This was a frustrating film for me: a German science-fiction romantic film by a director, Maria Schrader, who I feel has no background and no interest in science-fiction. One problem is that the premise has been explored before, such as the Black Mirror episode Be Right Back for example. This might be fine as there is always more to add to the subject but this film demonstrates no awareness of previously existing interpretations and has zero interest in exploring the physical practicalities of such an android and the implications of the technology beyond the socio-cultural sphere. The film is excellent in other respects and even has a worthy argument to advance but it’s just terrible at being science-fiction.

After loving Local Hero so much, adding this equally highly regarded earlier film by director Bill Forsyth to my watch list was a must. This is a really low budget production, so cheaply made that the actors apparently just wore their own clothes. Yet this back to basics production values actually heighten its sense of authenticity and provinciality. I can’t say that I always get the film’s sense of humor but I really loved its charm and especially appreciated how it treats the subject of teenage infatuation and horniness with kindness and sweetness.

Independent filmmakers come up with great horror concepts and this one mines the stuff of nightmares for its material. The director Anthony Scott Burns and the cast aren’t complete unknowns but they’re all new enough that most people probably haven’t seen anything they have been it. This film is imperfect in that it offers no satisfactory explanation to the strange phenomena that happens in it, yet as my wife notes that may be a deliberate decision to heighten its scariness and this is indeed one horror film that is undoubtedly scary.

Here’s another shot at a film by Claire Denis even though we keep not quite being able to get what critics love so much about her work. This one is a very subtle film, perhaps too subtle as it seems almost bereft of any plot, but after getting to know its characters, it comes closest to a film by this director that I actually like. It also presents a view of the Parisian suburbs that is almost completely inhabited by people of color. That isn’t directly relevant to the themes or the characters but it still is a rather startling portrayal of France.

Nicholas Cage does so much awful work these days that it was quite a surprise last year to see this low budget, independent film shoot to the top of critics’ charts. After learning about its premise, I was disinclined to like this, worried that it would be mostly about watching one or more animals suffer. As it turned out, this film isn’t really about the pig at all and is a lot more like John Wick than I ever imagined, albeit in a radically different direction. It sure is an interesting and creatively impressive film but it has as little to do with real cooking and food as John Wick has with real combat.

Due to how much I loved The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, I am certainly going to watch more of the work of its two directors Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, who as a duo call themselves the Archers. This is again a film that is really about Britishness itself, being inspired by Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, but set during the Second World War. As Chaucer’s collection of stories is about a group of pilgrims travelling to Canterbury, so too is this film about a group of people who befriend each other on the road and find themselves going to Canterbury as well. In this way, it captures a little of what the pilgrimage experience might have been like for those in the Middle Ages and shows off the city and its surroundings to wonderful effect.

As I write this, director Jafar Panahi has once again been imprisoned. His sad fate contrasts sharply with the tone of this, one of his better known films that is about the oppression of women in Iran but is lighthearted and patriotic. This is about how the country stops women from attending football matches but this doesn’t deter a determined group of female fans. It was apparently filmed in a stadium during an actual qualifying match which gives this an electrifying atmosphere and incredible sense of authenticity. It’s fiction of course because no way would real soldiers and police officers be as empathetic and as easily bullied as the ones shown here as the director’s own fate demonstrates. But it sure does make for a fun movie.