This Hong Kong film is partially based on a true event involving government workers clearing the shacks of homeless people in Sham Shui Po. For a while I was inclined to dislike it as it seemed like an overly sentimental take on a complex issue, falling into the trap of the recent spate of Hong Kong films that are well-intentioned but simplistic. Then I realized that the opinions of its main character might not be the film’s own opinion and indeed some of the other homeless people call him out for his stubbornness. Perhaps director Jun Li might personally be more sympathetic to those views than I’d like but at least he proves that he has thought through it carefully and that makes me feel a lot better about this film.

I was a little hesitant to watch this because on the surface it feels like it’s just another mountaineering documentary so why watch more of the same. What makes this particular project interesting to me is that it was conceived and led by a Nepali Nirmal Purja with a team of fellow Nepali climbers. As such it’s a deliberate attempt to move away from the old tradition of Westerners leading mountain expeditions and the Nepali sherpas being credited only as assistants. I also appreciated that this film, unlike so many others, actually goes into the difficulty of raising money in the pursuit of such an insane dream, on top of the physical and mental challenges of the climbing itself.

This was Ingmar Bergman’s last film and the sequel to Scenes from a Marriage. Just as it was made some 30 years after the television series, this film picks on up Marianne and Johan 30 years later as well. The premise is deceptive though as the main story is really about new characters, Johan’s son and granddaughter from a later relationship, rather than the old couple. This allows Bergman to explore fresh themes, in this case the relationship between a parent and a child, and that is welcome but it is a chore to muster up enthusiasm for entirely new characters who are unknown to us.

This film by Ridley Scott features a triptych structure to tell its story from the perspectives of its three main characters. That instantly earns comparisons with Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon. Unfortunately this film is simply unworthy of the comparison as the treble format here is an unnecessary indulgence that detracts from the film instead of enriching it. The film is technically well made and the duel at its center is one of the most brutal and realistic ones I’ve ever seen. But it is confused about where its emotional and dramatic heart is and really only needs one point of view.

This film is mostly interesting as being of the very few comedies directed by Alfred Hitchcock. In keeping with the reputation and style of the legendary director, the plot still revolves entirely around what to do with a corpse. It’s amusing enough but it’s not laugh out loud funny and the plot is predictable once you understand what Hitchcock is going for. The colors of the fall foliage were so vivid I thought it must have been colorized after the fact but it seems that this was exactly the look Hitchcock wanted. As usual, the director’s execution is impeccable but this one is probably worth watching only for committed fans.

As many others have pointed, the past several years have been so tumultuous that we have mostly forgotten major events that happened only a short time before. Anyway there was a moment when the entire world was fully absorbed in the drama of the Tham Luang cave rescue in Thailand and this documentary tells the story from the perspective of the foreign cave diving experts who were essential to the rescue effort. It was made by Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin, the same team who made the immensely successful Free Solo, and it does a great job with the material. Note however that it omits the story from the perspective of the trapped children and their coach themselves because of complicated rights issues.

I’ve never watched a film by director Jiří Menzel before this but I understand that he and this film in particular is part of what is known as the Czechoslovak New Wave. I confess to having a hard time connecting to the film even if I mostly understood what was going on in the story. It was only by exerting myself to link its events to many possible themes that I realized what its trying to convey and really started to enjoy it. This actually isn’t a difficult film to grasp and it is very good. It’s just that I couldn’t intuitively understand it as Czechs and perhaps other Europeans would be able to.