As this was one of the most talked about films last year I was inevitably going to watch this and it helps that I actually do have some memories of the incident as it’s called here. Funnily enough I was one of those mentioned in the film as remembering it as being Tonya Harding herself who assaulted Nancy Kerrigan. Though it looks like a documentary, I think it’s fairer to think of this as a biographical film.
This is one of those classic Hollywood films whose title everyone has heard of but probably rather fewer have actually watched. It’s based on a crime novel that was very popular in its day and thus was a popular subject for film adaptations. In fact, there are so many that I was confused about which one was supposed to be the famous one and picked this from the Golden Age of Hollywood. While it’s true that this certainly is the most famous of the adaptations, I’m not sure that it’s the best one.
As this is clearly a children’s movie I had no interest in it. But after the sequel was released last year I heard some very good things about it and it hasn’t escaped my attention that it has an insanely high Rotten Tomatoes rating. This first film isn’t as highly regarded but is still considered quite okay so I thought it would be appropriate to watch it before the sequel.
This is the only the third film we’ve watched by legendary Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami and it’s his earliest one yet. This film seems to have helped establish the director’s reputation in the west though it was panned in Iran itself. It’s based on a real event with all of the main people involved playing themselves though understandably most scenes are reenactments.
This one made it onto my list as it is a highly regarded film, being apparently considered one of the best Canadian films ever made. It was inspired by a real life accident involving a school bus and a truck but I think it’s been fictionalized enough that it doesn’t matter. I found that I didn’t like it much however due to how its focus seems sort of spread out and how it doesn’t follow through on its individual storylines.
This one appeared on critics’ lists as one of the most notable films of last year so I had to check it out. The fact that it’s billed as a supernatural horror film out of Norway only makes it more intriguing. To me however the hype seems unjustified and it’s pretty standard fare. From what I can tell, it has been lauded simply because it is Norwegian and it portrays a lesbian relationship of a sort which seems unwarranted to me.
This was a recommendation from our cinephile friend but I had a hard time getting into it. Even with the help of Chinese subtitles I had difficulty following along as the characters switch between different Chinese languages and the cast of characters is huge with complicated relationships between them. The director Yang Ya-che must have realized this as well as there are captions when new characters are introduced as well as a pair of two mysterious elderly storytellers who provide exposition but that wasn’t quite enough for me.
Continue reading The Bold, the Corrupt, and the Beautiful (2017)