This represents one of the rare occasions during which Hou Hsiao-hsien worked outside of the Chinese languages and indeed should be the only non-Asian film he ever made. It feels like a gimmick that shouldn’t work given that Hou doesn’t speak French and the French actors all don’t speak Chinese. Yet it does and the result is a wonderful view of the daily life of a Parisian family seen from the perspective of an outsider. I’ve never watched the 1956 film that serves as the inspiration but the references are obvious enough. I’m even more impressed that Hou manages to work in connections to Chinese culture that really are enriching and meaningful.

We missed out on watching the first Dune when it was shown in the cinemas because society was just reopening after the COVID-19 lockdowns just then. So this time we made sure to watch the second part in an IMAX cinema hall. The experience was everything we’d hoped for, overwhelming us with its visuals and soundscape. This adaptation compresses many of the events in the novel and leaves out quite a few important details including the birth of Alia, Paul and Chani’s first son, and the role of the Navigator’s Guild. But there are also changes that are arguably superior to the original, including making Chani one of the main skeptics of Paul’s divinity. All in all, it’s a real triumph and the changes make the science-fiction classic more relevant to our time.

Since this is intermittently hailed as one of the greatest films of all time, not having watched it was one of the most major gaps of my cinematic journey. It’s pretty much as I expected from its reputation, being a powerful tragedy but also one that is too dated for me to really fully appreciate. One thing that did strike a chord with me is how much it’s really about the alienation and isolation of man rather than just how hard life is. The ending isn’t a surprise as the main character Ricci works himself up to it throughout his search, ignoring alternative solutions and other people in his obsession to retrieve his bicycle. I suppose this sort of depth is why it’s such a highly regarded film.

I was under the impression that this was a documentary about the ill-fated Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 and so was blown away that it’s a dramatic reenactment with best in class production values. Everything else about the film is on point as well, the acting, how it handles cannibalism, how the survivors struggle to make sense of it all. It’s only the latest in a long line of adaptations about this disaster but it might be the most authentic one yet with its use of Uruguayan and Argentine actors.

Venturing a little outside of our usual picks for television shows, here’s a drama about Koreans who are in migrants in Japan. It’s really an American production, being an adaptation of an English-language novel by a Korean-American writer. That’s probably why this accords better with our tastes being a compact series with a fast moving pace, unlike the interminably long shows common in Asia. It covers multiple generations of the same family from roughly 1915 to 1989. We really liked the stories set in the distant past about the beginnings of the family but the material set in the 1980s seem uninspired. We’ll have to wait for the reviews to decide if we’re going to watch the upcoming second season.

This is another one of Agnès Varda’s documentaries, or video essays really, that she made late in her life. It won me over right from the beginning with the title card of her production company Ciné-Tamaris being her cat in her own house. Since everyone likely is wondering what gleaners mean, she goes straight to explaining the word from the Dictionnaire Rousseau. The film follows Varda as she travels all over France with her handheld digital camcorder to meet the people who gather the leftover crops after the harvest from fields in the countryside or scavenge food and trash in the cities. As the French title makes clear, Varda considers herself a gleaner as well as she gathers ideas, inspiration and meaning from those she meets.

I’ve soured on the works of Wes Anderson of late but after dithering for a while, I gave in and watched this one. Once again, it’s an ensemble film featuring an insane number of Hollywood luminaries and doesn’t really mean anything at all apart from the usual pathos of its characters. Yet I ended up rather liking this one because it’s very overt in telling the audience not to worry too much about it means and to just enjoy the show. It also helps that like the other Anderson films that I’ve most liked, it has more in the way of young adult characters and of course the retro-1950s science-fiction setting is great fun.