So we watched the first season of this a while back and only now made time for the second season. There’s a third and final season already out but I think we’re done with it. As Marvel Comics fans will know, Legion refers to David Haller, the super powerful son of Charles Xavier and who appears most often as a villain. I’m amazed that so esoteric a show was allowed to be made. I’m even more amazed that it amounts to an exercise on how to present psychosis in a visually interesting way.

This marks the last of Stanley Kubrick’s films that I have yet to watch. I was reminded of its existence only due to Filmworker as Leon Vitali got his start with the grandmaster director here with a supporting role. As always I am astounded by Kubrick’s ability to make masterpieces of completely different genres and this is indeed a beautiful film on multiple levels. Still though it proceeds at a sedate pace, this should be considered one of his more conventional and approachable films.

Due to director Bong Joon-ho’s track record alone, we would have gotten around to watching this eventually. Yet I am still struck by how successful this has been, both critically and commercially. Many critics have named it the best film of 2019 and it has been so talked about that it has become a meme. It’s quite an extraordinary achievement for a foreign film to gain such a cultural foothold in the US. For myself, I don’t quite see where the greatness lies. It’s a good film, of that there is no doubt, but the widespread acclaim it has garnered has made it feel overrated to me.

As I’ve mentioned on Broken Forum, Ne Zha can be thought of as China’s current best answer to Marvel and Pixar. It predictably sold well in China but performance outside of it has been lacklustre. Non-Chinese audiences probably found the title mystifying and I have to say that its trailer looks unimpressive as well. I was prepared to critique this heavily but ended up being rather surprised at how decent it is.

As I mentioned to my wife, our cinephile friend would never watch something like this, but I’m a soft touch for the occasional teenage romance or coming-of-age story. In addition, I like to think of this, together with Crazy Rich Asians and Andrew Yang’s campaign to be the Democratic nominee for the US presidential race, as part of the welcome phenomenon of Asian Americans coming out and becoming more visible amidst the broader American culture.

This marks probably the last significant oeuvre from the filmography of Jacques Demy that I’m going to watch and the final part of the trilogy that includes Lola and The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. Yet though Anouk Aimée reprises her role as Lola here, this is an American film with English dialogue and was shot in California. Demy rather incredibly claimed that he was there on vacation and decided to make a film then and there. At the same time, this doesn’t feel American at all and comfortably fits into the broad strokes of the French New Wave movement.

I have zero interest in sports so a documentary about doping in the world of cycling is hardly something that I’m likely to get excited about. However while this was director Bryan Fogel’s original plan for his film, subsequent events played out in a way that must have been far beyond anything he could have predicted, and so he seemed to have pivoted his film in response. The result is a riveting watch that tests the boundaries of what documentaries are supposed to be.