The Russian people have suffered more than most under the Second World War and this is well represented on film. The Cranes are Flying is one of the earliest and most well known such efforts. Unfortunately while there is a lot of emotive power in the simplicity of this drama, it is a very traditional and old-fashioned film and as such feels to me more like a sort of prototype in what it is trying to achieve that has since been superseded by other films. It’s also a little too obviously nationalistic propaganda for my tastes.
The personal story of Britney Spears as a musician and a celebrity isn’t that interesting to me but this film’s focus is on the media’s reaction to Spears than the person herself. It won critical acclaim and no wonder, it is one of the rare activist documentaries to actually succeed in its objective. Shortly after it was released, a judge ordered an end to her father’s involvement in her conservatorship and it certainly seems that this film had a part to play in that decision, so that’s quite amazing.
This is a French thriller which was commercially very successful and won its share of critical acclaim as well. It felt very much like an American thriller to me, and no wonder, for it was adapted from an American novel of the same title, with the story transposed to France. While there’s some novelty in seeing a French film in this style and some excitement when the main character is on the run from the police, I did not much care for the film by its end. It’s just too overwritten with too many characters and the protagonist has so little agency that he’s seems more like an observer than a participant.
Everyone knows about My Fair Lady but before that was this much earlier adaptation of George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion and the dramatist himself supervised this production and wrote the screenplay. Though it has been outshone by the musical now, this film was very successful in its day. Without the music, this is less fun but I feel that it does make the drama of the situation feel more serious and highlights the inherent unfairness of how much the way one speaks can alter a person’s fate.
Being the debut of its director Bao Tran and starring Asian leads, I thought this was another of the recent spate of films exploring Asian-American identities. It turns that this isn’t really the case as it’s a straight up martial arts film. The plot is simple and the ending feels abbreviated but it does make for an effective story and they do actually have real martial arts choreography. That makes this film a real pleasure to watch and something the director has good reason to be proud of.
This is a yakuza film by a director who is new to us, Masahiro Shinoda though he is known as being as assistant to such famous directors as Yasujirō Ozu. This one is considered a Japanese New Wave film and as such while one can follow the plot readily enough, it’s not so easy to discern what is the point it is driving towards. In the end I think it’s about self-destructive people who to go to extremes in search of a thrill to make themselves feel alive. It’s okay I suppose but not something I am particularly excited about.
Netflix released an updated American series of this name earlier this year but the reviews for it seemed mixed. So I thought it might be more interesting to go back to this original series made for Swedish TV and directed by Ingmar Bergman. Watching this is quite a draining experience as it feels more like a documentary than a television drama and it is so dense and intense, forswearing any kind of light distraction or entertainment to lighten the mood. It is an amazing showcase of writing and acting but I really would not care to go through this ordeal again.
