidy little thriller. Then it takes those ingredients, throws them at the wall, and does a little softshoe routine to smear them across the kitchen tiles.

THEATRE OF BLOOD: The Bard's Price

This review was requested by Brian Kapustik. Many thanks to Brian for supporting Post-Credit Coda through our Patreon. Be warned, spoilers abound.

Director: Douglas Hickox
Writers: Anthony Greville-Bell, Stanley Mann (idea), John Kohn (idea)
Cast: Vincent Price, Diana Rigg, Ian Hendry, Harry Andrews, Coral Browne, Robert Coote, Jack Hawkins, Michael Hordern, Arthur Lowe, Robert Morley, Dennis Price
Runtime: 104 mins.
1973 

Theatre of Blood (also stylized as Theater of Blood depending on where you look) follows the exploits of the ghost (?) of Shakespearean actor Edward Lionheart. Lionheart has returned from death to mercilessly exterminate a cabal of theatre critics one by one, all because of their excoriating treatment of him in the papers. Each gloriously ironic killing follows the template of a Shakespeare play that Lionheart headlined in his final season. I present this review in ten segments, one for each of Shakespeare's works as represented in Theatre of Blood.