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.
So this is another film by director Hirokazu Kore-eda and we’ve certainly watched a fair few of his works across the past several months. This is the earliest of his films yet and it’s based on a real event that took place in 1988 albeit very loosely. It’s odd now that I notice how so much of his work share a theme about parents failing their children.
Once again, I’ve barely watched any entries of the highly successful Mission Impossible franchise though I did write about the fourth one. The rave reviews for this latest entry, with some critics going so far as to call it one of the best action movies ever made, convinced me to turn up at the cinema for it. Like everyone else, I am left amazed by how hard Tom Cruise is still working at the age of 56.
So I planned to watch both this and You Were Never Really Here in the same week without realizing that the newer film starred Joaquin Phoenix, who is of course the brother of River Phoenix. I’ve had this film in my sights for a while now due to RIver’s performance in it but the fact that it was also directed by Sidney Lumet is another plus in its favor.
This one arrived on my list via the usual recommendations and I thought it was simply a new, notable work by relatively unknown people. It turned out that it was directed by Lynne Ramsay who also the excellent We Need to Talk About Kevin and of course the male lead is Joaquin Phoenix though I could not recognize him at all due to how buff he made himself for this role. It’s one of those astonishing transformations that some actors pull off from time to time that seems unhealthy to me.