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Reading & Watchlist

Books I’ve Written About

Currently Reading

  • Chatwin - In Patagonia
  • John Fraser - The Chinese, Portrait Of A People
  • Fei-Fei Li - The Worlds I See
  • Albert Camus - The Stranger
  • Fyodor Dostoevsky - Notes From The Underground

Films I’ve Written About

Movies I’ve Watched

  1. Shawshank Redemption (Frank Darabont, 1994) - First watched this as a kid on my dad’s old hard drive. A slow burn that earns its payoff. Hope as something you choose.
  2. Blind Shaft (Li Yang, 2003) - Set in Sanmenxia, not far from where I was born. Brutal portrait of the coal mines and the people ground down by them.
  3. Baby Driver (Edgar Wright, 2017) - Every gunshot, screech, and footstep lands on the beat. Pure style. Made me dig out my Simon & Garfunkel records.
  4. In the Heat of the Sun (Jiang Wen, 1994) - Beijing in the Cultural Revolution, but filtered through the haze of teenage memory. Nostalgia for a time that maybe never existed.
  5. A Touch of Sin (Jia Zhangke, 2013) - Four stories of violence in modern China. Desperate people pushed past breaking points. Hard to watch, harder to look away.
  6. Solaris (Tarkovsky, 1972) - Sci-fi as grief. The ocean gives you back what you can’t let go of.
  7. Mirror (Tarkovsky, 1975) - Memory as structure. Doesn’t need to make sense to feel true.
  8. Andrei Rublev (Tarkovsky, 1966) - Three hours of mud, violence, and silence. Then the icons blaze into color.
  9. Stalker (Tarkovsky, 1979) - The Zone gives you what you really want, not what you say you want. Terrifying idea.
  10. 12 Angry Men (Sidney Lumet, 1957) - One room, twelve men, reasonable doubt. Shows how prejudice hides in certainty.
  11. Letters from Iwo Jima (Clint Eastwood, 2006) - Iwo Jima from the other side. War without heroes, just men waiting to die.
  12. The Emperor in August (Masato Harada, 2015) - The longest day in Japanese history. How a nation decided to stop fighting.
  13. My Way (Kang Je-gyu, 2011) - A Korean forced to fight for three different armies. War as absurdity on an epic scale.
  14. The Eight Hundred (Guan Hu, 2020) - Four days defending a warehouse in Shanghai. Spectacle and sacrifice.
  15. The Crossing I & II (John Woo, 2014-15) - The Taiping sinking as tragedy. Melodrama, but the kind that earns its tears.
  16. Boyz n the Hood (John Singleton, 1991) - South Central as both home and trap. Singleton was 23 when he made this.
  17. Catch Me If You Can (Spielberg, 2002) - A con man who just wanted his family back. Light on its feet for a film about loneliness.
  18. Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance (Park Chan-wook, 2002) - Revenge where everyone loses. No catharsis, just spiraling consequences.
  19. Oldboy (Park Chan-wook, 2003) - The hammer fight, the twist, the dread. Korean cinema announcing itself to the world.
  20. Shiri (Kang Je-gyu, 1999) - The film that launched Korean blockbusters. North-South tension as action thriller.
  21. Joint Security Area (Park Chan-wook, 2000) - Friendship across the DMZ. The tragedy is that it has to be a secret.
  22. Taegukgi (Kang Je-gyu, 2004) - Two brothers, one war. The Korean War as family torn apart.
  23. Parasite (Bong Joon-ho, 2019) - Starts as a con, ends as a knife. Class warfare in one house.
  24. Hacksaw Ridge (Mel Gibson, 2016) - A man who wouldn’t touch a gun saved 75 lives. Conviction as a kind of madness.
  25. Chungking Express (Wong Kar-wai, 1994) - Two stories about heartbreak in Hong Kong. Canned pineapple and California Dreamin’.
  26. Fallen Angels (Wong Kar-wai, 1995) - Neon loneliness. Everyone’s in motion, no one connects.
  27. In the Mood for Love (Wong Kar-wai, 2000) - What almost happened. Restraint as its own kind of devastation.
  28. All Quiet on the Western Front (1930 & 2022) - No glory, just mud and dying boys. Both versions hit the same nerve a century apart.
  29. Downfall (Oliver Hirschbiegel, 2004) - The bunker as the world shrinks. Bruno Ganz disappears into the role.
  30. Sisu (Jalmari Helander, 2022) - One old Finn versus a Nazi battalion. Absurd, brutal, cathartic.
  31. Bridge to Terabithia (Gabor Csupo, 2007) - Marketed as a fantasy, hits you with grief. Still not over it.
  32. WALL-E (Andrew Stanton, 2008) - A robot learns loneliness, then love. The silent first act is perfect.
  33. Ratatouille (Brad Bird, 2007) - Anyone can cook. Ego’s final monologue is the best defense of criticism ever written.
  34. The Wind Rises (Miyazaki, 2013) - A man who dreamed of flight and built machines for war. Beautiful and troubling.
  35. My Neighbor Totoro (Miyazaki, 1988) - Childhood as magic. The catbus alone is worth it.
  36. Spirited Away (Miyazaki, 2001) - A girl works in a bathhouse for spirits. Growing up as losing your name.
  37. Ponyo (Miyazaki, 2008) - A fish who loves a boy. Pure, unguarded joy.
  38. From Up on Poppy Hill (Goro Miyazaki, 2011) - Post-war Japan rebuilding itself. Quiet and earned.
  39. Taxi Driver (Scorsese, 1976) - Loneliness curdles into violence. De Niro in the mirror, talking to himself.
  40. Apocalypse Now (Coppola, 1979) - Vietnam as a river into madness. The horror, indeed.
  41. Full Metal Jacket (Kubrick, 1987) - Boot camp breaks men down. War doesn’t build them back up.
  42. 2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick, 1968) - Humanity’s whole arc in three hours. HAL is the warmest character.
  43. Munich (Spielberg, 2005) - Revenge that hollows you out. No satisfaction, just more blood.
  44. Incendies (Denis Villeneuve, 2010) - A mother’s secret unfolds. The ending rewires everything before it.
  45. War Dogs (Todd Phillips, 2016) - Two idiots become arms dealers. Absurd because it’s true.
  46. Superbad (Greg Mottola, 2007) - High school panic and McLovin. Funnier and sadder than it had to be.
  47. Mid90s (Jonah Hill, 2018) - Skateboarding as belonging. The bruises are the point.
  48. 21 Jump Street (Lord & Miller, 2012) - Dumb premise, surprisingly smart execution.
  49. 22 Jump Street (Lord & Miller, 2014) - A sequel that roasts itself. The end credits are genius.
  50. Challengers (Luca Guadagnino, 2024) - Tennis as foreplay. The three-way tension is unbearable.
  51. American Psycho (Mary Harron, 2000) - Wall Street vanity as horror. The business card scene says everything.
  52. The Big Short (Adam McKay, 2015) - The 2008 crash explained with rage and jokes. Still makes me angry.
  53. Margin Call (J.C. Chandor, 2011) - One night as it all falls apart. Quiet dread in expensive suits.
  54. Operation Y and Shurik’s Other Adventures (Leonid Gaidai, 1965) - Soviet slapstick at its best. Shurik bumbling through life.
  55. Kidnapping, Caucasian Style (Leonid Gaidai, 1967) - More Shurik, more chaos. Comedy that transcends the Iron Curtain.
  56. The Imitation Game (Morten Tyldum, 2014) - Turing breaks Enigma, then his country breaks him. Brilliance punished.
  57. Jarhead (Sam Mendes, 2005) - A war film about waiting. The desert empties you out.
  58. The Godfather (Coppola, 1972) - Michael’s slow fall. The door closing on Kay says it all.
  59. The Godfather Part II (Coppola, 1974) - Two stories: one man rises, another rots. The better sequel.
  60. Nightcrawler (Dan Gilroy, 2014) - Gyllenhaal as a sociopath who found his calling. LA noir at its slimiest.
  61. Good Will Hunting (Gus Van Sant, 1997) - “It’s not your fault.” Robin Williams earning every tear.
  62. Seven Years in Tibet (Jean-Jacques Annaud, 1997) - A man finds himself by losing everything. The mountains do the rest.
  63. Come and See (Elem Klimov, 1985) - War as trauma. A boy’s face ages decades in two hours. Unwatchable and essential.
  64. The Aviator (Scorsese, 2004) - Hughes chasing the sky while his mind falls apart. Ambition as disease.
  65. Enemy at the Gates (Jean-Jacques Annaud, 2001) - Two snipers in Stalingrad. War reduced to patience and one bullet.
  66. October Sky (Joe Johnston, 1999) - A coal miner’s son builds rockets. Escaping your fate one launch at a time.
  67. The Beast (Kevin Reynolds, 1988) - A Soviet tank lost in Afghanistan. The enemy is everywhere, including inside.
  68. Blood & Gold (Peter Thorwarth, 2023) - A deserter versus the SS. Pulpy WWII revenge done right.
  69. The Captain (Robert Schwentke, 2017) - A deserter finds a uniform and becomes a monster. Power corrupts instantly.
  70. De Oost (Jim Taihuttu, 2020) - Dutch soldiers in Indonesia. Colonialism’s violence laid bare.
  71. Saving Private Ryan (Spielberg, 1998) - The Omaha Beach sequence rewrote war films. Earn this.
  72. Inglourious Basterds (Tarantino, 2009) - History rewritten with a baseball bat. Waltz steals every scene.
  73. Dunkirk (Nolan, 2017) - Survival as three timelines. The sound design alone is suffocating.
  74. Schindler’s List (Spielberg, 1993) - The red coat. The list. Whoever saves one life saves the world entire.
  75. The Pianist (Polanski, 2002) - A man survives by disappearing. Warsaw in ruins, music as the only proof of humanity.
  76. Threads (Mick Jackson, 1984) - Nuclear war on Sheffield. The most hopeless thing ever broadcast.
  77. Das Boot (Wolfgang Petersen, 1981) - Claustrophobia under the Atlantic. Every depth charge shakes your chest.
  78. Valkyrie (Bryan Singer, 2008) - The plot to kill Hitler. You know it fails, but you hope anyway.
  79. Unbroken (Angelina Jolie, 2014) - Zamperini survives everything. Endurance as defiance.
  80. Narvik (Erik Skjoldbjaerg, 2022) - Norway’s forgotten battle. Small nation, first victory against the Nazis.
  81. Napoleon (Ridley Scott, 2023) - Phoenix as Bonaparte. Battles as spectacle, Josephine as obsession.
  82. Life Is Beautiful (Roberto Benigni, 1997) - A father turns the Holocaust into a game for his son. Heartbreak disguised as comedy.
  83. Life Is Beautiful (Grigory Chukhray, 1979) - A taxi driver dragged into resistance under a junta. Soviet-Italian co-production, largely forgotten.
  84. Anora (Sean Baker, 2024) - A stripper marries an oligarch’s son. Chaos, class, and a Palme d’Or.
  85. 50/50 (Jonathan Levine, 2011) - Cancer at 27. Funny and devastating in equal measure.
  86. About Time (Richard Curtis, 2013) - Sold as a rom-com, actually about fathers and sons. Wrecked me.
  87. Decision to Leave (Park Chan-wook, 2022) - A detective falls for his suspect. Longing shot like a procedural.
  88. 500 Days of Summer (Marc Webb, 2009) - “This is not a love story.” Expectations versus reality.
  89. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Gondry, 2004) - Erasing someone from memory. You’d still find your way back.
  90. Interstellar (Nolan, 2014) - A father crosses the universe to keep a promise. Time as the cruelest distance.
  91. Blade Runner (Ridley Scott, 1982) - “Tears in rain.” What it means to be human, asked by those who aren’t.
  92. The Battle of Algiers (Gillo Pontecorvo, 1966) - Revolution as textbook. Still the definitive film on insurgency.
  93. Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind (Miyazaki, 1984) - Ecology as epic. The film that launched Ghibli.
  94. Castle in the Sky (Miyazaki, 1986) - Adventure, wonder, a floating city. The first true Ghibli film.
  95. Admiral (Andrei Kravchuk, 2008) - Kolchak’s doomed stand against the Bolsheviks. Russian history as tragedy.
  96. Farewell My Concubine (Chen Kaige, 1993) - Fifty years of China through two opera singers. Art, identity, and survival.
  97. Crazy Rich Asians (Jon M. Chu, 2018) - Wealth, family, mahjong. A rom-com that mattered.
  98. Us and Them (Rene Liu, 2018) - Two people, a decade, what could have been. Chinese romance done right.
  99. Better Days (Derek Tsang, 2019) - Bullying, gaokao pressure, and two kids protecting each other. Brutal and tender.
  100. Goodbye Mr. Loser (Yan Fei & Peng Damo, 2015) - Time-travel comedy about second chances. Funnier than it has any right to be.
  101. Ip Man 1-4 (Wilson Yip, 2008-2019) - Donnie Yen as the Wing Chun master. Fists as philosophy.
  102. The Warlords (Peter Chan, 2007) - Blood brothers in the Taiping Rebellion. Loyalty betrayed, ambition rewarded with death.
  103. Youth (Feng Xiaogang, 2017) - A military arts troupe through the Cultural Revolution. Beauty and waste.

Series I’ve Watched

  1. Suits (2011-2019) - Legal fantasy where everyone talks fast and looks good. Comfort TV.
  2. Babylon Berlin (2017-) - Weimar Republic noir. Decadence before the fall.
  3. Generation War (2013) - Five German friends enter WWII. None come out the same.
  4. Black Mirror (2011-) - Technology as horror. Some episodes stay with you for weeks.
  5. For All Mankind (2019-) - What if the Soviets landed first? The space race that never ended.

Please email me recommendations at jameshan.cs@gmail.com!