I’ve left this, perhaps the most heartbreaking of the Studio Ghibli films, for among the last. I couldn’t help but be partially spoiled in advance as this is so well known but it turned out to be very different from what I expected. For example the famous firebombing scene takes place at the very beginning. It sets the stage for the trials of the brother and sister duo but doesn’t really play a part after that. In fact it seems to me that what causes their deaths isn’t the war at all and I found the situation that the two found themselves in to be implausibly contrived in order to maximize their suffering. Contrary to expectations, I didn’t much care for this film.

I didn’t actually believe that this would really turn out to be a comedy action movie but I suppose I really should have believed in the poster and all of the clues. It’s so weird watching this after Ms. Marvel because it’s doing so many of the same things and even has the same actress playing the villain despite not having any superpowers involved. In some ways, it’s even better since having people with superpowers resort to fisticuffs in the end always looked dumb. There are some points in this film where it crosses the line over into cringe territory but I’d say it’s a decent action movie in the growing girl power genre.

We’re continuing with the recent spate of Malaysian films I suppose as my wife insisted on catching this in the cinema to support local filmmakers. I admit that the idea of a Malay director, Tunku Mona Riza, directing a mostly Chinese cast in intriguing and I do like how it’s set in the town of Taiping. Unfortunately the material she has to work with is television drama level crap. It feels like something out of the 1980s with its moral conservatism and naive take on the human condition. I do want to watch something interesting set in Taiping but this isn’t it.

This was added to my list because it’s a film by the Archers, the partnership between Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. I can’t say that I like it all that much even if it is known as one of the best British films of all time, but I am astounded that this really is all about a ballet production. In fact, its central feature is a performance that goes on for nearly twenty minutes and most of its cast are professional ballet dancers. There’s a delicious uncertainty for a long while as to where exactly this film is leading but it becomes more conventional once two of the main characters fall in love with one another.

I believe this is first film we’ve watched by Kenji Mizoguchi, one of the great directors of Golden Age Japanese cinema alongside the better known Akira Kurosawa and Yasujirō Ozu. This one is naturally one of his best works, apparently adapted from a folk tale. It’s a real tearjerker, piling tragedy after tragedy on top of its characters yet doesn’t feel over the top because of their folkloric origins. It’s absolutely brutal in portraying how pitiless the slave-owning society in medieval Japan was like. By the midpoint, I was ready to watch the protagonist lead a slave rebellion and burn it all down. This being not only a Japanese film but one that is all about imparting a Buddhist sense of mercy, this is very much not what happens.

This is a slickly made gangster film that takes place entirely within the confines of a tailor’s shop and is suffused with black humor. There’s probably a clever word for this specific genre but for the life of me, I can’t think of what it is. This kind of thing has all the hallmarks of a writer having great fun and is usually written by the director himself. Indeed this was the directorial debut of Graham Moore and he is also a co-writer. I found it entertaining and fun, though predictably for the genre there are perhaps one or two layers of obfuscation and deception too many. If I were younger, I would probably have found it to be great. As I now am, I think it’s cleverly written and that’s all it has going for it.

I hesitated to watch this as I find biographies tiresome as a general rule and I have no particular affinity for the person of Leonard Bernstein. In the end, what made me come around was that it’s focused on his relationship with his wife, rather than his career as a musician, and I thought my wife might like it. Its specific focus actually made it better than I’d expected. On the one hand, it’s another case of the talented superstar who can’t help being involved in endless extramarital affairs. On the other, it establishes that his wife was still the love of his life the whole time, at least within the story that it wants to tell. I have too little emotional connection with any of these people to love this film but I do have to admit that it’s solid work.