This one is apparently known as Hollywood’s most notable screwball comedies of the era though I don’t believe we’ve watched anything from this director Preston Sturges before. However I found that the plot to be so outrageous and the male lead character so stupid that it’s unbelievable. Still there is a certain charm in this kind of lowbrow humor that we haven’t seen in a long time and I suppose it must have been quite novel at the time to have the female lead character be so dominant throughout the entire film.

Sometimes it can be truly astonishing how such simple films with so little going on can be so effective. This is the first film we watched by director Kelly Reichardt but it seems that her reputation for such minimalism is already well established so more of her work is definitely going onto the to watch list. I dislike the ending as it feels abrupt and I would like to imagine a happy ending for our two plucky heroes. Nevertheless this is an amazing film that immerses you fully in its setting.

Odd how we’ve never watch a single Romanian film but here we have two in relatively short order. This one actually uses multiple different languages and attempts to be a kind of international thriller. Unfortunately it relies entirely on the central conceit of whistling as a language and is not otherwise a film to be taken very seriously. I do note it evinces a very cynical morality that says interesting things about Romanian society.

Here is yet another tiny, indie science-fiction film that has achieved a measure of critical acclaim all out of proportion with its budget. It’s the debut feature of its director Andrew Patterson who basically kept submitting it to many, many film festivals and finally got it to be shown in drive-in cinemas amidst the lockdowns of 2020. There’s is nothing new here to add to the extensive canon of UFO films but it does have an angle all of its own and I can’t help but love a film that knows exactly what it is trying to do as it is the case here.

Years after watching Sonatine, here we finally get around to Hana-bi which is arguably director Takeshi Kitano’s magnum opus. This one has many of the same thematic elements as the earlier film including the director himself playing a jaded, violent character but is far more refined and coherent. Featuring music by Joe Hisaishi and artwork by the director himself, it leans fully into the anime aesthetic to fantastic effect.

This is of course the film whose real world inspiration was the Harvey Weinstein affair though none of that is mentioned within the film itself. In fact, the film delicately deals with the controversial subject matter by side-stepping the boss entirely so that he is never seen and the main character here is his assistant. This brilliant move ensures that the film doesn’t feel exploitative in the least and refocuses the issue on the complicity of the industry as a whole in his wrongdoings.

This is a lesser Alfred Hitchcock film that I added to my list originally because the director mentioned in various interviews that it is one of his favorites. I think this was probably because it is one of his earliest Hollywood films that was a great success and clearly establishes his signature style. Watching this now, it feels too straightforward to be truly great but there are perhaps some interesting insights to be had in its themes.