Watching films is one of my favorite ways to spend my free time. My favorite directors are David Lynch and Hou Hsiao-hsien. Films allow me to step into worlds far removed from my own experience. Sometimes I feel a little like Gil Pender, the protagonist of Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris: moving through different times and places, I can momentarily feel as though I am encountering the people and stories of another world firsthand.
I love Cinema Paradiso for its music, its sense of place, and its exploration of dreams, memory, and home. The film makes cinema itself feel like a bridge between childhood and adulthood, between the place we come from and the world we eventually leave to pursue our dreams. Its treatment of nostalgia reminds me that leaving home does not necessarily mean leaving it behind.
Mulholland Drive fascinates me through its sound design, cinematography, and fragmented narrative. I especially enjoy the way Lynch uses cinematic form to blur the boundary between reality, fantasy, memory, and performance. Its exploration of identity, desire, and sexuality makes the film feel less like a puzzle with one answer and more like an experience that changes depending on how you look at it.
I admire A City of Sadness for the way it approaches historical trauma through the lives of ordinary individuals rather than through grand historical spectacle. The film captures the traces of a turbulent period through the intimate experiences of a family, allowing history to emerge through small gestures, relationships, and personal loss. It showed me how cinema can reveal the weight of an era precisely by focusing on people who are simply trying to live through it.
Breathless is one of the films that made me understand why the French New Wave remains so influential. I love its unconventional cinematography, restless energy, and willingness to challenge established cinematic conventions. Rather than feeling perfectly polished, the film feels immediate and alive, which is precisely what makes its style so memorable to me.
I love the slow pace of Yi Yi because it gives me time to become immersed in the characters' lives. Through the perspectives of different generations, especially the children, the film reveals the complexity of ordinary relationships and social life. I am particularly drawn to its nuanced female characters and its use of metaphor and mirrored relationships. The film reminds me that seemingly ordinary lives can contain enormous emotional and social complexity.