Watched a bunch of stuff between Saturday and Today:
Medium - Polish supernatural horror/detective movie from 1985. Best way I can think to describe it is like Brian De Palma's The Fury meets Richard Franklin's Patrick, set in Nazi-occupied Poland. One of my favourite things about Netflix right now is its selection of Polish cinema, and according to Polish Wiki this is the first film from Poland to deal entirely with the occult.
Three Times - Hou Hsiao-hsien doing what he always does so well with his dreamy patient romantic style. This one consists of 3 short stories set during different periods of Taiwan (1966, 1911 and 2005 aka present day Taiwan) but using the same lead actors in each. Shu Qi is so great, at times almost reaching Maggie Cheung levels of screen presence. Very interested to see Alan Yang's new film on Netflix called Tigertail as he explicitly stated Hou Hsiao-hsien was a big influence while making it.
Burning - Not what I was expecting at all but in a good way. Really uneasy tense atmosphere and no definitive reveal or conclusion to the plot. I like that a lot. Steven Yeun was so good in this too, smug without being cartoonish, charming without being cliche, ambiguous enough to be perceived as a sociopath or as innocent but misinterpreted by Jong-su's wild writer's imagination. Had I seen this when we did the 2018 lists it would have made my top 10 for sure. Also SK cinema taps into class consciousness themes so well (this one at times goes into feminism more specifically, but Ben's relationship with the two country bumpkin main characters definitely has a class angle IMO).
Maps to the Stars - Pretty messy psychological drama that comes across more like a soapie a lot of the time. I honestly thought I wouldn't like it as I was watching it, but at some point maybe 30 or so minutes in it started to click with me and I found myself engrossed. Evan Bird was entertaining as fuck, such a little prick yet sweet in the scenes with his sister. Julianne Moore was so melodramatic and at times it bordered on insufferable but the culmination and eventual conclusion of her character made this kind of portrayal so much more essential and satisfying to me.