I’d bet many people including myself added this to their list of films to watch after the events of last year. This is considered one of the most highly acclaimed Ukrainian films of all time and was made during the USSR era. In many ways this feels more like a documentary than a film as its plot is barebones and very straightforward. The real delight is in how vividly it captures village life in the Carpathian Mountains that is its setting, complete with their costumes, music, dances, customs and more. I also found it notable how dark it is as a story of a typical man’s life which I’d attribute to the character of the Russian psyche.

Every country has their own historical epics so I’m very pleased to have watched this one about the African kingdom of Dahomey focusing on the all-woman warrior unit known as the Agojie. Colonialist westerners who encountered them called them the Dahomey Amazons but of course the Amazons were mythological while the Agojie were real. This film more or less conforms to the standard tropes of the genre except that more emphasis is laid on the general of the unit rather than the king and of course their all-female nature. I think the film could benefit from being a little shorter and in many ways it’s too bog standard. Still it’s a fine exemplar of its genre and I do love its African focus.

Very few horror films are so horrifying as to make me not want to finish watching it but this one qualifies. It does this not by using shots of gore or jump scares but by having you realize that all of the characters in it are children, and that by being children they are capable of doing anything because they don’t know any better. This film is similar in many ways to Chronicle which I’ve always felt was underrated and it does a great job at front-loading the horror to make you understand that anything can happen in it. Still the inherent constraints of its chosen genre, such that only the children know what is going on and matter, made it irritating to me after a while. To me, it’s a very strong film but some way short of being great.

I’m skipping over almost all of the MCU shows, only picking those of particular interest to watch. This one doesn’t even have much of a connection to the MCU beyond the name. The real draw for me though was the involvement of Oscar Isaac and Ethan Hawke, and of course the fact that Moon Knight is one of the more obscure, unusual heroes in their lineup. Never during my childhood would I have imagined that someone would one day make an adaptation based on this character. In the event, this is a surprisingly serviceable television show. It has all of the usual faults of its production values not being quite top notch and the ending is just cheap, but overall I rather liked the series.

My wife is a huge Studio Ghibli fan so it’s always a happy surprise to come across one of their films that she hasn’t watched yet. It’s always so wonderful to see these hand drawn animated films that are so full of detail today and the setting of what must be the most perfect and idyllic Japanese small town ever adds to the pleasure. The plot is too sweet for me though and the main character is so much the ideal, diligent good girl that she’s just unreal. It’s a very beautiful and pleasant film to watch but not anything to engage with seriously.

I added this to my list because I loved the two previous films I’ve watched by the filmmaking duo of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger so much. Unfortunately this turned out to be a lesser film that at times comes close to being campy. It takes some interesting twists that keep it from being trite including pitting the United States against Britain in a contest over moral superiority. There is some startling imagery and some fascinating perspective presented here, but ultimately this is too shallow a film to worth bothering with.

I’m pretty much done with the films of Jean-Luc Godard but I just had to watch this one which I believe is his only one that can be considered truly science-fiction. Godard’s films are famously obtuse but this one is pretty transparent to me about a secret agent who infiltrate a technocratic dictatorship. Everything in it, its themes, its ideas and concepts has been done to death by now. It is still impressive as a very early showcase of these tropes and how Godard appropriates plain old Paris to look dystopian is fascinating. My least favorite part is the utter ineffectiveness of the security apparatus of the police state. Godard isn’t an action movie director of course, so what passes for action scenes in here are just laughable.