Even before it won all those Oscars, I was always going to have to get around to watching this eventually as much as I didn’t relish the prospect of watching a three-hour biopic. Critics have praised Christopher Nolan for successfully framing this as a thriller with the use of jumps in the timeline to add tension and uncertainty yet to my mind it is still a biopic. The unique angle that Nolan adds is elevating the character of Lewis Strauss to serve as the principal antagonist of the film. I understand that this was a major brouhaha at the time but as Nolan observes himself, it really is much ado about nothing. It feels unworthy to make such a big deal out of it and in the same vein, I don’t think very highly of this film either.
Saving this science-fiction classic until now was unexpectedly fortuitous because I have better idea of its influence having watched films such as Vesper and Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind that were clearly inspired by it. Right off the bat, it blew me away with its depiction of a far future Earth in which what remains of humanity must eke out a precarious existence against the plant-life that predominates. The amoral perspective, since there is no room for anything other than survival, is sobering and this is pretty much purely a survey of the ecosystem of the era. My interest did fall off somewhat once it establishes a pattern of its characters being continually forced to confront unfamiliar environments due to a series of misadventures, rather than staying in one particular biome to explore it in-depth. But it remains one of most eye-opening and original science-fiction books I’ve ever read.
I was aware of this documentary’s reputation as a real tearjerker but it still managed to leave me in shock. This is a very personal film made by a single person, Kurt Kuenne, in honor of his friend Andrew Bagby who had been murdered. The horror is that his murderer is his ex-girlfriend who was at the time pregnant with his son and the intent behind this film is to let the son Zachary know what kind of man his father was. The story develops into so much more than that as it touches the lives of so many people and resulted in the law being changed. I’m not sure that I’ve ever seen another documentary that is as charged with personal rage and frustration as this one as Kuenne really invests so much of himself into it.
This is one film that I probably wouldn’t have watched if it weren’t for a friend’s recommendation and the fact that it’s easily available on Netflix. It has passable and it did get nominated for an Oscar for cinematography but its premise reads like a gimmicky B-movie. This turned out to be a fair assessment as it’s a beautifully shot comedy horror with a dumb plot, crammed with dark jokes of a political persuasion. I can even see why my friend liked it, as it has something of Wes Anderson’s surrealism except that it’s monochrome and is unrestrained when it comes to sex and gore. But it isn’t really the sort of thing I like.
We’re nearly done with the slate of Studio Ghibli films and here we come to an old one that my wife said she fell asleep watching back in the day. This is admittedly one of Hayao Miyazaki’s lightest and simplest films. It encapsulates nothing but Miyazaki’s love of aircraft and specifically the aircraft of the pre-World War 2 era. There is combat but it’s treated as comedic playacting with no one dying or even getting seriously hurt. This is barely more sophisticated than a children’s cartoon but I found I rather liked the purity of its vision. Miyayaki knew exactly what he wanted to express here and so he did it without caring about what anyone else thought.
I’m such a completionist when it comes to video games that I hate not finishing any games that I start but I have to throw in the towel for this one. I bought this because I thought my flightstick was getting too little use and this is a well known game series that I’ve never dabbled in before. As it turned out, this is so much of an arcade game that the regular gamepad works better so I switched to it. I also very quickly discovered that this is the kind of game that really wants to frustrate the player and force you to make multiple attempts every mission just to find out what you need to do and what to bring. The missions are winnable, no doubt, once you know what to bring and you’re prepared for what’s going to happen, but this game is just too much of a pain for me to deal with.
This is commonly cited as one of the great Australian films even if there is some debate over whether it counts as being Australian at all. Director Nicolas Roeg and the two white actors are English. I’d say it easily counts as this is probably the definitive film about the Outback. I’m not a big fan of this use of the noble savage trope and I found its core message to be similarly outdated and simplistic. Even so I can appreciate how perfectly this film conveys that message with its vivid, almost hallucinogenic vision of the Outback and its boldness in using nudity and sheer physicality for both the male and female characters.
