This Mexican film is dystopian enough to count as science-fiction and another indicator is how its characters are increasingly sidelined as they are overtaken by the plot. Walking into this blind, it is shocking to watch the comfortable lives of the moneyed elite being disrupted and then destroyed by an increasingly violent riot by the masses of the poor underclass. Yet instead of seriously engaging with the morality of both sides, the film pivots away to blame the military instead. This thoroughly ruins its credibility and with it any chance of treating it as a serious film.

This live action adaptation of the anime by the Wachowski brothers was very poorly received, which is why I never watched it. Since one of the brothers has been in the news again recently, some discussion went on to cover their previous work and I read that while this isn’t a good film, it may at least be a visually unique one. Having now watched it, I certainly agree that it has a bold artistic vision but that’s not enough to make this bloated and nonsensical monstrosity worth watching.

This was the last film made by Yasujirō Ozu as he died about a year after its release. All of the director’s usual themes are present but with an expanded cast of characters, the focus feels a little diffuse. I do like it a lot though as there are all of the little stories for the characters and it makes for a more comprehensive picture of Japanese social mores. Setsuko Hara doesn’t appear in this one so this is more strongly a film about Chishū Ryū’s character and his relationships.

This was a recommendation from our cinephile friend who probably likes dark movies a little more than is healthy. It does have a decently high Rotten Tomatoes rating and it starts with some promise as it seems to have been made with decent production values. But ultimately I did not like it at all, finding it a shallow film that is interested in little more than stringing together a succession of scary images and makes no effort whatsoever to impart any deeper context or meaning.

Everything about this film, its title, the poster with John Travolta’s iconic pose and of course the Bee Gees songs, have long been subsumed into popular culture. But I’ve never watched it before now and I wonder how many people really have. It would be so easy to dismiss this as a standard dance movie about the protagonists trying to win a dance competition but it is so much more than that. In parallel with the disco dancing which is of course wonderful to watch, this is a fairly serious drama about a young man learning to grow out the milieu he has grown up in and I loved how both tracks complement each other so perfectly.

This film was such a major cultural phenomenon in China that it would be remiss not to watch it. It was adapted from a popular novel but it would be fair to say that it in turn was inspired by real suicides among high students. It was directed by Derek Tsang who most people will know of as being the son of Eric Tsang but this is a China film through and through. Although it is well made and the young actors deliver excellent performances, it is ultimately a sentimental and shallow romance that panders to the sensitivities of the Chinese government and does a disservice to the issue of bullying in school.

Finally we get to the end of what is supposedly a trilogy by Michelangelo Antonioni. This one is no easier than any of the previous ones when it comes to figuring out what it actually means, yet the incredible power present in every scene impresses you nevertheless even as you scramble to make sense of things. Monica Vitti is the constant across all of these films and here she is at once both incredibly beautiful and incredible resistant to any simple dissection of her motivations. There are any number of ways that one could interpret this film but as some critics have pointed out perhaps it is its open-ended nature that is the real point.