Here is another film by Yasujirō Ozu, though of course a much less well known one than Tokyo Story. I originally thought that this was part of the director’s so-called Noriko Trilogy but it turns out that this doesn’t count because although actress Setsuko Hara appears in it, her character here is named Akiko. It’s extra confusing how all the same cast members appear but playing different roles. The themes here are less sharply defined as well but it still makes for an excellent family drama.
Given the title and the poster, you might expect this to be another nature documentary. In fact this is more about the people who live in the Antarctic stations, particularly those who endure a full year there through the dark winter season, isolated from the rest of the world. Given that I’ve previously worked in remote locations as part of the logging industry, this had added resonance and I really enjoyed the details of what they daily routines looked liked.
I still consider The Tree of Life to be one of my favorite ever films but I haven’t anything Terrence Malick has made since then due to how awful the reviews are. This most recent one has been better received but still isn’t considered as good as his earlier work. Its subject is surely a worthy one, being one that fits well with Malick’s personal spirituality and it shows flashes of brilliance. But it also goes on for too long and feels too repetitive and you get the feeling that the people around him are just too reluctant to call out the grandmaster of cinema for merely passable work.
This was directed by Alan J. Pakula and is considered part of his so-called Paranoia trilogy, the other two being Klute and All the President’s Men, both of which we have already watched. Actually the seriousness of those two films tricked me into thinking that this was a serious political thriller as well. While it does start off being very grounded in reality, it soon veers off into the fantastic and is basically an indulgence of all of the most pernicious conspiracy theories of the time.
This dates from several years ago and is a story that at the time made news headlines around the world about a man who managed to write a book while being paralyzed and able to communicate with the outside world only by blinking one eye. Though obviously romanticized to some extent, it is indeed an excellent film that shows how a person may still have a rich and active mind while the body is paralyzed and succeeds in being emotionally resonant while avoiding trite sentimentality.
This animated series would mark the first Star Trek television show that we’ve watched since Deep Space Nine as I have chosen to skip all of the intervening ones due to their reputation for not being very good. I probably will get around to watching Picard at some point however. I wanted to watch this as I liked the idea of a lighter-hearted Star Trek show and I loved its premise of featuring characters lower down the totem pole. In the event, it doesn’t exactly succeed at being a show about non-command officers as the stories have them taking on major roles anyway and it does get off to a rocky start, but it does find its footing towards the end.
Elizabeth Moss once again impresses in an independent film that even if it isn’t quite great, is at least highly interesting. Shirley Jackson is of course a real American novelist and while the characters and circumstances of this film are based on her life, I don’t believe that this is intended to be a biography and should be thought of as fictional. Instead this is as much about a young couple who have come with Shirley and her husband as Shirley herself and, in line with the other works that Moss has recently appeared in, is about the woman’s place in a man’s world.
