2046 Reviews

As memorable and emotionally intense as any of Wong's films. It's a mood as much as a movie.

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A riot of sight and sound that, however baffling, has an irresistible, elemental pull.

Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5

Be prepared for a movie that unfolds with painstaking slowness and deliberation. But if you can hook into its peculiar wavelength, it's a small masterpiece.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4

Sometimes muddled and confusing but beautiful-looking follow-up effort.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4

The film combines the sublime and the mundane in ways that previously went unimagined.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5

The result is almost fetishistic, come-hither doodling of Wong's own making. He is a craftsman mumbling to himself in a language only he understands.

| Original Score: 2.5/4

[Zhang's] identity is so strong that it seems to hold the story together most of the time; it really should have been only about her.

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Wong...is a naïf stylist, a director who always stays on the lush surface of things.

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... demands to be seen if only because no film -- no film this reviewer has seen -- captures the beauty of its actresses so artfully, with such spectacular style and light.

| Original Score: A-

More stunt than substance.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5

The cinema hasn't witnessed such a magical effort to make its leading ladies look so gorgeous since Josef Von Sternberg invented new lighting techniques to capture Marlene Dietrich.

Full Review | Original Score: A-

This long, gorgeous, occasionally maddening movie is the work of a hopeless romantic who knows there is no pain as bittersweet -- or as haunting -- as the pain of a broken heart.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4

As someone who admires Wong's ambition and skill, I'm able to give 2046 only a halfhearted recommendation.

| Original Score: B-

In a film that likes teasing mysteries, the greatest revelation is Ziyi Zhang.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4

I suppose it was only a matter of time before Hong Kong director Wong Kar Wai fell into self-parody.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4

An engaging drama and character study, but without much to rally behind

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4

It's all terribly atmospheric, and if you're in the mood for atmosphere, 2046 delivers.

| Original Score: 3/4

It's like a sketchbook. These are images, tones, dialogue and characters that Wong is sure of, and he practices them, but he does not seem very sure why he is making the movie, or where it should end.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4

At its best, it drenches the screen with sensuous poetry and touches a core of sadness.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4

Think of it as a visual tone poem about longing and loss, a journey through a vale of luminously beautiful tears.

Full Review | Original Score: B+