I was aware of this documentary’s reputation as a real tearjerker but it still managed to leave me in shock. This is a very personal film made by a single person, Kurt Kuenne, in honor of his friend Andrew Bagby who had been murdered. The horror is that his murderer is his ex-girlfriend who was at the time pregnant with his son and the intent behind this film is to let the son Zachary know what kind of man his father was. The story develops into so much more than that as it touches the lives of so many people and resulted in the law being changed. I’m not sure that I’ve ever seen another documentary that is as charged with personal rage and frustration as this one as Kuenne really invests so much of himself into it.

This is one film that I probably wouldn’t have watched if it weren’t for a friend’s recommendation and the fact that it’s easily available on Netflix. It has passable and it did get nominated for an Oscar for cinematography but its premise reads like a gimmicky B-movie. This turned out to be a fair assessment as it’s a beautifully shot comedy horror with a dumb plot, crammed with dark jokes of a political persuasion. I can even see why my friend liked it, as it has something of Wes Anderson’s surrealism except that it’s monochrome and is unrestrained when it comes to sex and gore. But it isn’t really the sort of thing I like.

We’re nearly done with the slate of Studio Ghibli films and here we come to an old one that my wife said she fell asleep watching back in the day. This is admittedly one of Hayao Miyazaki’s lightest and simplest films. It encapsulates nothing but Miyazaki’s love of aircraft and specifically the aircraft of the pre-World War 2 era. There is combat but it’s treated as comedic playacting with no one dying or even getting seriously hurt. This is barely more sophisticated than a children’s cartoon but I found I rather liked the purity of its vision. Miyayaki knew exactly what he wanted to express here and so he did it without caring about what anyone else thought.

This is commonly cited as one of the great Australian films even if there is some debate over whether it counts as being Australian at all. Director Nicolas Roeg and the two white actors are English. I’d say it easily counts as this is probably the definitive film about the Outback. I’m not a big fan of this use of the noble savage trope and I found its core message to be similarly outdated and simplistic. Even so I can appreciate how perfectly this film conveys that message with its vivid, almost hallucinogenic vision of the Outback and its boldness in using nudity and sheer physicality for both the male and female characters.

This represents one of the rare occasions during which Hou Hsiao-hsien worked outside of the Chinese languages and indeed should be the only non-Asian film he ever made. It feels like a gimmick that shouldn’t work given that Hou doesn’t speak French and the French actors all don’t speak Chinese. Yet it does and the result is a wonderful view of the daily life of a Parisian family seen from the perspective of an outsider. I’ve never watched the 1956 film that serves as the inspiration but the references are obvious enough. I’m even more impressed that Hou manages to work in connections to Chinese culture that really are enriching and meaningful.

We missed out on watching the first Dune when it was shown in the cinemas because society was just reopening after the COVID-19 lockdowns just then. So this time we made sure to watch the second part in an IMAX cinema hall. The experience was everything we’d hoped for, overwhelming us with its visuals and soundscape. This adaptation compresses many of the events in the novel and leaves out quite a few important details including the birth of Alia, Paul and Chani’s first son, and the role of the Navigator’s Guild. But there are also changes that are arguably superior to the original, including making Chani one of the main skeptics of Paul’s divinity. All in all, it’s a real triumph and the changes make the science-fiction classic more relevant to our time.

Since this is intermittently hailed as one of the greatest films of all time, not having watched it was one of the most major gaps of my cinematic journey. It’s pretty much as I expected from its reputation, being a powerful tragedy but also one that is too dated for me to really fully appreciate. One thing that did strike a chord with me is how much it’s really about the alienation and isolation of man rather than just how hard life is. The ending isn’t a surprise as the main character Ricci works himself up to it throughout his search, ignoring alternative solutions and other people in his obsession to retrieve his bicycle. I suppose this sort of depth is why it’s such a highly regarded film.