I’ve actually run into mentions of this New Zealand film more than once, on at least one occasion about how it is a realistic depiction of how a person’s personality can suddenly and shockingly shift under the influence of alcohol. This was director Lee Tamahori’s debut feature and he later went to make many well known commercial films in Hollywood but I don’t think that any of them has quite the impact of this one.
This is a very old Chinese film that I added to the list due to its classic status and its international reputation as one of the finest Chinese films ever made. However it predates the Communist victory by just a hair and as such it lacks the leftist sentiment that pervades the Chinese films of its era. This caused it to be sidelined by the Communists and its celebrated status today seems to be a relatively recent affair.
So I thought the whole time this was an Italian film but in fact it’s an English language film starring a whole roster of recognizable Hollywood stars. In fact this is a film directed by Italian director Paolo Sorrentino, whose La Grande Bellezza I loved a couple of years ago. This one is set almost entirely within the confines of a luxurious hotel in the Swiss Alps and it’s no less impressive a work.
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.