Brie Larson is kind of big deal now that she is slated to appear as Captain Marvel and of course we loved her performance in Room. Short Term 12 however is considered her breakout role and it also made the name for its writer and director Destin Daniel Cretton. Cretton apparently made based on his own experiences working at a facility similar to the one shown in the film.
I can’t remember why I added this to my list and I’m pretty sure I’ve never watched anything by director Kim Ki-duk before but this is listed among some polls as one of the best films ever made so I suppose that’s reason enough. The title is very long and feels rather generic given how common this metaphor is but it does turn out to be very fitting.
Continue reading Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter… and Spring (2003)
This Italian film can be considered a classic but I don’t think it is that well known and I only knew about it from a post on Broken Forum. As it cost so much to make they needed American money to fund it and so, unusually, it stars an American actor, Burt Lancaster, in the titular role. All of Lancaster’s lines are therefore dubbed. As the choice of male lead was forced on director Luchino Visconti, the result should have been a disaster, yet all seems to have turned out well.
This film seems to be the result of a deliberate attempt to rekindle the magic behind Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid by reassembling the creative team of Paul Newman, Robert Redford and director George Roy Hill. Since we liked the earlier film so much, putting it on the list was a no brainer. It does evoke the same tone and look very strongly beginning with the opening scene featuring the familiar ragtime melody “The Entertainer”.
So this definitely isn’t the sort of film that we usually go to the cinema for, what with it being a crassly commercial romantic comedy with no artistic aspirations and a bog standard plot. But I still got caught up in the cultural buzz surrounding it and I have to admit that the cultural representation thing has me excited as well, especially as there are so many Malaysians involved in it.
This was added to our list on the strength of the two other films we watched so far by Russian director Andrey Zvyagintsev. This is the earliest yet being his first feature film that was made on a very small budget. It effectively only has the three male actors playing the father and the two brothers with the mother having only a very limited supporting role.
Documentaries are always good for being a serious watch without being too emotionally draining and this one especially so with its strong emphasis on spectacular visuals alone with very little commentary or dialogue. With a running time of only about an hour it’s short as well.