This is a nearly two and a half hour long documentary about a musical duo that I’ve never heard of and you probably haven’t either. But it was directed by Edgar Wright and it’s listed as one of the best films of last year so that’s enough to get me onboard. This duo consisting of two brothers have been around for a while and while they have a large cult following, they have never achieved success on a global scale. This supremely entertaining film strives to serve as a comprehensive record of their career and tries to show that they have had an outsized influence on other artistes that you will have heard about.

Films about the mental degradation that comes with age aren’t novel but this one does add something new: the subjective experience from inside the mind of the afflicted. Anthony Hopkins turns in what some have called the performance of a lifetime and given the kind of career he has had, that is saying something. This is a small scale film as befits an adaptation from a play with small sets and a small cast but it is exceptional at what it does with director Florian Zeller being himself the playwright of the original play.

This is one film that I did watch long ago but I barely have any memories of it. By now this is a cult classic but as is so often the case was a commercial failure on its release. It is best characterized as John Carpenter attempting to make a 1980s style wacky Hong Kong movie. My favorite part about it however is that it draws heavily on Chinese folklore but manages to more or less respect the source inspiration, casts a white man as the hero but doesn’t elevate him above his Chinese co-stars, making it a woke film that is far ahead of its time.

This Mexican film is dystopian enough to count as science-fiction and another indicator is how its characters are increasingly sidelined as they are overtaken by the plot. Walking into this blind, it is shocking to watch the comfortable lives of the moneyed elite being disrupted and then destroyed by an increasingly violent riot by the masses of the poor underclass. Yet instead of seriously engaging with the morality of both sides, the film pivots away to blame the military instead. This thoroughly ruins its credibility and with it any chance of treating it as a serious film.

This live action adaptation of the anime by the Wachowski brothers was very poorly received, which is why I never watched it. Since one of the brothers has been in the news again recently, some discussion went on to cover their previous work and I read that while this isn’t a good film, it may at least be a visually unique one. Having now watched it, I certainly agree that it has a bold artistic vision but that’s not enough to make this bloated and nonsensical monstrosity worth watching.

This was the last film made by Yasujirō Ozu as he died about a year after its release. All of the director’s usual themes are present but with an expanded cast of characters, the focus feels a little diffuse. I do like it a lot though as there are all of the little stories for the characters and it makes for a more comprehensive picture of Japanese social mores. Setsuko Hara doesn’t appear in this one so this is more strongly a film about Chishū Ryū’s character and his relationships.

This was a recommendation from our cinephile friend who probably likes dark movies a little more than is healthy. It does have a decently high Rotten Tomatoes rating and it starts with some promise as it seems to have been made with decent production values. But ultimately I did not like it at all, finding it a shallow film that is interested in little more than stringing together a succession of scary images and makes no effort whatsoever to impart any deeper context or meaning.