In about seven years, the British magazine Sight and Sound will conduct its next critics' poll of the greatest movies ever made, which has been held every decade since 1952. It's always hard to handicap these things, but I have two predictions: 1) Vertigo will finally unseat Citizen Kane from the top of the list. 2) More than one critic, maybe a bunch of them, will name 2046 as one of the best movies of all time.

It's the sort of film that was made for international top ten lists—the most beautiful, hypnotic, and ambitious movie ever to come out of Hong Kong. I do miss the humor of Wong's earlier films, and deeply regret the fact that 2046 represents a long, deliberate retreat from the spontaneity and grace that made Chungking Express such a miracle...but really, I shouldn't complain. I'm just glad to have more Faye Wong—as a beautiful android, no less—and more cigarette smoke, more sequined dresses and lonely apartments, more opaque voiceovers, more night. It's Wong, it's big-time, it's the movie of the year. And it's so very, very sad.