I’ve never seen Life is Beautiful but I have heard about it. Unfortunately while dropping by the in-laws’ house recently, I couldn’t help but catch glimpses of a Chinese television show whose entire point seems to be to provide summarized digests of chosen films. This meant that the film was effectively spoiled for me before I ever watched it.
Christopher McCandless dies at the end. There, I’ve said it. It’s not much a spoiler. Pretty much everyone who sits down to watch this knows this part of the story if nothing else. Since we already know how it all ends, the focus must be instead be this young man’s journey to his ultimate end.
For a film about a dancer, Frances Ha sure doesn’t have much dancing in it. Come on, it’s even on the theatrical poster. Instead it’s very much all about the travails of a struggling young artiste trying to find her place in New York. At the same time, it shows her with her best friend, a relationship that our heroine says is “like a lesbian couple that have stopped having sex.”
I don’t remember how this one got put on my “to watch” list. Probably a combination of seeing the trailer in the cinema and wanting to watching something a bit different from the usual fare. Romantic films very rarely make it onto the annual “best of” lists and for all of its quirks and faults, this one definitely does count as a romantic film.
Poetry is the first film I’ve watched by director Lee Chang-dong, upon the recommendation of my cinephile friend. Apparently his work is acclaimed both domestically and internationally, so much so that he served as South Korea’s Minister of Culture and Tourism from 2003 to 2004.
American Hustle is not a film that is meant to be taken seriously. If you couldn’t tell that from Christian Bale’s over-elaborate comb-over or Amy Adams’ deliberately horrible British accent, it must be obvious by the time Michael Peña quips, “Abscam? Arab scam? That’s racist.” Then when an uncredited cameo by a famous actor hamming it up in the kind of mobster role he is most recognizable for, you realize the film-makers are just having fun with you.
Like most gamers, I have always been fascinated by the Second World War, by far the largest armed conflict in human history. Unfortunately my education on the subject was somewhat scattershot, consisting of random readings here and there and lately enlivened by Wikipedia articles and, most of all, time spent on Paradox’s Hearts of Iron game. So when I heard about this series on Broken Forum and learned that it is one of the most highly acclaimed documentaries ever made, I suggested to my wife that we watch it.