Ryusuke Hamaguchi is probably Japan’s mostly highly regarded director of the moment and we’ve already seen a few of his works. This one was shot with non-professional actors and a visibly low budget. I only warmed to it at the scene where the representatives of the developer meet the local residents. Pegging it as a film about NIMBYism, I was instantly hooked. Yet Hamaguchi is a far more complex and subtle director than that and the ending left me stunned. I had to think about it for a bit and look up what others had to say about it online to get what it means. It does sort of make sense and explains the film’s title but I don’t think this will be among my favorite of this director’s works.

I’ve skipped a whole string of major biopics of famous musicians because they were only mediocre as films. Still, the great thing about the genre is that they’re easy to watch and you can be certain that at least the music is enjoyable. This one places the music in an even more central role than most and barely even attempts to be a biography of Bob Dylan. It covers only a tiny slice of the legendary singer’s life from 1961 to 1965 and aims to relate the mythos rather the facts. By its end, we don’t get to really know who Dylan is but we do get to understand why his rise as a folk singer was such a big deal and that’s a worthy story in of itself.

I opted not to watch this series when it popped up on Netflix but changed my mind after watching Thunderbolts of all things. Part of the creative team for what must be the best MCU entry in years also worked on Beef and the shared DNA is especially obvious in the very last episode. The series starts off with a bang as a road rage incident between two strangers escalates into a protracted feud. I loved it as a deep dive of two psychologically damaged people who allow a minor incident destroy their lives. I liked it less though when it starts spreading itself too thinly by developing the supporting characters. It’s good but maybe tone down on the crazy escalation and dramatic twists.

Based on its premise, I expected this to be a visual extravaganza, especially since this is a documentary made by National Geographic. What I did not expect was how brutal it is in showing how closely death stalks the community of base jumpers. This film was shot over a period of seven years, enough time for there to be big changes in the lives of the participants featured here. As the directors were astute enough to focus on three romantic couples in particular, it’s the human aspect that is so gripping as we watch them grapple with fears, injuries and death.

This may be a recent release but between its stark black and white visuals and the post-World War 2 Italian setting, sure doesn’t look like it. It’s deliberately anachronistic in more ways too, being shot in the neorealist style of the 1940s and 1950s and being about how horribly oppressed women of that time were. Yet its genius is that even as it superficially purports to be a film of that era, it subverts expectations to deliver a thoroughly modern message of female empowerment with a dose of wry humor. The twist at the end is perhaps too abrupt but does successfully prevent the film from reverting back into the usual clichés.

Bas Devos is a Belgian director who is new to me and his passion seems to be to showcase the city of Brussels and perhaps the people who live in it. That might not be immediately apparent in this quiet, contemplative film and indeed it’s hard to tell for a long time what it is at all. I think I do get what the director was trying for here, in showing the forest that exists as part of Brussels and in emphasizing the immediacy or thisness of small moments. But to fully achieve the intended effect would require truly sublime imagery and cinematography and I don’t think this film quite reaches those heights.

Wim Wenders has made many amazing films and I’ve covered quite a few of them here. Here’s one of his most critically planned films which I added to my list anyway because Scott Sumner had some nice things to say about it. This is strange film that will leave you in confusion much of the time yet it does have a comprehensible plot. It has a very cinematic feeling, but almost too much so until it feels like a caricature of Hollywood movies. Wenders has made excellent American films before so it’s not like he doesn’t have an excellent grasp of both the language and the setting. So it’s strange that he seems to be deliberately trying to be bad at times. It’s an interesting project but not a good film at all.