By Nathaniel R
Ang Lee with one of his Billy Lynn stars, Vin DieselOne of our favorite directors has a new film going wide today. Unfortunately number 13 proves unlucky for the great Ang Lee as Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk, a military drama about the way we use soldiers as propaganda pawns or blank slates to project upon, is hard to watch. Let us pray for a swift death to Hollywood's current unfathomable interest in the high frame rate technique. (The technique is ugly, expensive but looks cheap, and doesn't look like cinema -- that's lose lose lose or three strikes you're out. So what's the appeal Hollywood?)
Nevertheless Ang Lee has given us so many riches over his 24 year feature film career that we ought to appreciate his filmography this weekend.
How many of his pictures have you seen?
All the posters are after the jump...
The Beginning (1992-1994)
Pushing Hands is his least successful picture (in terms of box office gross) but both The Wedding Banquet and Eat Drink Man Woman (consecutive Oscar nominations for Taiwan in Best Foreign Language Film) were major arthouse hits in their day... to give you a sense of their size they were twice as successful as major foreign hits in our current scene like say Amour or The Grandmaster.
Hollywood Experiment (1995-1999)
Another Oscar hit with Sense & Sensibility as he segueways into English language cinema. Ice Storm has devout fans but wasn't popular. And Ride With the Devil was as stumble, his least successful English language picture. But if we take it as a warm up for his future western classic it was all worth it...
World Giant (2000-2012)
The first dozen years of the new century were very kind to Ang Lee bringing him his all time biggest hit (Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon), another masterpiece (Brokeback Mountain), a gorgeous potent return to Taiwan (Lust Caution)... and two Oscars for Best Director (Brokeback Mountain and Life of Pi)!
Now (2016-?)
Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk sees Ang Lee chasing the technological breakthrough mode of filmmaking that brought him so much success with Life of Pi. But really, Ang Lee is one of our great humanist directors. We have plenty of technology chasers (James Cameron et. all) but we only have one Ang Lee. We hope he gives up trying to push visual fx envelopes and returns to human drama where he excels and can send hearts soaring, and bodies too, whether they're balancing on leafy branches or riding horses up mountain ranges.
How many have you seen and how would you rank them?
Trivia
Ang Lee's films first 12 pictures have been nominated for a total of 38 Oscars (including an incredible 4 Best Picture nominations!) winning 12 statues, 2 for Ang himself. If we average that out that's 3 nominations and 1 statue per film ;)