From time to time, I’m still working through the Hollywood classics and I keep being amazed by how enjoyable they are. I see this John Huston film being described as a noir but I don’t think it counts as one. I’m not sure what the genre is called but it’s one of those where the characters are all trapped by circumstances in a confined space and have to put up with each other. As usual, this provides the opportunity to go into what makes each of them tick and it’s a real pleasure to see even the supporting characters being put under the microscope. Great performances all around and it even ends with a relatively realistic yet thrilling gunfight!

So this is a case where I absolutely agree that director Mike Mills has made an incredible film and yet this is the kind of film that doesn’t accord well with my own tastes. The theme here is communication, specifically of the verbal kind to express one’s thoughts and emotions, and so this film really is all about talking. To facilitate this, the film actually deemphasizes its visuals so as to be as unobtrusive as possible and I believe it was shot in black-in-white for that reason. The result is a work that perfectly delivers on what the director set out to accomplish but is also about listening to people talk to such an extent that it’s off-putting to me personally.

Here’s another Czech film and coincidentally it’s centered around the railways as well. As is so often the case, the shadow of the Second World War hangs heavily in this film and yet the specific event it is about, the expulsion of Germans just after the war in the face of the advancing Russians, is completely unknown to me. This made it difficult for me to understand what was going on and who all of the characters are. Nonetheless I can still appreciate enough of the personal story of the titular character to realize that this is a great film and the rotoscoped animation makes it uniquely beautiful as well.

I rated The Suicide Squad as probably my favorite of the DC superhero films I’ve seen so if James Gunn is making a spin-off television show from it, I’m all onboard. Though this is a DC show, it features characters so obscure that their comic book origins barely matter. This gives Gunn a free hand in doing pretty much anything he wants with them and that’s key to why this series is so good. It has great character development, funny dialog, even if there’s a little too much of it at times, a good enough plot and surprisingly strong action scenes. I’d characterize this as an attempt to copy the MCU’s formula but with something close to an R-rated sensibility. As far as I’m concerned, the formula is a winning one.

Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumolo are an established comedic duo and I suspect that how much one likes this film directly depends on how much you like their act. I’ve never seen any of their work before this and I have to say that I was totally flummoxed by the tone of this film and who it’s meant for. Eventually I was able to work out that it’s really a power fantasy for middle-aged women while embracing maximum silliness. This isn’t really a film that is to my tastes but I do acknowledge how well-made it is and how fully committed it is to its particular vision of female friendship.

Pretty much the same gang of filmmakers seem to be making the most highly acclaimed films in Taiwan and so I keep watching them. We’ve seen work by director Chung Mong-hong a few times before this and I have mixed feelings about them. I’d rank this as one of the better ones due to its solid foundations and how it treats the topic of mental illness with maturity. It does unfortunately have the same kind of shock twist ending that this gang seems to favor but that I feel is detrimental to treating it as a serious film.

As a big fan of Jacques Demy’s musicals, I’ve had this musical by Jean-Luc Godard on my to watch list for a while now. This is one of Godard’s earliest films though and not considered among the best. Indeed it plays off the musical aspects as a kind of joke and even the title is a silly bit of wordplay. Underneath the absurdity the plot is rather straightforward and readily accessible. I enjoyed its sense of fun and humor and as well as how it puts the romantic couple in an entirely mundane domestic context but it’s also deliberately designed to frustrate fans of traditional musicals.