Chungking Express (1994)

I think I would have been a lot more taken with this film if I'd seen it in 1994 when it was released. Why didn't I see it then? Anyway this is a free-form, new wave experiment about two lovelorn cops and the mysterious women in their lives, and it's the film that put Wong Kar-wai on the map. I didn't dislike it but it somehow didn't really work emotionally for me--it felt self-consciously arty instead of genuinely true in any sense we have of that word. What did I like: the gorgeous cinematography by Christopher Doyle, and any time that Faye Wong danced to "California Dreamin'."