8. "The Shadow Play"

Chinese art-house auteur Lou Ye's "The Shadow Play" is a crime drama thriller that tells how a naive rookie cop pursues truth in a grotesquely complicated case as he investigates a wealthy real estate family and finds himself caught in a web of love. The film attempts to create a sense of danger by editing the story into bits and pieces, then jumping back and forth in time and place, from Guangzhou to Hong Kong. The film is a strong social critique, as is always with Lou's films, observing the complexities of humanity and the crux of its fall in the current epoch.