This film was nominated for a bunch of categories at Taiwan’s Golden Horse Awards but didn’t really win much. It certainly wouldn’t have caught my attention. Our cinephile friend however sent it along as a recommendation and the first thing that caught my attention was that it has Michael Hui, the legendary Hong Kong comedian in it. Having not watched anything with him in it for years, this certainly makes the film a lot more interesting.
Since I’ve never seen a Coen brothers film I didn’t like, I thought I work my way through their filmography as I’ve never watched some of their very early works. This film has familiar faces from the brothers’ regular cast and even features a very young Scarlett Johansson from before she became truly famous due to Lost in Translation.
I knew of this as recommendations from a couple of different sources and so I added it to my list without knowing anything about it other than its title. Within several minutes of it starting, I asked my wife, “so is this a film about architecture?” And I was totally right!
So our cinephile friend dropped off a whole load of films recently and we basically decided to watch whatever he gave us though it’ll take us a long while to get through all of them. This was one pick that we would never have watched ordinarily, a film about youth rebellion from 1960s Japan. Apart from the fact that it’s Japanese however, I didn’t find it that remarkable.
I wanted to watch this as I believe it’s a very important film in the history of Indian cinema though it seems to have been overlooked internationally. It was far ahead of its time when it was released and generated a huge amount of controversy, being not only about a homosexual relationship but attacking as it does fundamental aspects of Indian society. It’s also notable that its writer and director Deepa Mehta is a woman.
This one was a recommendation from Broken Forum and its director Armando Iannucci has been in the news lately due to his newest film The Death of Stalin. Unfortunately I couldn’t find a copy of it so it’s still sitting on my watch list. I’ve never watched anything else by him but it looks to me that he has made a career out of satirizing politics and this film was a spin-off from a successful British television series.
Given how lukewarm my own reception was towards The Force Awakens, I decided to base my decision about whether to watch the sequel on its reviews and word-of-mouth. Its high Rotten Tomatoes was a point in its favor but the rabid backlash from the fanbase only made it even more intriguing to me. The audience reaction was so harsh that it made me really curious to see it what’s up with it for myself.