Once again, Mikio Naruse falls just outside of the most celebrated Japanese directors of his era. Yet I’ve also found that this allows him to do things that are ever so slightly not Japanese. This must be one of the most unorthodox romances I’ve seen and like the other Naruse films is willing to present a seedier, grimier view of the society for the camera. With the understated passion of the two leads and dynamic camera work that takes readily to the outdoors, there are times when it feels positively European. The ending kind of has it peter out but that’s an acceptable tradeoff for what is otherwise a perfect film.
Ne Zha 2 is indisputably the cinematic phenomenon of the year, breaking all box office records. When I first wrote about the first film, I called it China’s answer to the MCU. Well, this sequel is now head and shoulders above the current state of the MCU. Thematically it’s just more of the same so that’s not too impressive. But its visuals, action choreography, humor and sheer scale are all just off the charts. The pace is unrelenting as it just never stops throwing more things onto the screen for you to look at. This would actually have been better if it had just a little less fighting but it’s as good as action movie as anyone could want.
Why does it seem like running a clever scam is a running theme in Argentinean films? This one starts with a straightforward heist but at its core is the quest for freedom that perhaps money can buy. Of course there is more than one kind of freedom and there’s a whiff of Don Quixote in the main character’s dream of it. This is a long film however and it might even leave you wondering at the end what’s the point of it all. But I believe in between the subtle black humor, beautiful shots of both the city of Buenos Aires and the remote countryside of Alpa Corral, and its myriad distractions, this is more than worth watching.
The news that a fourth film of this series was just released was enough to have my wife rewatch the first film. I’d never watched it myself but I suppose I’d better because its cultural impact is very real. Immediately it is obvious that this is a very in-your-face adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, with a female heroine who is just ever so slightly overweight, maladroit and tongue-tied so as to be relatable to the average woman. It is not a terribly sophisticated film but it is decently funny and I can see why it’s the almost perfect female fantasy film.
I was frustrated for so long in the process of watching this series. After a rather conventional first episode, it confusingly leaps around, seemingly refusing to be tied down to any particular time and place. I was also frustrated that it has no interest in the plausible logistics of survival in an end-of-the-world scenario and so felt increasingly unrealistic. But then as the multiple threads combine, I finally realize how everything just fits. As a Broken Forum poster pointed out, this is really about trauma and healing from it in different ways. There are many parts of its message that I dislike but I can’t deny that this is one perfectly planned and crafted standalone series.
This French legal drama film won so much international acclaim that it’s a must watch. Despite the death at its heart, the film actually uses the intense courtroom scrutiny as an excuse to dissect every detail and every layer of a relationship between a woman and her husband. Director Justine Triet ensures that multiple interpretations of every scene, situation or line of dialogue are possible at the same time. Not only is the truth is elusive no matter how hard we search for it but at some point it may have to be something that we decide for ourselves.
Experimental films are usually difficult to make sense of but that is very much not the case here. The putative director William Greaves explicitly explains what he is doing and his crew further contribute their own theories. The real question is whether or not the end result is anything interesting or worthwhile. That’s a surprisingly difficult question to answer and it’s not even obvious if Greave is really as inept a director as he appears to be here. It appears from his filmography that he actually is a competent filmmaker so the apparent chaos here must be deliberate and so this is a work of art after all.
