I know that this really should be seen in a proper cinema hall but it was shown too early after lockdown was lifted for us to feel comfortable going out just yet. In retrospect I regret that as this was originally shot in the IMAX format and television screen just don’t do it justice. At this point, it’s fair to say that I’m a fan of Denis Villeneuve so it was always exciting to have him tackle Dune. Having now watched it I have to say that this is as perfect an adaptation of the novel as anyone could reasonably ask for.

The Wire is still widely cited by many as the greatest television show that has ever been made. Creator David Simon has made other shows since then but none stood out to me particularly. The Deuce however brings serious star power with James Franco and Maggie Gyllenhaal as leads and co-producers. Instead of drugs, the focus of the series is on the sex trade in New York City during the 1970s. We’ve only seen the first season and it’s as great and richly complex as you might expect. It does however feel more like an ethnography than a dramatic story and it unfortunately lacks the magical spark that made The Wire so special.

I guess this makes two films this week that are about history. This is a documentary about a music festival that took place over six weekends in the summer of 1969 in Harlem, New York City. Since one of the Sundays was concurrent with the much better known Woodstock Festival, this event was at times marketed as being Black Woodstock. However despite the presence of many famous performers and a large attendance of mainly black people, the event was little known to most of the US or the world. This film shows how it was a formative, life-changing event for many of the attendees but afterwards it disappeared from the public consciousness and even this footage of it languished unseen.

The Srebrenica massacre took place more than 25 years ago. I suppose it took this long for a major film about the event to be made. Yet watching it today feels extra meaningful due to the ongoing war in Ukraine. This film focuses on the perspective of a single fictional character and her family, while being very light on any exposition about the larger conflict. As a dramatic work, it is unquestioningly brilliant in putting the audience in the shoes of the hapless civilians who are powerless in the face of the disaster and death all of them can see coming towards them. Yet there is so little information about what is really going on that it can at times be very frustrating.

While watching this, we had the vague impression that we’ve already seen this before yet couldn’t be sure. Since I now have a record of every film I’ve watched, I could check and see that it wasn’t the case. It’s just how the film makes use of the usual techniques of the horror genre that makes it seem so familiar. This is a supremely creepy, suspenseful film and it represents perhaps the very epitome of what can be achieved with this style. Yet it also illustrates their limits as it’s all pure atmosphere and the film doesn’t really go anywhere at the end.

I thought this film was a thriller but it’s really more of a psychological drama of a Vietnam War veteran’s weird ways of coping with his trauma. It’s a surprisingly more complex film that I expected yet the execution doesn’t quite live up to its full potential. This is the first film we’ve watched by director Ivan Passer but he was a close collaborator of fellow Czech Miloš Forman whose work we’ve loved. Imperfect as this film is, it seems to already be the pinnacle of Passer’s career so it’s doubtful that we’ll be watching more of his work.

Both my wife and myself somehow missed watched this film by Tsui Hark from back when he actually a good director. I thought about looking for it later but it seemed impossible to find anywhere except for YouTube. Recently my wife’s interest in it was rekindled after watching an online lecture about it and so we settled for the YouTube version despite its inferior quality. It is very much a film of its era with its kitschy special effects. Yet it is amazingly, even shockingly shock though perhaps much of the credit should go to Lilian Lee, as the author of the novel this was adapted from.