We liked Asura so much we decided to give this earlier series that Hirokazu Kore-eda also made for Netflix a shot and its focus on food would only be a plus for my wife. However it becomes evident quickly that this is not at all in Kore-eda’s usual style. Instead it’s a sweetly wholesome story without an ounce of darkness in it and barely any conflict at all. I suspected that this was adapted from a manga and indeed it was so. It’s prettily made and serves as a neat pocket tour of the customs surrounding the geisha of Kyoto but it’s too superficial to engage with seriously.
Jia Zhangke’s work hasn’t felt relevant for some time and a new film that recycles footage from his previous work seems even more dubious. This is something Jia can accomplish only because his wife Zhao Tao appears in all of his films so he can edit the old footage into a new story. Yet it surprisingly does work. I don’t care at all for the main story about the couple, but what entranced me is that it’s really also the story of the vast changes China has gone through over the past two decades or so. Returning to the city of Datong in Shanxi province which is Jia’s own hometown in the final sequence is a more powerful statement than what happens to the characters.
As many have observed, it is immediately obvious that this film was inspired by the work of Terence Malick. The quiet, still shots, the way it highlights the majesty of the nature, even its understated story about the life of an ordinary man are all reminiscent of the grandmaster. That’s admirable and this is fine work. Even so, it never manages to reach the sublime heights that Malick achieved at his best. The dialogue is flat at times and the third-person narration does too much work instead of trusting in the power of images alone to convey what is needed. This appears to only be director Clint Bentley’s second feature film so he’s someone worth watching out for.
Everyone has been hyping this one up so much since its release and this once it’s absolutely justified. Not only is it far and away the best action movie of the year, it crosses genres and is as much a musical as a horror film. It looks and sounds fantastic, fearlessly imaginative while being grounded in the Jim Crow-era South and is perfectly paced. There’s actually not that much action, but when it arrives, it’s explosive and definitive. It’s what a blockbuster Hollywood movie should be and I only regret not catching it in the cinemas earlier.
Shih-Ching Tsou is a long-time collaborator of Sean Baker and now she finally gets her own feature film, one that is set in Taiwan. Shot on an iPhone and featuring highly saturated colors, it’s stylistically similar to Baker’s work and is about the lives of a downtrodden family in Taipei. It’s fascinating to watch a Taiwanese framed in a more American style and it’s cathartic to watch the family crash headlong against traditional Chinese mores. But on the whole it’s a fairly conventional film that doesn’t break any new ground.
Agnès Varda’s work never stops astounding me and this very early and deceptively simple film is a case in point. It’s shot in cheerily bright colors, reminiscent of the work of her husband Jacques Demy, and presents a postcard perfect picture of a blissfully married life. What’s brilliant about this is that Varda plays it so straight that you could plausibly take it at face value and never see anything wrong in it at all. But it would be uncharacteristic of her make something like that so seen from a different perspective, we can only conclude that it is a horror film.
Frankenstein was apparently Guillermo del Toro’s dream project for years and the filmmaker has certainly earned enough credit to be worth paying attention to no matter what he wants to make. I actually have read the book this time but accept that adaptations have their own take on the source material. In this instance, del Toro has chosen to cast the monster purely as the wronged party which seems a little obvious. He does know exactly where he wants to go with this version of Frankenstein but I was disappointed by the lazy path he took to get there. The result is underwhelming and even a bit boring.
