Since Tsui Hark’s The Blade was interesting in many ways I thought I’d give more recent film a shot. This was reasonably well received in Asia and boasts of a star-studded cast. Unfortunately this is terrible film in all respects and it is difficult to find even a single saving grace in it. The plot is comprehensible enough even if there are inexplicable jumps here and there but it is just dumb and none of the performers in it acquit themselves well. Everyone involved should be ashamed of themselves, Tsui himself most of all.

This is Peter Jackson’s documentary about the experience of British soldiers during the First World War. While it features both archival footage and voice recordings of veterans, it is the voices that dominate this film, so much so that the images largely fade into the background. Used as we are to war films, there is little that is new to be learned here but hearing the first-hand testimony of the survivors of the war recount their experiences still makes this an affecting film.

Here is another Howard Hawks film starring Cary Grant and while you might expect this to be another romance in some exotic locale, it’s also actually a very serious film about what is now called the Golden Age of aviation. Hawks wrote this story himself after being impressed by some pilots that he has met in Mexico and so this film is set in some generic South American country. I’m not sure that the film is entirely realistic in portraying flying as being so dangerous but it certainly is full of tension and some of the flying shots are simply amazing given the technological limitations of the time.

Since I’ve been talking about minimalism in films recently, the works of director Hong Sang-soo so I haven’t previously described them as such. This one is even more minimalist with four characters and pretty much nothing in the way of background extras. This one embodies some of the director’s favorite themes about patterns and events recurring with small changes and the performances are strong as always. But the scenario here is so forced and simplistic that it borders on the farcical and so empty of establishing details that it’s not believable at all. I would consider this a weak film even if it does have artistic aspirations.

It blew me away how someone born and raised in China could make so American a film as The Rider and of course as everyone now knows that Chloé Zhao repeated the feat with this even more highly acclaimed title. I didn’t like this one as much as first as the camera seems to keep the main character at a distance much of the time and it sometimes seemed to be more about the lifestyle of the nomads in general than any one person in particular. But it does eventually settle on a common thread shared by all these different people and though there may be some debate about how valid this interpretation of their choices may be, it does arrive at a very emotionally affecting ending.

This is an Argentine film that is apparently very well known but I haven’t heard of it before I read it being talked about by Tyler Cowen in the context of films that best represent the country. At first I was skeptical as it seemed like a slick movie about conmen which could have taken place anywhere. I eventually realized that it is meant to represent the entirety of Argentine society from the elites at the top to the street-level hustlers who are the main characters here and that is why it is a such brilliant film.

This is another low budget, minimalist film, an adaptation of a Russian novella transposed onto 19th-century England. With its lack of a musical score and limited set pieces, it feels very much like a play and it makes for an engrossing character study of its villainous protagonist. This isn’t one my of favorites however as the character’s internal thoughts are deliberately kept as a mystery to the audience and it doesn’t really have much of a theme that personally resonates beyond the horror of her crimes.