This is of course another famous film based on an equally famous novel and it was directed by Miloš Forman who everyone surely knows due to Amadeus. Plus it stars Jack Nicholson in a film set in a mental institution. What could be more perfect, right? It turns out that the premise is actually that he plays the sole sane man in an asylum and that is even more awesome.
I confused myself by having two films with the same English language name released so close to one another though they are completely unlike one another. This one is a Chinese film by Feng Xiaogang who my wife notes is more of a mainstream director. Despite the plethora of awards this film racked up, it is utterly conventional and therefore uninteresting.
This film made the news for all the wrong reasons as it was released digitally by Netflix instead of a more conventional distribution and that apparently upset its director Alex Garland. I didn’t have high expectations of it but the director did make Ex Machina and this was adapted from a science-fiction novel that managed to win the Nebula Award in 2014. I haven’t read it however and after watching this I have no desire to at all.
It’s been a while since we’ve watched a Woody Allen film and as the director is currently out of favor in Hollywood due to the #MeToo movement, his career may very well be over. I added this one to my list after I read about it as being among his best work and I note that it’s also notable as being one of those in which he does not himself appear in it.
This came to my notice via the usual routes but I was apprehensive about it after learning that it contains gory content. I thought that it would be some variant of a torture porn film and I detest those. While the initial premise appears to bear this out it turned out to be a complete subversion and this is a far more original and effective film than I gave it credit for.
Next we have yet another Japanese film by Hirokazu Kore-eda. The director seems to be on a roll as he is making noteworthy films every year. This one is unlike the others as it is a legal thriller and not a family drama. Yet somehow the director can’t resist filling it with flawed parental figures as well.
The second of the films that I caught on the plane is the latest work by Steven Spielberg and adapted from a popular young adult novel. Though I read plenty of crap on the Internet, I am not so juvenile as to think that stringing together a pile of pop culture references and packaging them into a game makes for anything resembling a decent novel. As such I had no real interest in watching this but then I did hear that this is a rare case of the film adaptation being better than the source material.