This was one my wife’s picks that she must have read about somewhere and it turned out to be a film with only female characters, including a couple of trans women. It was a surprising coincidence given that we’d only just watched Tokyo Godfathers the day before. Unfortunately it’s also similar to that film in that many points in its plot are connected through a series of implausible events that leave you gasping in disbelief and this time I don’t think that there’s supposed to be any magic involved.
This marks the fourth film that I’ve watched by director Satoshi Kon though it’s been so long since we watched Millennium Actress that I barely remember any of it. I do recall quite well the ones that we watched more recently, Perfect Blue and Paprika, both of which heavily feature scenes that skirt the boundary between reality and the imagination. Tokyo Godfathers for the most part has no such scenes, making it a much more approachable and straightforward film, albeit also a lighter one.
Each and every one of us has probably watched dozens of films about the Second World War but how many of them were from the Soviet point of view, by a predominantly Soviet cast and crew? Come and See is billed as a propaganda film because it was explicitly made to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the Soviet victory and to tell the world of the horrors inflicted in Belarus by German forces, a tragedy that the Soviets thought the world had ignored. Unlike so many such efforts however, under the direction of Elem Klimov, it was not only a commercial success but went on to be acknowledged as one of the best war films ever made.
This one must have been added to our watch list after taking the Marriage and the Movies course last year but I can’t recall why exactly I did that. It was mentioned but wasn’t required watching in the course. I am aware that it’s a classic of the romantic comedy genre, being perhaps the grand-daddy of all stories in which the couple meets while travelling together. That alone may be a good reason to seek out this very old film.
Despite my wife’s objections, I continue to occasionally add horror films to our watch list in the hopes of finding something that is decent. Housebound made the cut both because it was extremely well reviewed with many good comments made about it on Broken Forum and because it’s a New Zealand film. Let’s face it, when was the last time anyone has watched anything from that country that wasn’t set in Middle-Earth?
This is one of director Edward Yang’s lesser known films and as such I probably would never have ever watched it. My wife requested it however as apparently it is going to be a topic of discussion for a writing class that she is taking. A few minutes in and we understand why the class’ teacher picked it. One of the characters is an aspiring writer who is worried that her monotonous daily routine as a housewife is undermining her ability to come up with new and interesting material.
One of the most memorable comments I’ve ever read about 8½ was by Broken Forum’s resident film geek. He noted that every great director eventually tries to make his or her own version of this film. The Wikipedia entry for it cites some examples, with even Charlie Kaufman’s Synecdoche, New York being considered one such attempt. It’s Federico Fellini’s best known film and easily qualifies as one of the key films every fan of cinema must watch.
