This is another old film that is not great enough to be considered a classic and not well known enough to be a cult hit either. Nevertheless its director Alan J. Pakula is an established name, being the producer of To Kill a Mockingbird and the director of All the President’s Men. This film itself is noteworthy for its unusually complex psychological treatment of its characters, especially in the domain of sexuality, though it does feel a little dated now.

Like a significant proportion of the planet, we were on a binge of watching the series a few years ago and my wife was absolutely smitten by it. That’s why watching this highly anticipated feature film was always going to be inevitable even if objectively speaking we all know that it’s not going to be much good. The best thing to be said about it is that it properly reunites the cast, with the exception of Matthew Goode who has a curiously insignificant role, and the show is led by series creator Julian Fellowes.

As far as I know, director Jafar Panahi is still barred from leaving Iran or officially making films but of course he doesn’t let them stop him. Here he and the other characters are still playing themselves but at least he isn’t pretending that this isn’t a film anymore. I do like how Taxi Tehran was mostly about the city of Tehran, but this one is about him driving around in the countryside.

So far we’ve watched two films by Ken Loach, Kes, which we loved, and I, Daniel Blake, which I thought was the product of a director out of touch with the times. This film about the Irish War of Independence and the Civil War immediately after is much closer in quality to Kes and I suppose that reflects the director’s greater affinity for the period. But it still is rather hamfisted with its political messaging and I think a little biased in the director’s insistence on how much of the disagreement was founded on fighting for socialism.

Having a Philippine film on here is another first. Though it mostly takes place in Hong Kong, this definitely counts as a Philippine film by virtue of its leads, its director Cathy Garcia-Molina, and its screenplay. A comparison with the recent Still Human is obvious as both feature Philippine women working as domestic helpers in Hong Kong. But Hello, Love, Goodbye is the superior film is almost all respects with the main reason being that it captures life from the Philippine point of view much more authentically.

This is very much not the appropriate season for this film but we could all do with some lighter fare and cheering up in these trying times. I suppose this counts as a second tier animation film as its quality and budget are visibly inferior to the box office releases. In another era, we would have called this a direct to video film but a Netflix release doesn’t sound so denigrating these days. Note that while this is an English language film and features many famous voice actors, it was actually made by a Spanish animation studio.

I loved First Man when I watched it in the cinema a couple of years ago but do I really need to watch a documentary of the same events? It turned out that yes, even though it covers much of the same ground, the excellent editing here and the use of previously unseen archival footage makes this well worth watching for space fans and adds much of value even to those who are already familiar with the moon landing.