(Un)Sentimental Films
When writing film reviews, I often criticize Chinese-language and Taiwanese films for being too prone to sentimentality and peddling warmth. However, when I watch movies, I'm often in a state of internal conflict. Which side of me—the cold and sharp, or the warm and sentimental—is more easily moved by a film? This film list covers coming-of-age movies, movies about movies, the various relationships between story and art, how authors tell their own stories, and how they integrate the perspective of their era to reflect social consciousness. These aren't exhaustive, but they largely explain my current thoughts on cinema.
Author鄭秉泓影評人，高雄電影節節目總監。
7 films
Labyrinth of Cinema
Lee Chang-dong: The Art of Irony
Storytellers
A New Old Play
Age of Panic
Farewell, My Lovely
Wild Tides
Popular
Those irreversible slices of life
Recently, in a novel I've come to love, I found myself grasping the weight of life's slices. In the story, there is a wicked sorcerer who freezes people in the instant just before tragedy strikes—suspending everything, sealing it into a crystal ball, and building an entire museum from these frozen moments. And isn't film, in its own way, just as cruel? As viewers, we are little more than instruments for collecting tissue slices—slipping into a character's world for a single fleeting moment, wandering through it in passing, only to return, in the blink of an eye, to the reality that is our own.