"Nothing tells memories from ordinary moments,” La Jetée's narrator observes, “Only afterwards do they claim remembrance on account of their scars.” A film told almost entirely with still black-and-white images, Chris Marker’s photo journal/sci-fi mini-epic retains only the scars—exploring whether the human being is the author or the victim of memory. For Marker, art seems to be the realization of memory. His post-apocalyptic Möbian riddle ponders the contradictions of art and representation, even questioning its own photojournalistic form in a post-WWII world in which global events are understood through media, itself subject to censorship by those trying to control history—manifested via the scientists who fling Marker’s protagonist in a rescue mission back and forth across time. The destruction of humanity in the film's fictional WWIII has obliterated both the timely and timeless qualities of the human experience, the antithesis to the artist's responsibility. Ironically now secure in the cinematic canon, Marker’s existential tale is one in which those who pursue the bliss of eternal virtues are those who feel the mortal erosion of time the most. – Gunnar Sizemore

Given that Wong Kar-wai's sixth film sprouted from Liu Yichang's short story Intersection, it is fitting that the film situates itself at the stylistic crossroads of his career. Building on a Cassavetes-inspired filmmaking approach that relied on a rough outline and heavy improvisation, Wong chose here to ditch his often-frenzied camerawork—an approach aided by his signature cinematographer Christopher Doyle leaving mid-way through. The style of replacement Mark Lee Ping-bin—longtime Hou Hsiao-hsien DP—contrasted with Doyle’s kinetic handheld camera; Doyle shot many of Wong's most famous sequences at a slower shutter speed to achieve the impasto effect of the protagonists somehow outrunning time, smearing elusively across each frame, whereas Lee’s sensibilities rest more in control, employing little if any camera movement to create a melancholic awareness of time’s constant, irrecuperable passing. Born from this clash of visual philosophy was an electrifying union of bold style and immense restraint—mirroring the relationship of Chow Mo-wan and Su Li-zhen, who conspire in rooms of sensual deep reds and golds yet fail to act on or even verbalize their taboo feelings, remaining locked in respective charade-marriages. Out of this tension and onto the screen bursts Wong’s exquisite vision of timeless romance hampered by fickle circumstance. – Gunnar Sizemore