In top 10 of 21st century's greatest movies poll

    THREE Asian films have made it into the top 10 of the 100 greatest movies of the 21st century in a poll of critics commissioned by the BBC.

    Wong Kar-wai’s melancholic masterpiece “In the Mood for Love” came in at second place, behind David Lynch’s audaciously surreal and hypnotically arcane magnum opus “Mulholland Drive,” but ahead of Paul Thomas Anderson’s third-placed “There Will Be Blood.”

    The other Asian films in the top 10 are Hayao Miyazaki’s Oscar-winning “Spirited Away,” which was in fourth place, and Edward Yang’s “Yi Yi, A One and a Two,” which came in eighth. “Yi Yi” helped the Taiwan filmmaker nab the Cannes Film Festival’s best director prize in 2000.

    The BBC compiled its list by polling 177 film critics from different platforms — print, online, academia, curators — and from every continent except Antarctica. Each critic was allowed to submit 10 films and the grand total of 599 submissions was then sorted into the top 100.

    One of the standout features of the list according to the BBC was “the emergence of new classics from Asia like nothing we had ever seen before.”

    Wong’s “In the Mood for Love,” a film about infidelity starring Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung, got the highest number of votes from female critics, while Thai indie director Apichatpong Weerasethakul and Taiwanese Oscar winner Lee Ang were ranked among the directors with the most votes.

    Justin Chang of Los Angeles Times explained his endorsement for Wong’s film: “Wong Kar-wai is one of world cinema’s most notorious perfectionists, but he earned every moment of editing-room indecision with ‘In the Mood for Love,’ the rare movie that draws much of its melancholy power from what it leaves off-screen … never before has a film spoken so fluently in the universal language of loss and desire.”

    Two critics from Singapore — Nanyang Technological University’s Associate Professor Stephen Teo and freelance critic Ong Soh Chin — contributed to the poll.

    Ong told Channel NewsAsia that having Asian films represented in the top 10 is great: “The three films undoubtedly deserve their place on the list. However, I would have liked to see more films from other parts of Asia, like India and Southeast Asia, represented; as well as films from Africa and the Middle East too.”

    “Mulholland Drive,” which stars Justin Theroux and Naomi Watts, was released in 2001 and earned David Lynch an Oscar nomination for best director.

    It tells the story of an aspiring actress who moves to Los Angeles and befriends an amnesic woman.

    The neo-noir mystery film was not one of the year’s highest grossing films at the box office but it received warm praise from critics.

    The most recent film in the top 10 was Richard Linklater’s “Boyhood,” which took fifth place.

    Released in 2014, the coming-of-age film shot with the same cast over 12 years won the best film Bafta in 2015 and a best supporting actress Oscar for Patricia Arquette.

    The most recent recipient of the best film Oscar, “Spotlight,” came in 88th place. Only two other best picture winners made the top 100 — “No Country for Old Men” (which was placed 10th) and “12 Years a Slave (44th).” (SD-Agencies)