This film was compiled from old Soviet footage of the funeral of Joseph Stalin in 1953 by Sergey Loznitsa, a Ukrainian director of Belarusian origin and predates the ongoing invasion. With no added commentary except for an afterword, its surreal quality naturally lends it added resonance this year as it makes for a powerful indictment of the cult of personality built around the supreme leader of the USSR. At a little over two hours long, it’s a bit of a chore to get through as it consists only of the expected pageantry and ceremonies of a huge funeral repeated again and again. Yet I would argue that it’s worth it for the look into the USSR of the period and what such a national cult is like from the inside.

I have not watched all of the Daniel Craig Bond films and I have little idea of the story so far. Still strong reviews and the sense of this being the end of an era persuaded me that it might worth watching this last one, especially as we so rarely watch conventional action movies these days. As expected this looks slick and beautifully shot and there is some real emotion in Bond’s relationships. However the plot that serves as its connective tissue is almost perfunctory in how thin it is and it’s hard to feel any sort of real peril in the action scenes. In short, it’s standard, formulaic Bond.

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.