Céline Sciamma is rapidly becoming my favorite modern French director with her women-focused films. Here is another, about the relationship between a child and her mother told in a manner surely no one will expect. I love how complete and perfect this work is: the excellence of the performances of the two child actresses who carry the film, the accurate yet subtle insight into how children are dismissed by adults and all of it in a package only a little over an hour. It’s a wonderful example of compact, economical filmmaking that I will recommend to everyone I know.

I added this onto my watchlist purely because of Ridley Scott’s name and because the subject matter seemed promising. But I really should have heeded the atrocious reviews because this film is so mediocre I wondered why Scott wanted to take this project on. This isn’t about fashion or even the world of luxury goods at all but rather is about a feud within the Gucci family that would eventually lead to the murder of Maurizio Gucci in 1995. The characters are businesspeople not artists or craftsmen and it’s not even a particularly serious depiction of business. Lady Gaga gives her all to her role as Patrizia Reggiani but everyone just seems to be going through the motions. Since everyone doesn’t seem much bothered, I don’t see why the audience should either.

After years of not watching a single Malaysian film, I suppose I’m picking up the slack now. The Story of Southern Islet is still really not that well known and this is director Chong Keat Aun’s first film. Nonetheless I believe it’s the best Malaysian film I’ve seen in a long time and is able to hold its own against the world’s best. Chong is actually a reasonably well-known figure in our local cultural circles but this is his first foray into directing. The result is an impressive debut that proves that he really does have the technical skills and artistic vision to have a promising career ahead of him.

Pedro Almodóvar’s films can be hit or miss with me and this one is definitely a miss in my book. The main story is perfectly cromulent even if some decisions in it seem a little suspect. On top of that is tacked on a secondary story about excavating the mass graves of victims of the Franco regime. This lends dramatic weight to the film but feels like a cheap trick as it’s so tangential. If it had been made by a lesser director, I think it would be a solid credit in their filmography. But with such renowned names attached to this project, it ends up being underwhelming.

Immediately from the opening shots, you can see why some have called this essentially Skyrim the movie. Unfortunately the plot and even its themes are far more straightforward and less sophisticated than the video game. This is a Viking revenge story pure and simple, deeply steeped in Norse mythology and played completely straight. Given that period film rarely go back so far, this has some exotic appeal. Yet it is so traditional, so old-fashioned in its sensibilities that it’s difficult to discern why someone would decide that making it in 2022 would be a good idea.

This film by Orson Welles is both shorter than it was meant to be and looks older than it should. The reason for the first is that the studio edited and cut the final film against Welles’ wishes and for the second is that it’s meant to show the grand old times before the age of the automobile. There are quite a few bits in it that I liked, such as Welles’ narration of how the rich old families used to live. Yet on the whole this didn’t work for me. The romance between the two leads is central to the story but Welles is I think not a very good director of romances. The butchering by the studio is also very visible and completely ruins the ending.

This anime is like an explosion of tropes: living a new life in an online virtual world, a magical girl who can stop the world in its tracks through the power of song, even freaking Beauty and the Beast. All presented in the form of fantastically dense and beautiful art, this is almost overwhelming to the senses but more or less does work. I think there’s some mixed messaging in its treatment of online spaces and I’m not fond of high school romance stories. Still this is a worthy update of the familiar tale and as my wife notes, one far more suited to the current era than the Disney version.