I wad dubious about this at first. It felt like the age-old formula of young lovers committing crimes and rebelling against the world, except with a lesbian couple. But then it starts ramping up the intensity and never stops even as it enters surreal territory. Right then I was hooked and understood that this was something special. It’s kind of insane that a formula like bodybuilding noir could ever work but it does. It’s fitting then that it was made the same director who made Saint Maud as it shares the same kind of insane intensity.

Not only is this a French animated science-fiction film, it’s a very serious one to boot and relies on the audience being reasonably intelligent and attentive. Most science-fiction stories are built around just one or two cool ideas, but this one just keeps throwing new things at you and expects you to keep. Unfortunately it flubs the ending as the buildup is way better than the payoff but it’s so good as a cyberpunk noir while it lasts.

Here’s another masterpiece from classic Indian cinema and this time it is not by Satyajit Ray. It does cover similar thematic territory however in being what I would call misery porn. It was made by Ritwik Ghatak and is believed to be his best known and most watched film. There’s supposed to be some political backdrop to this but I don’t think it matters much as the Partition of Bengal is not directly mentioned. All we need to know is that this is about a miserably poor family and a self-sacrificing daughter who bear everyone’s burden. It’s such a superbly made film that one instantly recognizes why it is a masterpiece. Yet it also advances a morality that I find execrable.

This is an honest to goodness nunsploitation film that stars probably one of the hottest Hollywood sex symbols of the day. That sounds, well, exploitative but it seems that Sydney Sweeney was the one who pushed for it to be made and it is relatively restrained in terms of sexual titillation. With its title and setup, it’s not hard to guess that this is about immaculate conception. It’s a rather straightforward take on the premise and I’d say it’s effective enough as horror. It’s also not good enough to really stand out but I’ll take what I can get.

Yasujirō Ozu’s films keep being great and so I keep watching them. This one is actually a remake of his own earlier black-and-white silent film and I’m sure that the improved production values make a difference. It features bigger names as stars as well so it’s the preferred version over the original. As usual with Ozu, this is a film about family and human relationships, but it’s noticeably more salacious and lurid than most of his body of work. It’s centered around a travelling theatre troupe which seems glamorous at first but they all turn out to be a bunch of scoundrels, truly the floating weeds of the film’s title.

A British miniseries about adolescent male violence that is realistic enough to be shown in schools is a must-watch for us. What’s more, each of the four episodes were shot in a single take, lending it both a powerful sense of urgency and some added authenticity. Unlike other crime shows, there is no question of the perpetrator’s guilt and even details of how the murder itself was carried out aren’t that important. What matters is how the machinery of the state is activated in response to a crime like this and how everyone desperately searches to understand what could have driven a 13-year-old boy to kill.

None of Alex Garland’s films have ever really clicked with me. Critics love him however and I’ve read analyses about his work that raise interesting points that I’ve missed, so I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. Yet after watching this, I am left even more disappointed and puzzled. Conceptually, I love this and I’m pretty sure I understood what he was going for. But his execution of the idea is so unserious, so deliberately low brow and over the top that it feels like a waste of a good idea. So I’m still not a fan of his work and I really don’t get what his deal is.