Magnus von Horn is an up-and-coming Swedish director who studied in Poland which explains why he has made a Polish film about the life of a social media influencer. This is of course a very hip subject and it might be easy to imagine what direction such a film might take. Yet this film continually surprised me with its choices. I’m not sure that it’s all good and plenty of the problems experienced by the protagonist are unrelated to her being an influencer. But it is well made and intriguing and that’s enough to win von Horn plenty of fans among the critics.

This is a strong Hong Kong film that was the directorial debut of Norris Wong who also wrote the story. The title refers to a particular neighborhood in Hong Kong and the setting is one specific shopping mall there that specializes in weddings. The director apparently grew up right opposite the mall and is so often the case for good films, this immediate, personal connection lends it a powerful sense of authenticity, all the so as the director is herself a woman and can relate to the main character.

Video game movies have a terrible track record but they do seem to be getting better. This one has as video gamey a theme as you can imagine and it’s a surprisingly fun and effective action movie. I credit this to Ryan Reynolds’ enthusiasm for the project as this fits perfectly with the comedic persona he has cultivated. Of course this isn’t to be considered a serious science-fiction film as there is no consistency at all to the rules of the world and video game development definitely does not work like that. But the world has been begging for a video game movie like this for ages and this does deliver.

My wife likes to be forewarned before watching any films that might be particularly dense or difficult to parse and a documentary about Chile’s political history seems to qualify. Yet the first one third of this hour and a half film seemingly has nothing at all to do with politics as it discusses the country’s love for astronomy and how the dryness of the Atacama Desert makes it one of the best places in the world to observe the stars. But the film does eventually swing around to the massacred victims of Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship and so we see filmmaker Patricio Guzmán genius in linking these seeming unrelated topics. To be fair this style of documentary is too light on the facts for my tastes as it aims instead to make an emotional impact but I must admit it is critically acclaimed for good reason.

Horror films that try to combine a science-fiction theme with mysticism usually fail but this is one of the better attempts at it that I’ve seen. It’s also the first film we’ve seen that was made during the covid-19 pandemic and is set during the pandemic itself. Apparently director Ben Wheatley had gotten bored while everything was shut down and made this in a mere 15 days. This is still a quick film made on a small budget and a tiny cast and there are limits to how much one can achieve in this way but this truly is a solid horror film.

Apichatpong Weerasethakul now seems intent on expanding his career outside of his native Thailand with his first foreign film, this one set in Colombia and uses a mixture of both Spanish and English. His film before this was so cryptic that it was hard to even tell what is going on. This new one may leave you questioning the intent behind his choices but the overall plot is actually rather straightforward to follow. Towards the end there is a twist totally unlike anything the director has done before which I’m not sure I like but all directors must innovate I suppose. But overall this is another masterful work that reaffirms the director as being among the best working today.

Just a couple of months after Made You Look, here is another documentary about the art world. As you can see for yourself it’s about the famous Salvator Mundi painting, supposedly a long lost work by the hand of Leonardo da Vinci himself. I’d already read about this in the news but the full story here has plenty of detail that I wasn’t previously familiar with which makes it immensely interesting to me. Moreover I am fascinated that filmmaker Andreas Koefoed was able to secure the cooperation of many of the parties involved, including the Swiss businessman Yves Bouvier who is rather shady individual to say the least. Beyond the fascinating story of the painting itself, this also shows how money and political power shape the art world.