I’m slowly growing to be more of fan of the work of Jean-Pierre Melville. Take this crime thriller for instance which tells the story in a very straightforward way. The story itself is intricate only because of the many characters involved and how they must interact with one another. Events play out so organically and unpredictably that it doesn’t feel much like a movie at all. It’s always a pleasure to watch competence in action but this film makes the point that often pure chance plays its part as well.
Netflix is getting serious into prestige television with lavish productions like this. Since I’d never read the actual novel by Gabriel García Márquez, this might the closest I can get to knowing its story. With its gorgeous visuals and huge cast of characters, it effortlessly drew me into the lives of the Buendia family and the founding of the town of Macondo. Yet the longer the story goes on the more bored I became. The series is like a very literal retelling of the novel but seems unable to impart any deeper meaning to the many dramatic twists and turns, making it feel like a soap opera. There will be a second part to the series but at this point I’m not terribly enthusiastic.
A film about a Jewish-American boy who is rebelliously ungrateful of his own affluent background isn’t something is compelling to me even if it features major talents like Anthony Hopkins and Anne Hathaway. But then I realized that we usually get stories from the opposite side of the divide with the underprivileged kid as the protagonist, so this is indeed a novel trajectory. It seems that this is yet another semi-autobiographical film drawn from its director’s life so it does have the ring of truth but it’s probably still a little underwhelming for me.
Hirokazu Kore-eda keeps churning out solid films and so I keep watching them. He stays on the subject of children being let down by adults but this time around it is a little muddier who exactly is being wronged and who the guilty party or parties are. This film pulls you irresistibly into a story about bullying at school and a gross taunt about a child having the brain of a pig. There are red herrings and misunderstandings aplenty, complicating the search for the truth. Unfortunately once you dig past the confusion, what remains isn’t that substantial and hiding the nature of the boys’ relationship as a twist feels like an outdated move. It’s not bad but it’s weaker than his usual fare so I’d consider it missable.
As a philistine, I have never heard of Anselm Kiefer and this film made me embarrassed about it. Ostensibly a documentary by Wim Wenders about the contemporary German painter and sculptor, but it is a work of art in its own right. With no narration and only brief snippets of Kiefer being interviewed, the film mostly lets his artwork speak for itself. Accompanied by music and readings from the poetry that inspired Kiefer, watching this is a mind-bending experience. The breadth of Kiefer’s talent, the vividness of the worlds he creates and of course the incredible scale of his works boggles the mind. This is probably the best art film I’ve ever seen and nothing else comes close.
Mike Leigh is a celebrated auteur of British cinema so it’s unfortunate that the only film of his that I’ve watched to date has been the mediocre Peterloo. To remedy that, here is one of his best, a film whose dialogue is so dense with British colloquialisms that it’s difficult for us to parse. The main character here reminds me a great deal of the one in Henry Fool, cynical losers who are intelligently and weirdly attractive to women. But this film goes to far darker places with a cast full of equally broken people. It is funny in parts but there is nothing amusing about it at all.
Sean Wang must be an up-and-coming director to watch since he managed to get Joan Chen to appear in his debut feature. It joins a growing lineup of Chinese American films and appears to be a semi-autobiographical account of the director’s own childhood in Fremont, California in 2008. The main character is a little shit who I don’t find sympathetic in the least but I suppose this attests to how realistic it is as a coming-of-age film. It’s the kind of film that can feel underwhelming as nothing especially earthshattering happens. But I like understated films so this is a winner for me.
