As many others have pointed, the past several years have been so tumultuous that we have mostly forgotten major events that happened only a short time before. Anyway there was a moment when the entire world was fully absorbed in the drama of the Tham Luang cave rescue in Thailand and this documentary tells the story from the perspective of the foreign cave diving experts who were essential to the rescue effort. It was made by Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin, the same team who made the immensely successful Free Solo, and it does a great job with the material. Note however that it omits the story from the perspective of the trapped children and their coach themselves because of complicated rights issues.

I’ve never watched a film by director Jiří Menzel before this but I understand that he and this film in particular is part of what is known as the Czechoslovak New Wave. I confess to having a hard time connecting to the film even if I mostly understood what was going on in the story. It was only by exerting myself to link its events to many possible themes that I realized what its trying to convey and really started to enjoy it. This actually isn’t a difficult film to grasp and it is very good. It’s just that I couldn’t intuitively understand it as Czechs and perhaps other Europeans would be able to.

This film takes a while to get going and even then might mislead you into believing that it’s a historical account of the persecution of Catholics in Joseon-era Korea. It’s much more than that, amounting to essentially championing Western enlightenment values. At the same time it is respectful towards the teachings of Confucianism even if it is skeptical that Confucian values are really being practiced. I’m was shocked that it’s at least partially based on a true story as the historical Jeong Yak-jeon did indeed get exiled and spent that time writing Korea’s first treatise on marine life. This feels like yet another film that was perfectly tuned to accord with my own values, so yes, I loved it and I’m amazed that it even exists.

I should have watched this ages ago but so many newer American films run to significantly longer than two hours and that makes it harder to schedule the time needed. Then there’s the fact that once you know its premise and you’re on the side of the scientists, it’s almost unnecessary to watch this as it plays out almost exactly as you predict. The film has such a large cast and is so-on-nose with its character archetypes and situations that I can’t rank it very highly in terms of artistic merit. But even if it does nothing but preach to the converted, I am of course one of them and it is so cathartic to watch the truth-denying Trumpists crash headlong into reality even if the rest of the world ends up paying the price along with them.

The story behind this project is almost as incredible as the film itself with director Domee Shi being asked to pitch ideas after the success of her short film Bao. The result is a resounding success of a debut feature that boldly grapples with the anxieties of a teenage girl growing up better than almost anything else I can think of. Some critics have noted how this is targeted at such a specific audience that it lacks universal appeal. As always, for me it is because of its specificity in being set in a particular place, cultural milieu, and even era with the characteristic Tamagotchi-like toy that it feels so authentic as it recognizably draws on the director’s own life experiences.

Without intending to, it seems like we’ve watched two older films about psychologically dysfunctional characters back to back this week. I’ve liked pretty every John Huston film I’ve seen so far but this one is by far the most subversive, most subtle one of the lot. In fact, given that it was roundly panned by critics at the time, I believe that audiences of the time either did not understand the film or were unprepared to accept what it had to say. It essentially accuses the US military of churning out personnel who are sexually repressed and therefore all somewhat crazy, making it an incredibly bold and ahead of its time film.

This is one of Luis Buñuel’s least surrealist films and it’s straightforward to understand every one of the side-plots going on, yet it leaves me confused as to what is the point of it all. I believe that it’s necessary to view this from the perspective of the time it is set in, with France embroiled by the Dreyfus Affair and antisemitism on the rise. That it condemns the perversions of the bourgeoisie is obvious too but then it doesn’t exactly portray the servant class in a kindly light either. I suppose that too is one of the contradictions of the original novel this was based on.