Ran was Akira Kurosawa’s last epic and is one of his most famous films despite it being made so late in his career. It’s considered an adaptation of Shakespeare’s King Lear though it seems that the director was originally inspired by a real figure from Japanese history Mōri Motonari. While Kurosawa was never a very subtle director, I found this to be much too heavy-handed and obvious for my tastes, like a lavish, exaggerated stage play. It does look incredibly beautiful and being the most expensive Japanese film ever made at the time, features some of the most impressive large-scale period battles put on film. It even manages to convey the effective use of tactics to win battles!

This series may consist of only three episodes but the total running time adds up to over eight hours. Even if it’s The Beatles, it gets boring watching four guys muck about the studio just doing their own thing. I’m not a particular fan of the group but I persevered anyway, treating it as a kind of inside look on the creative processes of genius musicians as well as their group dynamics. Plus of course it’s fun to listen to their performances as they experiment with different variations and even do covers of other people’s music to warm up or relax.

I added this onto my watchlist more out of sense of obligation than anything else as it was one of the big winners at last year’s Oscars. For a while this film fell on the wrong side of being too sickly sweet for me but it did eventually win me over when it focused on how the main character’s ability to hear is making her deaf family too dependent on her. I note that this is a remake of a French film but the original wasn’t notable enough to register on my radar. Out of curiosity, I sought out its trailer to take a look and yeah, it’s so similar down to the sex jokes that there’s no point in watching it. This not being a very consequential film anyway, I’m actually kind of glad that I watched this American version as its production values are visibly better.

After being so disappointed by No Time to Die, it’s reasonable to ask if it’s even possible to make decent action movies set in the modern era. This film from the Philippines makes for a great counterexample as it limits the scope of its action to reasonable levels. Despite its limited budget, its cinematography is fantastic and it doesn’t compromise on its plot and character development either. This is admittedly a very dark film but that this what it means to treat the subject of violence and killings seriously. It seems that I was way late in hearing about this and this was successful enough that an American remake is in the planning.

This film wowed critics as a real-time look into how an upmarket restaurant in London works behind the scenes in one long, continuous shot. Despite its modest scope, the film impressed enough people that it’s already been made into a full series. I loved all of the details and how each character, including the customers of the restaurants, all have their own little stories. But I do note that the way it ramps all of the restaurant’s myriad problems into an explosive climax kind of makes it feel like a reality show. It’s just so dense with drama and it makes a lot of sense why this might better be expanded into a television series.

This film was compiled from old Soviet footage of the funeral of Joseph Stalin in 1953 by Sergey Loznitsa, a Ukrainian director of Belarusian origin and predates the ongoing invasion. With no added commentary except for an afterword, its surreal quality naturally lends it added resonance this year as it makes for a powerful indictment of the cult of personality built around the supreme leader of the USSR. At a little over two hours long, it’s a bit of a chore to get through as it consists only of the expected pageantry and ceremonies of a huge funeral repeated again and again. Yet I would argue that it’s worth it for the look into the USSR of the period and what such a national cult is like from the inside.

I have not watched all of the Daniel Craig Bond films and I have little idea of the story so far. Still strong reviews and the sense of this being the end of an era persuaded me that it might worth watching this last one, especially as we so rarely watch conventional action movies these days. As expected this looks slick and beautifully shot and there is some real emotion in Bond’s relationships. However the plot that serves as its connective tissue is almost perfunctory in how thin it is and it’s hard to feel any sort of real peril in the action scenes. In short, it’s standard, formulaic Bond.