This documentary has been well-liked enough to appear on various critics’ best of year lists. But what convinced me to put this on my list is a strong recommendation by Tyler Cowen of it offering plenty of social science to think about while urging the audience to be skeptical of its conclusions.

This second part follows directly from the first one and as they were shot together should be seen as a single epic. Nonetheless there are discernible differences. Unlike the first one, this one takes place across a much shorter span of time as we approach the present. With the level of violence escalating drastically in this one, it also starts to feel more like a conventional action movie.

Once again I heard about this epic from The Economist which annoys my wife to no end as Indian films tend to be tediously long. This one more than qualifies for being long as the whole thing comes to well over five hours. It was divided into two parts for theatrical release and so this post covers the first part.

When film critics crank out their best of the year lists, it’s fair to say that this title will appear in many of them. It’s not just that this Danish film is genuinely good, it’s also that its gimmick makes it stand out. There’s basically just the one actor who appears on screen and there is only just that one scene shot in a single location. Yet it has no difficulty being both very tense and riveting.

The Economist had an excellent article a few months back contrasting this film which was a bit of a surprise hit to Asura, a hugely expensive failure. It talked about this as an indication of increasing social consciousness in China and that the authorities probably regretted approval this film for distribution as it helped fan the flames of dissatisfaction with rising medical costs. This film is inspired by real events but after a cursory check, it seems to me that so much has been fictionalized that it should be judged independently.

Each of director Noah Baumbach’s films so far has been incredibly rich and insightful treatises on life and this title is no different. This is even a much more ambitious and wide-ranging film than the other two we’ve watched and it features a quite different cast. Not all of its themes gel together perfectly but I would still quite happily call it brilliant.

Given his huge stature as a cultural icon, it’s a little hard to believe that James Dean only ever starred in three feature films. This one was his debut, a major project directed by Elia Kazan and partially based on a novel by John Steinbeck. It’s very obviously an adaptation of the Biblical story of Cain and Abel but as my wife notes, it’s also a story with strong Freudian overtones.