RESURRECTION

Who among us isn’t moved by a love letter to capital-C Cinema? Told in six wildly different chapters—from a silent-era monster movie to a shadowy atomic-age noir to a supernatural parable to a story about an unlikely pair of schemers to a punk-rock vampire story, plus a wraparound story with the great Shu Qi—the film is a feast for the senses. The main story is glorious gobbledygook: In a post-apocalyptic future, a woman’s consciousness falls into an eternal time zone where she attempts to revive an android by telling endless stories. Making sense of its premise hardly matters, because it’s really just an excuse for Bi to have fantastic fun with our suspended disbelief. It’s impossible not to get caught up in the ecstasy of his filmmaking, to marvel at his incredible mastery of so many styles and genres as he celebrates the miracle of movies over the span of a century. His ambition and daring continues to scale up with each new project. The highs of this omnibus are exceptionally high because of the sheer technical brilliance on display, culminating in a staggering single-shot finale that surpasses Bi’s audacious hour-long oner in Long Day’s Journey into Night. As New York Times critic Manohla Dargis succinctly summarized, this is a “cinephile’s delight.” ~OO