We watched Vietnamese director Trần Anh Hùng’s debut film some time ago and nothing since because they didn’t seem notable enough. Now here he is with an outstanding film that all the more surprising because of how French it is. This is nothing less than a pure love letter to classical French cuisine that is simply overflowing with passion for food. The term food porn is now part of vernacular but this film takes it to a new extreme and even weaves food deeply into the relationship between the two main characters. I’m not a foodie so I’m left bemused by its audacity but I have to admire the director’s total commitment and the excellence of the execution.

This film won a ton of critical acclaim and gave my wife and I plenty to talk about afterwards, so that’s always a good sign. I suspected at first that this dealt with prejudice against immigrants in Germany but it’s so much more than that. It details the impossibly complex dynamics that teachers in first world countries must navigate in the modern world with all parties, fellow teachers, students, parents, all having a say in everything that they do. In the end director İlker Çatak doesn’t seem to lead us to any firm conclusions but it is a captivating look into the German classroom and it asks good questions.

I pretty much love every film I’ve watched by Sidney Lumet so it was only a matter of time before I got around to this one, especially as it is about a case I’ve actually heard about. Real-life stories like this are hard to portray on film as they involve so many characters and take place over an extended period of time. So it’s very impressive how Lumet was able to distil a basic biography of the man, detail his relationships with women and fellow police officers, and cover his futile attempts to report police corruption over several years in little more than two hours. I don’t much care for films about police as a rule, nor do I have much sympathy for Frank Serpico, but this is an exceptional film on every level.

I enjoyed the first Inside Out way back when it was released and it took a surprisingly long time for them to come out with this sequel. Arguably too long as we’ve long since lost any emotional connection to the characters and 2024 feels like a different era than 2015. The premise of Riley’s puberty ramping up all of her emotions and introducing a whole host new ones is a promising one. But it mostly feels like a reprise of the first film with the trite lesson that every part of Riley has a role to play. Even more disappointing is that it refuses to show any meanness whatsoever so it’s unconvincing and boringly low stakes throughout.

This is a film about a donkey and given that this is a tragedy and it is supposed to have been inspired by a passage by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, it’s a given that the donkey dies in the end. It also suffers horribly but then so do many of the people around it. This is considered one of the greatest films of all time and of course it’s not really about a donkey in particular but life in general. I think its messaging is a little too simple by modern standards but it is very effective at engaging your emotions.

Nuri Bilge Ceylan has earned huge amounts of goodwill as he has made some of the most memorable and beautiful films we’ve seen. It took a while for me to get around to his latest one as they’re always so long but I was expecting good things from it. Unfortunately while it has some gorgeous cinematography and is crammed full of the kind of wordy dialogue the director likes, I’m not quite sure he knows what he’s doing here. The whole time I thought the film was working towards a condemnation against the extremely petty main character but then the monologue at the end appears to be sympathetic towards him. I must conclude that either the film is a failure and there is some mixed messaging going on here or else the director has some strange views.

Knowing nothing about Greek politics, I was apprehensive being able to understand a political film based on real-life events there. It turned out though that this is a fast-moving, readily watchable thriller that shows the assassination of an opposition leader and then more importantly covers the investigation that follows. The details shown here of a conspiracy and cover-up at the highest levels of government comes as no surprise to anyone familiar with modern politics but it’s immensely satisfying to watch them play out step by step here. What shocked me was that the investigating magistrate was allowed to get as far as he did even though the entire government is obviously in on it.