This was Ingmar Bergman’s last film and the sequel to Scenes from a Marriage. Just as it was made some 30 years after the television series, this film picks on up Marianne and Johan 30 years later as well. The premise is deceptive though as the main story is really about new characters, Johan’s son and granddaughter from a later relationship, rather than the old couple. This allows Bergman to explore fresh themes, in this case the relationship between a parent and a child, and that is welcome but it is a chore to muster up enthusiasm for entirely new characters who are unknown to us.

This film by Ridley Scott features a triptych structure to tell its story from the perspectives of its three main characters. That instantly earns comparisons with Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon. Unfortunately this film is simply unworthy of the comparison as the treble format here is an unnecessary indulgence that detracts from the film instead of enriching it. The film is technically well made and the duel at its center is one of the most brutal and realistic ones I’ve ever seen. But it is confused about where its emotional and dramatic heart is and really only needs one point of view.

This film is mostly interesting as being of the very few comedies directed by Alfred Hitchcock. In keeping with the reputation and style of the legendary director, the plot still revolves entirely around what to do with a corpse. It’s amusing enough but it’s not laugh out loud funny and the plot is predictable once you understand what Hitchcock is going for. The colors of the fall foliage were so vivid I thought it must have been colorized after the fact but it seems that this was exactly the look Hitchcock wanted. As usual, the director’s execution is impeccable but this one is probably worth watching only for committed fans.

As many others have pointed, the past several years have been so tumultuous that we have mostly forgotten major events that happened only a short time before. Anyway there was a moment when the entire world was fully absorbed in the drama of the Tham Luang cave rescue in Thailand and this documentary tells the story from the perspective of the foreign cave diving experts who were essential to the rescue effort. It was made by Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin, the same team who made the immensely successful Free Solo, and it does a great job with the material. Note however that it omits the story from the perspective of the trapped children and their coach themselves because of complicated rights issues.

I’ve never watched a film by director Jiří Menzel before this but I understand that he and this film in particular is part of what is known as the Czechoslovak New Wave. I confess to having a hard time connecting to the film even if I mostly understood what was going on in the story. It was only by exerting myself to link its events to many possible themes that I realized what its trying to convey and really started to enjoy it. This actually isn’t a difficult film to grasp and it is very good. It’s just that I couldn’t intuitively understand it as Czechs and perhaps other Europeans would be able to.

This film takes a while to get going and even then might mislead you into believing that it’s a historical account of the persecution of Catholics in Joseon-era Korea. It’s much more than that, amounting to essentially championing Western enlightenment values. At the same time it is respectful towards the teachings of Confucianism even if it is skeptical that Confucian values are really being practiced. I’m was shocked that it’s at least partially based on a true story as the historical Jeong Yak-jeon did indeed get exiled and spent that time writing Korea’s first treatise on marine life. This feels like yet another film that was perfectly tuned to accord with my own values, so yes, I loved it and I’m amazed that it even exists.

I should have watched this ages ago but so many newer American films run to significantly longer than two hours and that makes it harder to schedule the time needed. Then there’s the fact that once you know its premise and you’re on the side of the scientists, it’s almost unnecessary to watch this as it plays out almost exactly as you predict. The film has such a large cast and is so-on-nose with its character archetypes and situations that I can’t rank it very highly in terms of artistic merit. But even if it does nothing but preach to the converted, I am of course one of them and it is so cathartic to watch the truth-denying Trumpists crash headlong into reality even if the rest of the world ends up paying the price along with them.