So here's the thing about Wong Kar-wai. The guy doesn't make movies so much as he makes you feel things you didn't even know you were capable of feeling. You know how some films are about what happens? His are about what happens inside your chest while stuff is happening on screen. It's weird. Someone's always smoking a cigarette like their life depends on it.

He's a Hong Kong director who basically told Hollywood-style to take a hike and decided to do his own thing. No scripts half the time, just vibes and beautiful people being sad in beautiful places. He made it okay for movies not to make total sense as long as they felt right. Changed the way I look at everything, honestly. Which, looking back, might explain my life in my twenties. Anyway, here's my personal ranking.

Days of Being Wild (1990)

This is where the Wong we all know really showed up. Before this, he made a pretty normal gangster movie. After this, he never looked back.

It's set in the 60s and stars Leslie Cheung as this guy who's basically the human equivalent of a red flag. He tells women he loves them and then acts surprised when they want, you know, commitment. There's this whole thing about a bird with no legs that has to keep flying forever, which sounds deep until you realize it's just a fancy way of saying the dude's afraid of growing up.

Maggie Cheung is in it, being heartbreaking as always. She spends a lot of time walking up stairs really slowly while we watch. That's the thing with Wong; you have to get used to it. People walk slowly. They look at things. It takes time. But it works.

It's gorgeous and sad and sets up everything that comes later. But it's also a little rough. Like a band's first album, where you can hear the talent but they haven't quite figured out how to use it yet. Number five feels right.

2046 (2004)

Okay, so imagine you had the most intense love of your life, and then you lost them. Now, imagine you spend the next five years being kind of a jerk to everyone you meet because nobody measures up. That's this movie.

Tony Leung comes back as the same guy from In the Mood for Love, except now he's older and sleazier and writes these weird sci-fi stories to deal with his feelings. He lives in a hotel and gets involved with all these women, most notably Ziyi Zhang, who plays this woman who falls for him even though every bone in her body knows she shouldn't.

The movie jumps around like crazy. There's a whole futuristic train thing that's basically about people going to forget their past loves. Which is a metaphor for what the whole movie's about anyway.

It's stunning to look at. Like every frame is a painting you'd hang in your house if you were the kind of person who hangs sad paintings in your house. But it's also a lot. It's slow and expects you to remember details from a movie that came out four years earlier. Homework. The movie requires homework.

Beautiful though. Really beautiful. Just be patient.

Chungking Express (1994)

Now we're talking. This movie is pure caffeine. Wong apparently shot it during a break from editing another film because he was losing his mind and needed to make something fun. And you can feel that.

It's two stories that don't connect at all. The first one's about a cop who's obsessed with expired pineapples because his girlfriend left him, and pineapples have expiration dates, and love does too, apparently. Also, there's a woman in a blonde wig who's a drug smuggler. It's a lot.

The second story is the one everyone loves. Tony Leung plays another sad cop, and Faye Wong plays this manic pixie dream girl type who works at a takeout joint. She gets his apartment keys and starts sneaking in to clean and redecorate while he's at work. Which sounds creepy written down, but on screen it's somehow the sweetest thing ever.

Faye Wong sings California Dreamin' about eight hundred times. By the end, you'll be singing it too.

The camera shakes, the colors pop, and everything moves fast. It feels like being young and drunk in a city that never stops. It's hopeful, which is rare for Wong. Sometimes you want the rain and the sadness. Sometimes you want expired pineapple jokes.

In the Mood for Love (2000)

This is the one. The big one. The reason people dress up is just to go buy milk. The reason anyone thinks a tight dress and cigarette smoke equal romance is unclear.

Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung play neighbors in 60s Hong Kong. They figure out their spouses are cheating on each other. So they start spending time together, acting out how the affair might have started, and surprise, surprise, they fall in love. But they can't do anything about it. Because society. Because of what people think. Because it's wrong even though it feels so right.

They barely touch the whole movie. There's a scene where they pass each other on a narrow stairwell and their hands brush, and it's more intense than anything you've seen in an actual sex scene. That's Wong for you.

The music. That string melody that plays over and over. It'll break you. Every shot is perfect. Like, move one inch, and you'd ruin it perfectly.

So why isn't it number one? Because perfect can feel a little cold sometimes. It's so controlled, so precise. I love it. I respect it. But I don't always want to live inside it.

Fallen Angels (1995)

And here we are. The messy one. The chaotic one. The one that feels like 2 AM in a city that doesn't care about you. This one really speaks to me.

This was originally supposed to be part of Chungking Express, but Wong cut it out because it was getting too long. Good call. This movie needed its own space to be weird.

We got a hitman who wants to quit. We have his partner, who's in love with him and expresses it by cleaning up his crime scenes and touching his trash. We got a mute ex-con who forces strangers to buy ice cream from him and runs a business at 3 AM because he can't sleep. It's all over the place.

It's shot with these crazy wide-angle lenses that make everyone look distorted and desperate. The rain never stops. There's a scene where the hitman's partner breaks into his apartment just to lie in his bed and hold his pillow. If you've ever done something embarrassing because you liked someone, this movie gets you.

It's also funny somehow. The mute guy's dad runs a hotel, and there's this whole sweet thing between them. Wong throws every idea at the screen. Some stick. Some shatter. The result is beautiful and messy and alive.

In the Mood for Love is the film you study. Fallen Angels is the film you feel in your gut at 3 AM when you can't sleep, and you're thinking about that person you shouldn't be thinking about. This film also has a huge influence on my photography work. I love wide lenses, and I think that has a lot to do with Fallen Angels. That's why it's number one.