This technology-focused variation on the heist genre isn’t the most well reviewed film so it’s not one for the ages. Nevertheless it is something of a cult classic featuring a stellar cast and a reasonably plausible take on security penetration. Despite the serious stakes involved and plenty of outright murder, the film mostly has a light tone and indeed the cast and crew, including director Phil Alden Robinson, seemed to have had a lot of fun making it. That kind of carries over and makes this a highly entertaining caper.

Here is another documentary about the Taiwanese filmmaking scene with the focus this time being on cinematographer Mark Lee Ping-bing. Cinematographers are of course never as well known as directors but this is the person who shot among other works In the Mood for Love with Wong War Kai, The Sun Also Rises with Jiang Wen and many of Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s best known works, which makes him a rather big deal. Unfortunately this is only a passable documentary as it is light on technical detail and a little too intent on showcasing Lee’s relationship with his mother.

Here is another film that is based on a real event: the excavation of what is now known as the Sutton Hoo site in England, one of the most famous and important archaeological sites in the country. It’s a somewhat light film and relies on what is most likely a fictional romantic subplot to give it more of an emotional punch. Still the cinematography is gorgeous and I really love the very idea of a film that is about real archaeology instead of the comic book adventure version that we see most of the time. Solid performances all around and I still can’t get around how different Carey Mulligan looks in this compared to Promising Young Woman.

One of my favorite sources of interesting films to watch these days are recommendations by the economist Scott Sumner on his blog and here is one of his picks. It’s a little hard to see the point of this at first as it’s about a guy who just commits murders seemingly at random. But immediately one suspects that this is based on a real event, so haphazard and pointless are his crimes, and this is indeed the case. Sumner even comments that these look like real murders and not movie ones. By the end, I’m convinced that this is an underappreciated masterpiece and one of the darkest films about Japanese society I have ever seen.

Here is another screwball comedy from the classic Hollywood era starring two of the biggest stars of the era, William Powell and Carole Lombard. The director here, Gregory La Cava, isn’t as well known but he did lead a career as a pre-Disney animator before he started making films, and that might explain the rather creative animated opening title card used in this film. This is only one of the many comedies of this era but I think it is an exceptionally good one, well suited to distract audiences from the then still ongoing Great Depression.

I had no great hopes for this but it did get decent reviews and it is the first Disney animated feature to be inspired by Southeast Asian culture so it seems almost obligatory to watch it. Unfortunately it pretty much falls in line with my expectations: it’s technologically impressive and the art design is fantastic. But it is an American film through and through with only a very superficial veneer of Southeast Asian aesthetics pasted on. In being very much a kids’ only show of little interest to adults, it also feels like it’s Disney and not Pixar, which is kind of interesting given their ownership structure.

Since I’ve developed an appreciation for the films of Michelangelo Antonioni, it makes sense to want to see more of his acclaimed films. Red Desert is the director’s first color film and I think even that fact holds significance in the film itself. Unfortunately I found it difficult to parse the director’s intended meaning here beyond a general indictment of industrialization and a nascent environmentalist message. Such a reading feels a little facile to me however and indeed the director himself insists that is not the whole story. Certainly this isn’t going to be one of my favorites.