After years of not watching a single Malaysian film, I suppose I’m picking up the slack now. The Story of Southern Islet is still really not that well known and this is director Chong Keat Aun’s first film. Nonetheless I believe it’s the best Malaysian film I’ve seen in a long time and is able to hold its own against the world’s best. Chong is actually a reasonably well-known figure in our local cultural circles but this is his first foray into directing. The result is an impressive debut that proves that he really does have the technical skills and artistic vision to have a promising career ahead of him.

Pedro Almodóvar’s films can be hit or miss with me and this one is definitely a miss in my book. The main story is perfectly cromulent even if some decisions in it seem a little suspect. On top of that is tacked on a secondary story about excavating the mass graves of victims of the Franco regime. This lends dramatic weight to the film but feels like a cheap trick as it’s so tangential. If it had been made by a lesser director, I think it would be a solid credit in their filmography. But with such renowned names attached to this project, it ends up being underwhelming.

Immediately from the opening shots, you can see why some have called this essentially Skyrim the movie. Unfortunately the plot and even its themes are far more straightforward and less sophisticated than the video game. This is a Viking revenge story pure and simple, deeply steeped in Norse mythology and played completely straight. Given that period film rarely go back so far, this has some exotic appeal. Yet it is so traditional, so old-fashioned in its sensibilities that it’s difficult to discern why someone would decide that making it in 2022 would be a good idea.

This film by Orson Welles is both shorter than it was meant to be and looks older than it should. The reason for the first is that the studio edited and cut the final film against Welles’ wishes and for the second is that it’s meant to show the grand old times before the age of the automobile. There are quite a few bits in it that I liked, such as Welles’ narration of how the rich old families used to live. Yet on the whole this didn’t work for me. The romance between the two leads is central to the story but Welles is I think not a very good director of romances. The butchering by the studio is also very visible and completely ruins the ending.

This anime is like an explosion of tropes: living a new life in an online virtual world, a magical girl who can stop the world in its tracks through the power of song, even freaking Beauty and the Beast. All presented in the form of fantastically dense and beautiful art, this is almost overwhelming to the senses but more or less does work. I think there’s some mixed messaging in its treatment of online spaces and I’m not fond of high school romance stories. Still this is a worthy update of the familiar tale and as my wife notes, one far more suited to the current era than the Disney version.

Kelly Reichardt is probably my current favorite American director and this is another film that cements my love for her style. The Oregon Trail game was really before my time but I too briefly tried it and raged over how every one of your pioneers seem to eventually die of dysentery. Well, this is the story of one small group lost on that trail. As with Reichardt’s other films, the plot is straightforward and simple. It really is all about giving the audience an idea of what it was like to be a settler on the trail in 1845, complete with all of their trials, dreams and prejudices.

Here’s a film whose story we already know as we’ve watched the more recent American adaptation The Talented Mr. Ripley some years back. I judged this far earlier French adaptation, made only a few years after the publication of the Patricia Highsmith novel, worth watching anyway as it’s very well known and it was the film that turned Alain Delon into a star. It also helps that this version differs markedly from the American film which I believe is more faithful to the source material. This version is in some ways more traditional, both in Ripley’s motivations and in its ultimate resolution. In my opinion, that makes it less psychologically interesting but there are still good reasons to watch it.