This closes out the trilogy by Whit Stillman that I started years ago with Metropolitan and really, I shouldn’t have bothered. It’s still about young adults being self-important and clumsily falling in love, this time in Barcelona, Spain under a cloud of anti-Americanism. The fast patter of the dialogue Stillman appears to favor is familiar and there is a certain charm in his characters. But I can discern no meaningful heart in it and the attitude of both mocking the bourgeoisie and yet wholeheartedly embracing it is just grating when there is no real payoff to the dichotomy.
I don’t hold out much hope for horror films actually being able to scare me these days but this was a recommendation from our cinephile friend and it was a good way to fill an hour and a half time slot. The directors Danny and Michael Philippou deserve praise for an original concept, vivid imagery and a plot with a decent emotional core. Still this is a fairly standard story about high school kids playing around with contacting the spirits with all of the baggage of the genre including never letting the adults in on what’s really going on. It’s a good horror film but it wasn’t a particularly outstanding one and didn’t scare me.
After the incredible yet grueling experience of watching Sátántangó, it’s about time we moved on to more of the work of Béla Tarr. This is a more normal two hours long but it’s still similar in many ways with its rain-soaked remote mining town, dreary atmosphere and horrible people. The black and white imagery is exquisite and the vibes I got from it reminded me at times of the work of David Lynch. Unfortunately I found it to be far too overwrought and the self-flagellating speech in it so tortured that it would have been better to omit it entirely.
This Thai film was a big surprise hit and since it’s on Netflix, I thought I’d give it a shot even knowing that it will likely be a sentimental tearjerker. It is indeed that but it also turned out to be a reasonably balanced, serious drama. The premise may be trite, yet director Pat Boonnitipat does a rather good job of portraying the dynamics within families with all of the bittersweetness that entails. I was also impressed by how good it looks as the interiors of the houses they use look like real places someone would live in. The recent spate of Malaysian films in which their interiors look like a set designer’s idea of a living space compare very unfavorably.
The thing with these very old Hollywood films is that even if they’re not much good, at least they’ll be easy to watch and understand. This Depression-era film certainly qualifies as being the latter and taking into account the quality of storytelling of the time, I think it’s not altogether bad either. What aged the most is the slapstick humor as hitting people or seeing them fall down just isn’t very funny these days. The story about a working class girl skyrocketing to the luxurious heights of the high life is straight out fairy tale material, but perfect exemplifies the escapist fantasy of the period. It may not be a great film, but it’s quite fun!
I’m not a fan of Taylor Swift and I don’t know much about her music beyond the famous, mostly older songs that are played all the time. But I’m not blind to the huge cultural phenomenon that she is, especially in America. Her Eras Tour, still ongoing until the end of this year, is arguably the greatest show on Earth as of right now in terms of scale and commercial value. I thought I might watch this film version of the concert to get the merest taste of what the real thing might be like especially as it has been hailed as perhaps the best concert film ever made. As expected, it’s a grand spectacle and though it still doesn’t make me a fan of her work, it did give me a better appreciation the range of themes and genres she has explored.
After having read the entire trilogy, I was always going to watch this Netflix series even though I quickly noped out of the Chinese adaptation. There was no way I was going to be able to sit through 30 episodes and so much repetitive content. This English-language version makes big changes to the story, moving most of the scenes to England for example and more importantly creating a new set of characters, the so-called Oxford Five, to serve as the protagonists. I’d say that the changes are for the better as it does away with the marked misogyny of Liu Cixin’s work and makes for a more varied and interesting cast. On the other hand, it is somewhat implausible that the chief of the MI6 would take such a central role in leading the defense of Earth and it really needed more extras to portray the sheer scale of the events. Overall it’s a good adaptation and managing to convey so much of the story in only eight episodes is commendable. I’ll definitely be waiting for the next season.
