This is an adaptation of an 1956 Argentine novel and won plenty of plaudits from critics. The novel is apparently rather important in Argentine literature but I haven’t read it and I believe this film makes some assumptions that make it difficult to understand for those who have no knowledge of the book. For example, I had no idea that the events depicted take place in Paraguay. Add to that the usual dose of surrealism that you often see in South American literature and you get a film that takes some effort to make sense of.

Here we return one of the earliest Coen brothers films, so early that the director credit is attributed to Joel Coen alone as apparently those were the rules back then. It is of course a noir which was how they established their reputation in the first place. I think it’s a little heavy-handed at times but it sure is a lot of fun to watch.

After Blind Massage and Summer Palace, here’s a third film by Lou Ye and it’s one of his earliest yet. Another reason for adding this to our list is because it stars Jia Hongsheng who life story was featured in Quitting as well as Zhou Xun who was his real life girlfriend for a while. It also felt appropriate to watch this after visiting Shanghai recently and we even recognized a bridge from our visit in the film.

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.