Off the top of my head, I can’t think many any coming-of-age film that involves the main character needing to choose between different religions, so that’s enough to make this film interesting to me. Add to that how it boldly confronts issues like menstruation, and it’s no wonder this is a favorite of the critics. Strong as the pitch is, this film kind of flubs it by being too nice and too light-hearted. Margaret’s family is so sweet and so supportive and her problems so easily resolved with minimal fuss that we barely see her struggling with anything. It’s a pleasant film to watch but it feels like it ends too soon without Margaret having to get into any serious confrontations and that’s just not very satisfying.

We’ve watched many films by Akira Kurosawa but none have been quite like this, a lesser known one from very early in the director’s career. It’s about a student movement against the rise of militarism in Japan just before the Second World War, thus providing a relatively rare Japanese perspective of the war. It’s also notable in that it stars Setsuko Hara, who is best known for her collaborations with Yasujirō Ozu. I believe this is the only film in which Kurosawa and Hara worked together and I’m fascinated by how Kurosawa uses the actress in a way Ozu never would. There’s nothing particularly noteworthy in its execution so this isn’t considered to be a great film. But making this film in 1946 must have been an incredibly bold artistic statement and I really have to admire that.

Not long ago, I wrote about how Jafar Panahi’s newer films seem darker than his older ones. Well, I was wrong because I’ve now gone back to watch this and it’s far more depressing. Rather than having a central narrative, this film consists of a series of vignettes about a group of women who are all victims of the Iranian government and society. This is raw and brutal in a way that Panahi’s later aren’t. Even so I detect some amateurishness at this stage of his career, such as the way the camera sometimes focuses on details that are irrelevant.

This is likely the last Orson Welles film featured here since we’ve already covered most of the important ones and my wife has difficulty getting into them. I suppose it’s appropriate that Welles’ himself thought this was his finest work and fought hard to get it made, even lying to his financiers about what he was making to get it done. It’s an adaptation of Shakespeare, pulling plot details and lines from several plays, to tell the story of the character of Falstaff who Welles plays himself. Personally though I found this at times amusing and was impressed by the scale of the production, I think it says more about Welles’ own philosophy of life than anything. Welles’ attempt to rehabilitate the character is unconvincing to me and that makes this distinctly not the great film he thinks it is.

A string of some of the recent films I’ve especially liked feature a back to basics approach. The same could apply to this film too as the story of a young girl getting an unwanted pregnancy is all too familiar. Offhand though, I can’t recall a single one of these stories that doesn’t put the blame squarely on the girl or end with her making peace with delivering the baby. This is unapologetically a pro-abortion film and it is far past time that something like it exists, to show just how powerless girls feel to have no control over the course of their own lives and how unfair it is that the burden falls entirely on girls while the guys just walk away with no consequences. At the same time, it doesn’t shy away from the ugliness of what an abortion really is either, making it practically required watching for sexual education purposes.

The character of Ms. Marvel was created long after I’d stopped reading comics but I’d always thought it was a great idea and my impression was that they pulled it off very well. Introducing the character to the MCU was a natural choice so even though I’ve stopped watching most Marvel content, I wanted to give this a fair shake. As it turned out, the character as played by Iman Vellani is very likeable and it offers an intriguing look into the Pakistani Muslim community in the US. Yet it’s a pretty mediocre superhero show with poor action choreography, weak villains and weak worldbuilding. It’s about what I expected really and it’s a shame that this seemed to have been one of the least popular MCU shows.

Here’s yet another Studio Ghibli film as working through them is easy on Netflix. Watching this after Spirited Away is an especially illuminating experience as this one feels so much like a trial run for the later, much grander film. I like this a lot more however precisely because its restraint actually make the magical elements that are present all the more magical. That it’s more grounded also means that the shadow of grief and tragedy behind all of the sweetness feels more real and more poignant. The lessons here are that less really is more and it’s important to actually have things that matter even in a dream-like fantasy.