I’ve studiously avoided all of the Transformers films since the very first one, and indeed looking it up, that means I haven’t seen one in ten years. I decided to give this prequel a chance as it was not directed by Michael Bay and I quite like the idea of a smaller scale film featuring just Bumblebee. Unfortunately while this is definitely better than Bay’s own work for many reasons, it’s still recognizably the same type of action movie and that means I cannot in good conscience call it a good film.

Pedro Almodóvar directs this film that brings together some of the biggest name performers in the Spanish speaking world. I was dubious about it at first as the story of a renowned film director in decline being addicted to drugs seemed like just another entry in a tired genre. But it opens up to cover many more aspects of the director’s and I found that I quite liked it despite its lack of a singular focus.

Sergio Leone’s A Fistful of Dollars is of course his unofficial remake of Yojimbo, being similar enough that the Japanese production sued and Leone eventually settled out of court. Being one of the earliest Spaghetti Westerns, the European crew members were so nervous that they adopted fake American-sounding names. This is why the musical score really is composed by Ennio Morricone as you can tell immediately upon hearing it but it is credited to Dan Savio.

We have watched a film by director Peter Strickland though I didn’t remember that until I went back to check. It was the Duke of Burgundy about a lesbian BDSM relationship. This one is completely different, being a horror film about, of all things, a dress. It’s a little too weird for me to really like but I have to admit that it is highly original and of course its visuals are simply sumptuous, just like the earlier film.

We’re back to the classic Akira Kurosawa samurai film with this one. It’s full of the director’s favorite actors including of course Toshiro Mifune in the lead role and indeed the shot of him slowly striding down an empty street is one of the director’s most iconic images. The plot is comparatively simple but this characterization of a wandering samurai out to do good deeds through both guile as well as force of arms has been an influential one for good reason.

It has been almost exactly a year since we watched the well loved 1994 adaptation so it’s still quite fresh in our minds. We were always going to watch this new version due to its stellar cast and the fact it is directed by Greta Gerwig. Unfortunately while this completely blows away the older film in terms of production values and visual beauty, it also makes some unconventional decisions with regards to presenting the sequence of events and emphasizing different aspects of their lives. This serves to differentiate the new version but I’m not sure that it’s for the better.

This most definitely not a musical film is the first directorial feature of its director Ladj Ly who previously made a name for himself for similarly themed short films. It immediately made waves upon its release and it’s easy to see why. Even from the very first shots, it seizes your attention with its energy and urgency and never lets up. As usual with such things, it can offer no easy solutions to longstanding intractable problems, but its revolutionary message rings loud and clear and it certainly lives to its adopted title.