Like its title, this is a quiet, low-key film that breaks no new ground but is well made and its story so sweet that it’s impossible to dislike. It was adapted from a short story Foster by well known Irish writer Claire Keegan, and is the directorial debut of Colm Bairéad. But really it is child actress Catherine Clinch who carries the film. This is also notable in that it’s mostly in the Irish language and so most people will need subtitles for it. Yet the lines of English that it has are delivered in such a thick accent that you’d likely need subtitles for them too!

This is like only the second Swiss film I’ve written about here and it’s a very idiosyncratic one even by the standards of the films I watch. There’s no real plot as it’s almost purely exposition, portraying the way of life in the Saint-Imier valley in Switzerland in the late 19th-century. There are two distinctive elements here: the watchmaking industry that dominates the economy and the strength of the anarchist political movement among the residents. It’s an odd juxtaposition, made especially so by the film’s obsession with measurements of time, distance and money. Director Cyril Schäublin’s sympathy for the anarchists is obvious but I’m not quite sure what to make of the rest of it even as it continues to fascinate and engross me.

So it’s two politics heavy films this week and unlike Detention, this one is completely serious and actually worthy of its subject matter. It covers the so-called Trial of the Juntas in 1985 when Argentina put on trial the leaders of the military dictatorship that controlled the country from 1976 to 1983. It’s superbly crafted and seems to have been deliberately patterned after the best known political thrillers with a strong American influence. The only downside is that you keep waiting for the other shoe to drop, for something truly awful to happen, and I suppose this film is too faithful to the real events to invent something so dramatic as that. What’s most inspiring to me is that this was the most watched Argentine film in its year of release, no mean feat for a legal drama that goes on for almost two and a half hours.

This seems to have been a commercially successful film and the directorial debut of John Tsu. Its source material is a horror video game by a Taiwanese director and its premise is undoubtedly strong, being about students and teachers living during Taiwan’s White Terror period. Telling a story about political repression within the horror genre seems at first like a stroke of genius. But then it quickly becomes obvious why this is rarely attempted. The real event is such a weighty tragedy that the supernatural elements cannot help but feel farcical in comparison. Then there’s how the director plays up the horror imagery so blatantly, perhaps in order to be faithful to the video game, when a lighter touch would have been more effective. I really wanted to like this, but it’s much of a mixed bag to be considered actually good.

In so many of the Westerns he appeared in, Gary Cooper feels like he’s playing the same character and that’s the case here as well. Even though here he is a former outlaw who is forced to confront his old gang, the inner conflict and moral quandary are much the same as if he were the sheriff. This isn’t to say that it isn’t good because it is in fact a very solid Western. But it’s also a completely straight and stereotypical Western and its finale is a little underwhelming. I can see why it’s a classic of the genre but it’s not for me.

My wife has been raving about this one film since forever and it’s only just now that I’ve gotten around to watching it. Though this predates Studio Ghibli, it’s commonly considered their first film as its success was what made the studio possible. It was also based on a manga written and illustrated by Hayao Miyazaki himself so it’s a hundred percent his work. I found this to be far different from the later Ghibli films in so many ways: it’s explicitly violent with the heroine herself killing multiple people on screen, it depicts warfare and death on a grand scale and it’s straight out science-fiction. In fact, I’m pretty sure that Vesper was directly inspired by its imagery. As such, yeah, I’m pretty sure this is my favorite of the Ghibli films as well.

This was the directorial debut of Panah Panahi, the son of Jafar Panahi. Appropriately enough it’s a road trip film set largely within the confines of a car and about a family smuggling their son across the border, both elements that we’ve seen in his father’s films. It’s a rather grim scenario yet the film makes heavy use of dance and song to emphasize the humor in the situation. The use of music in particular and copious references to popular American movies ensure that Panah has difficulty establishing a style distinct from that of his father. I think the film lets the child actor steal the show too much but it is a fine film that surely presages an illustrious career to come.