With the recent announcement of the retirement of Serena Williams, it seemed like a good time to watch this. As per its title however it is really about the father of the Williams sisters, Richard, and the beginning of the career of Venus. Richard’s role as the parental figure who planned for and pushed them towards world-beating success is the focus. As far as I can tell, it does an excellent job at being reasonably fair and accurate about the double-edged nature of this kind of intense coaching since childhood. That marks this as a little different from the run-of-the-mill sports biographical film and perhaps worth watching even if you don’t care much for sports.

I don’t understand the social dynamics of the debutante balls that are at the center of this film but since neither does the protagonist, I suppose that is rather the point. My wife noted how this American film weirdly feels British and that makes sense too because they are in essence enacting a watered-down imitation of the social conventions of the British aristocracy. Anyway for these astute observations and an on-point characterization of these barely adults and their infatuations, I give this film full marks and thoroughly recommend it.

This is a tough film to evaluate. It’s simple enough to understand what is going on and even its themes are readily apparent yet you might still be left wondering what exactly filmmaker Edson Oda intends to convey in it. The problem is that the premise is so strange, so deliberately abstracted from everyday reality that it overshadows the relatively straightforward theme of appreciating life in all of its myriad aspects. In the end, I appreciate that such a film could be funded and made at all but even as a science-fiction fan I find it difficult to muster much enthusiasm for it.

I think this is the first film I’ve watched that is entirely in the Welsh language and of course being one in the horror genre, it mines related folk tales and superstitions for good effect. Unfortunately that is pretty all that this film has going for it as it is otherwise a fairly straightforward and standard horror setup. Some of the gory imagery may be alright but it’s too restricted in its scope and probably isn’t worth your time.

Taiwan has, I believe, a cinematic heritage of films about juvenile delinquency and A Sun can be regarded as a continuation of that tradition. It is epic in length as it tracks its young delinquent’s imprisonment, rehabilitation and reintegration into society while the dynamics of his family are also upended. While the film has its moments, especially while playing around with absurdist jokes, I believe its light-and-dark motif to be too facile and the structure and theme too traditionally Asian to be very interesting.

Courtroom dramas don’t seem to be very popular these days and it’s difficult to think of many modern films which portray lawyers in a positive light. This isn’t quite a courtroom drama but it is about a lawyer doing heroic work so it comes close enough in my book. It’s a biography of Kenneth Feinberg who was in charge of the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund and so had to balance competing interests to decide how much compensation each victim of the attacks should receive. In terms of artistic merit, this isn’t that good a film but it does its job well enough and I really like the idea of having art shine more light on the lesser known bits and pieces that make civilization work

I have almost no interest in any of the Disney animated films these days as my watch list is too crammed to bother with work that might only be marginally interesting. This one made the cut largely because it’s set in Colombia and features heavy use of Spanish, plus its songs were written by Lin-Manuel Miranda. I’d say it counts as a great success as pure spectacle and I do like how Disney seems to be moving towards stories where the conflict is purely internal such that there are no external enemies to defeat. The songs are great too though I can detect they are trying hard to rekindle the magic of Frozen. The plot is rather thin though and it relies on the song and dance sequences to distract audiences from that fact.