We’ve watched quite a few films by Lee Chan-dong so far but here we go all the way back to his very first one. It’s relatively simple but it may just be my favorite of his works. It’s very similar in tone to the Hong Kong gangster films of the late 1980s and early 1990s but unlike those, this has real pathos and depth. As with Pigs and Battleships, we get the life of a low-level gangster shorn of any glory or dignity and there is no happy ending to be had with the femme fatale of this story.
This is the first time I’ve watched a film written and directed by Jesse Eisenberg and he even stars here as one of two cousins on a trip to Poland. It’s effectively travelogue which is always nice to watch as you feel like you’re part of the group tour with them, seeing what they see. More importantly, it’s a deep dive into the relationship between the two. It’s quietly understated, restrained in its ambitions and painfully authentic, all excellent reasons for me to love it.
Amidst all the much more well-known animated shows, this one seems to have fallen under the radar and ultimately failed. I was drawn to it both by its sci-fi setting of survivors trapped on an alien planet and its art design. Its visuals are reminiscent of Western graphic novels and indeed the immediate inspiration is the work of French artist Jean Giraud. I’m always keen on animated speculative fiction shows that are made for adults and this certainly counts. Unfortunately this is a show about vibes, not cerebral ideas, and once it became obvious that it has no interest in offering grounded explanations for anything, my opinion of it dropped by a few notches.
Continuing the string of films that show the darker side of Japan, especially under US occupation, here’s one by Shōhei Imamura. The title sounds ridiculous but makes complete sense given the context and even earns its comedic tone. At its heart is a rather old-fashioned love story between a girl and a bad boy but the incisive message about cultural imperialism elevates it above the usual fare. It’s rather cleverer and more multifaceted than it initially appears even if the moralizing is a tad obvious.
I consider the Knives Out series to be the best detective films currently being made so I’m always down for more of them. This one is especially delightful for me as it pits the atheistic and rational Benoit Blanc against the mystery of religion. It does take a while to get going as a dead body doesn’t even show up until maybe an hour in. I think it falls short of the cleverness of the first film in how the murder was carried out but the motivations of the characters, the religious theme and how it ties in with current events all make up for it.
As I noted earlier, Alex Garland’s work gives me mixed feelings yet here I am back again watching his latest. He does share directorial credit here with Ray Mendoza who helped advise Garland in the making of Civil War and more importantly was a participant in the real-life battle that this film is based on. The result is a stunningly authentic recreation of the incident and probably the single best portrayal of what modern urban warfare is like on film. True, it has no wider ambitions and says nothing about why the US is even in Iraq, but it doesn’t need to as what it does is perfectly fine and even much needed. The question is, why didn’t Garland aspire to this level of realism in his earlier film?
This Chilean film by a new director Felipe Gálvez Haberle is instantly recognizable as a Western. It has rugged characters riding horses across vast landscapes, gunfights and especially the killing of natives. This is no action movie however as the action is all one-sided. The cowboys here are literally committing genocide against defenseless Indians on behalf of their wealthy rancher employer, based on historically real events. It’s brutally blunt both in its messaging and in its imagery but it certainly succeeds in its goal of bringing more attention to an atrocity that most of the world is probably unaware of.
