Director Wong Kar-wai's Chungking Express has been voted one of the world's 10 greatest movies of the past 25 years. Fifty British film critics and academics voted in a poll by the British Film Institute's Sight & Sound magazine and Wong's 1994 movie, starring Tony Leung Chiu-wai, Faye Wong and Takeshi Kaneshiro, came eighth. Another Asian movie, Taiwanese Edward Yang's 1999 A One And A Two was tied in 10th with Sergio Leone's Once Upon A Time In America. Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now was voted No 1 and Martin Scorsese's Raging Bull was second. Another Scorsese movie, GoodFellas, came in fourth, after Ingmar Bergman's Fanny And Alexander. Director Wong, who was not immediately available for comment, yesterday received a congratulatory note from Secretary for Home Affairs Patrick Ho Chi-ping. 'It's a great achievement, and it draws attention to Hong Kong's movies internationally,' his office said. The Commerce, Industry and Technology Bureau plans to set up a government-backed loan scheme to help film-makers obtain commercial loans to revive the recession-hit industry. Many critics say Chungking Express draws influence from the French New Wave, particularly from films by Jean-Luc Godard, which have a loose, improvisational feel. The movie tells two loosely related tales of heartbreak and unrequited love. The stories involve two policemen whose duties confine them to Tsim Sha Tsui's hot spot, Chungking Mansions. The film premiered in North America at the New York Film Festival in 1994 alongside Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction, which hogged international attention and overshadowed Wong's film. Tarantino later made up for it by championing Wong's movies, and helped to distribute Chungking Express in North America. Wong's movie also propelled Hong Kong cinematographer Chris Doyle to international fame. Doyle went on to do a highly stylised remake of Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho in 1998 for US director Gus Van Sant.
