Hirokazu Kore-eda keeps churning out solid films and so I keep watching them. He stays on the subject of children being let down by adults but this time around it is a little muddier who exactly is being wronged and who the guilty party or parties are. This film pulls you irresistibly into a story about bullying at school and a gross taunt about a child having the brain of a pig. There are red herrings and misunderstandings aplenty, complicating the search for the truth. Unfortunately once you dig past the confusion, what remains isn’t that substantial and hiding the nature of the boys’ relationship as a twist feels like an outdated move. It’s not bad but it’s weaker than his usual fare so I’d consider it missable.
As a philistine, I have never heard of Anselm Kiefer and this film made me embarrassed about it. Ostensibly a documentary by Wim Wenders about the contemporary German painter and sculptor, but it is a work of art in its own right. With no narration and only brief snippets of Kiefer being interviewed, the film mostly lets his artwork speak for itself. Accompanied by music and readings from the poetry that inspired Kiefer, watching this is a mind-bending experience. The breadth of Kiefer’s talent, the vividness of the worlds he creates and of course the incredible scale of his works boggles the mind. This is probably the best art film I’ve ever seen and nothing else comes close.
Mike Leigh is a celebrated auteur of British cinema so it’s unfortunate that the only film of his that I’ve watched to date has been the mediocre Peterloo. To remedy that, here is one of his best, a film whose dialogue is so dense with British colloquialisms that it’s difficult for us to parse. The main character here reminds me a great deal of the one in Henry Fool, cynical losers who are intelligently and weirdly attractive to women. But this film goes to far darker places with a cast full of equally broken people. It is funny in parts but there is nothing amusing about it at all.
Sean Wang must be an up-and-coming director to watch since he managed to get Joan Chen to appear in his debut feature. It joins a growing lineup of Chinese American films and appears to be a semi-autobiographical account of the director’s own childhood in Fremont, California in 2008. The main character is a little shit who I don’t find sympathetic in the least but I suppose this attests to how realistic it is as a coming-of-age film. It’s the kind of film that can feel underwhelming as nothing especially earthshattering happens. But I like understated films so this is a winner for me.
Adrian Teh is Malaysian director of Chinese ethnicity who has made a career out of commercially successful Malay language films. They’re not my usual fare so I’ve never watched them. His latest is a science-fiction film that has garnered decent reviews and strong word-of-mouth. Since it’s easily available on Netflix, I thought I should take a look. Since it’s billed as a heartfelt time travel story, I had a few thoughts on how that might play out. Unfortunately my worst fears proved true as it’s the usual ‘can’t change destiny’ and ‘arbitrary constraints on superpowers” tropes. It’s a bold project for a Malaysian but it’s just not that good of a film.
Fury Road is an action masterpiece for the ages so I’d originally planned on watching this prequel in the cinema. But then the reviews turned out not so good, I held off and now I see why. This is a decent action movie but it’s no Fury Road and more interestingly, it never even attempts to be. In recounting Furiosa’s backstory, it consistently keeps the action on a smaller personal scale and it’s more episodic, jumping between her key formative moments. Both the effects work and the action choreography are also inferior. The one upside is that it builds up the world of George Miller’s imagination, turning it into a setting that finally feels more real to me.
I’d already seen the original animated series so watching this live-action version might be of dubious value. Still, there’s only going to be more and more of these things so I thought I should watch at least one of them to judge how good they are. The fact is that they threw serious money at it so it looks very good indeed. The sets, the costumes, the bending effects and the scale of the action are all more than satisfactory. The downside is that this is still a kids’ show, with lines of dialogue that is often cringey. The adult actors do alright but the child actors just can’t emote well enough to sell those lines. The show looks so cool that I’m tempted to stay for the next season but I think I’m going to pass.
