This film has been sitting in my list for a while now but reading up news on the recent Oscar season led me to some lists ranking the most deserved winners of the award and I was surprised to note how highly it is usually regarded. Indeed this film has an absurdly high rating on Rotten Tomatoes and is considered a highly significant American film.
I suppose this counts as the next entry in the series of films about aging and mental deterioration. This was a critically acclaimed film in its time by Hong Kong director Ann Hui but I’ve never seen it. I’ve never quite understood why she doesn’t seem to be more recognized in the west, especially now that they’re emphasizing female directors so heavily. I’ve also found that despite this being quite a famous film, it is impossible to find it, legally or not, anywhere other than on YouTube. Unless a film is added to an online library or released as part of the Criterion Collection or something, it will probably just disappear.
So I added this to our list entirely because my wife is a huge fan of Downton Abbey and has been antsy about waiting for its movie. Gosford Park was written Julian Fellowes, the showrunner of the hit television series. It has a similar setting as the show and you can even recognize a couple of familiar faces in its cast. It also has a lot of other famous names to round out its cast.
As a famously hand-painted film about Vincent van Gogh, there was no way we wouldn’t be watching this one. Oddly enough this is a Polish production due to the fact that it was conceived by a Polish woman Dorota Kobiela who is credited as a co-director. It was also partially funded through a Kickstarter campaign.
This was another recommendation from our cinephile friend, a Chinese film so obscure that it’s almost impossible to get any information on it from the English-speaking net. The two directors Zhou Shen and Liu Lu seem to be unknowns, along with the entire cast. As it is billed as a comedy, I initially despaired at being able to get anything out of its sense of humor, but frivolous poster aside, this is actually a film that gets very dark.
I really loved the character’s debut in Captain America: Civil War but my initial impression of his solo debut from its trailer wasn’t that great. Like everyone else however, I was shocked by its success. The critical reception it received is perhaps understandable given its status as a black superhero film but its box office returns are amazing as well. This meant that I did have to watch and having done so I am sad to report that I found it to be overrated.
The adorable animal that is threatened by big business only to be saved by its loving family is a genre in itself and not one that is particularly appealing to me. They are basically children’s films. Still, Boon Joon-ho has a track record that is good enough to give him the benefit of the doubt and I rather like the idea of watching more Hollywood stars working under his direction.