Even after years at it, revisiting the great classics of cinema is a never ending affair and so here we have one of the earliest and most famous exemplars of the French New Wave movement. The director is of course Alain Resnais but I think we should also give due credit to screenwriter Marguerite Duras. I also note that the producers of the film stipulated that one of the main characters must be French and the other must be Japanese and scenes must be shot in both countries. So labouring under these restrictions, Resnais and Duras created this thoroughly unique film.

Here’s a classic Hollywood adventure film starring Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn and directed by John Huston. It’s notable in that they actually did film this at least partially in the Belgian Congo, which must have been quite a feat in the 1950s. It’s a fun enough adventure that is entertaining even today but there’s nothing especially noteworthy in it.

The proper Nosferatu film is of course the 1922 silent one by German director F. W. Murnau but we’ve never watched and judging that it is perhaps a little too difficult to grasp in the present, I decided to skip over it. This one is the 1979 remake by Werner Herzog, once again starring his favorite actor Klaus Kinski. Unfortunately while this is solid work the impact is subdued due to how familiar we all are with the Dracula story and I kept wondering how much of it really comes from the earlier work. I now think maybe I should have watched that instead.

After hearing about the controversy over the Bruce Lee scene, I held no great enthusiasm for watching this but I always knew I would get around to it eventually. As it turned out I did find the scene to be kind of insulting, but it’s a relatively minor part of the film. As for the rest of it, after a bit of a slow start, I found it thoroughly entertaining and yet bereft of any meaningful theme or deep insight.

I actually really liked the first Frozen and could immediately tell while watching it in the cinema that Let It Go would be a huge global phenomenon. It’s obvious that Disney struck lightning in a bottle with it and didn’t quite understand how that happened. The subsequent Frozen-based shorts that were released were truly awful and reinforced the impression that Disney had no idea how to replicate that initial success. The failure of any song in this sequel to make any lasting impression is proof enough that it isn’t as good as the first film but watching it now, I realize that it is far worse than I thought it would be.

After the crazy trip that was My Own Private Idaho, I thought I should watch this earlier film by Gus Van Sant. Oddly enough while this does begin as literally a drug-fueled trip, it is actually a much more conventional film than I expected. Perhaps one of the most interesting stylistic choices is the use of slow, moody music as the soundtrack to reflect the main character’s contemplative nature even as he lives a fast, dangerous life.

Onwards as we move through the filmography of Hou Hsiao-hsien, we have this exquisitely crafted Flowers of Shanghai. My wife recounted to me how she’d tried to watch this multiple times over the years but failed to finish it every time. The reason is that the predominant language used in the film is Shanghainese which made it quite incomprehensible. But this time, we watched it all the way to the end, thanks to the power of English subtitles.