Political films usually make for heavy watching, especially when they’re about the politics of countries that one has little familiarity with. I’m Still Here is an exception. Despite being quite long, it focuses only on the travails of a single family during the Brazilian military dictatorship of the 1970s and so is fairly easy to grasp. There are plentiful scenes that show how the happy life of the family was shattered by the father being disappeared by the government. It’s well-made and is a worthy record of this family’s struggle. But it’s probably too conventional and too specific a subject to be of interest to non-Brazilians.

People keep talking up this German science-fiction series and how much of a mindbender it is. I was skeptical if it’s even really science-fiction for a long time and so held off. I’ve now taken the time to watch the first season and what do you know, I don’t really consider it to be science-fiction after all. Instead, it’s a mystery box show with time travel at its central conceit. What differentiates it is that it must have been meticulously planned out from the beginning whereas other such shows make shit up as they go along and pretend otherwise. I’m looking at you Lost. This means that in principle, it’s possible to figure out the clues they provide before they drop the big reveals. The show has its issues but the mystery is a fair one so I’m very much down for the next season.

Kristen Stewart’s directorial debut is an emotionally intense adaptation of a memoir by writer Lidia Yuknavitch. As the narrator states at the beginning, it’s a disjointed account as it adheres not to orderly chronology but to the emotional lows of a woman’s formative years. The result is highly impressionistic yet vivid with a powerful mastery of imagery. It’s astounding work for a first-time director and one of the best book adaptations I’ve seen in a while, capturing unspeakable trauma and pain that can hardly be articulated in words.

A film about Palestinian refugees in Greece made by a Danish director of Palestinian origins Mahdi Fleifel can be expected to be sympathetic to their plight. Making your characters flawed is fine and even adds credibility. But I was very shocked that whether intentionally or not, he has delivered a film that effectively warns Europeans that these refugees have been reduced to such desperate straits that they are capable of anything. The premise and the characters are fine but the plot goes so far off the deep end that I wondered if Fleifel knows what he wants to say here.

Dora the Explorer is way past my childhood so I have no familiarity with the franchise and I wouldn’t ordinarily choose to watch a kid’s film like this. What convinced me is online word-of-mouth and the fact that this film’s reputation seems to have improved over time. The fourth wall breaking jokes I remember seeing in the trailer helped too. In the event. this is exactly as advertised a kid’s adventure film that embraces the fact that it was adapted from an animated show. It’s unashamedly positive, pointedly runs on cartoon logic and I love how it has the storyline of a children’s show, yet never considers the audience to be stupid.

Digging deeper into the history of cinema and especially the works of not-so-well-known directors can be hit and miss. But every so often it pays off in spades. Tampopo seems to be Juzo Itami’s best known and it is so delightful that it immediately made me want to check out the rest of his filmography. It’s already pretty rare that a Japanese comedy can work for international audiences and what’s more fun is that this is food-themed. I didn’t find all of the jokes funny as some seem rather dark. But it’s wonderfully creative, irreverent and has a heart of gold without being sentimental.

Dancer in the Dark is one of my major omissions from the filmography of Lars von Trier. My wife had already watched it by herself a while back plus it was surprisingly poorly reviewed despite being quite a famous film. It’s not a very good looking due to being shot using a handheld digital camera and the main story of a mother doing everything she can to save her son is crude emotional manipulation. Yet the character played by Björk is so fascinating and framing it as a musical is darkly imaginative of Trier. It’s definitely a lesser work but still one worth watching.