It’s been a while since we had a variant of the Groundhog Day formula on film and this one actually manages to be rather good. It is a romantic comedy as well but changes things up by having both people being included in the loop and that allows this to be a far less solipsistic experience. At the same time it feels much more science-fiction with characters who experiment to find out the limitations and boundaries of the loop they are trapped in.

Here’s another zombie movie, this one from Canada. The unique twist here is that the events are centered around a community of First Nations Indians who are all immune to the zombie virus. Of course they must still deal with the other perils of a full blown zombie pandemic. Unfortunately while there is some promise early on here and there is some attempt at a deeper theme, it suffers from a weak follow-through and ultimately feels like a comic book movie. Visually it even tries to look like a comic book movie with some animated frames to illustrate some scenes.

It’s kind of hard to judge this Brazilian film. At first it seems strange but very promising with what looks like a near-future dystopia setting. Then when we learn of the plot by the evil Americans, I feel like it takes a sharp dive in quality. But then when we see the villagers’ response, things get awesome again. Wikipedia classifies its genre as Weird Western, one of the more unusual classifications, and it sounds about right to me.

It might be tempting to dismiss this as just the latest of the innumerable nature documentaries David Attenborough has narrated, but it would be a mistake. He means it when he says that this is his witness statement and so this is his personal observation of how much the world has changed since he was a boy. More significantly, you can say that this is where he takes the gloves off and lays into the real causes of the climate disaster and what needs to be done to turn things around.

Director Diao Yinan made international waves a few years back with his noir Black Coal, Thin Ice and this is his follow-up. It’s hard to call this a noir however as it is mainly about police on a massive manhunt for a gangster. It does feature beautiful visuals and a great sense of atmosphere with its night scenes. But on all other counts it is a failure, with flat characters, a directionless plot and no real central theme of any kind.

As with The Lady Eve, this is another comedy by director Preston Sturges and was even released in the same year. However while I didn’t really like that other one, I found this to be a work of pure genius. Its comedic skits are just as inanely dumb but it leans into the inanity to justify its worth and even features an unexpectedly dark turn. This is a film that surprised and delighted me at every turn while being mostly respectful about the poor and downtrodden in it.

Once again sports film are very formulaic and often not worth the time. This one is a bit more promising, being less of a sports film than a personal redemption one about a one-time sports star turned coach. Unfortunately while it’s not bad, it’s not really that good. Oddly enough once you realize that the main character’s depression stems from the loss of a child, it starts to look like an inferior version of Manchester by the Sea, which of course starred Ben’s brother Casey Affleck.