I’ve skipped over so many of the Predator and Alien films that I have no idea what’s going on in that cinematic universe any longer. I opted to watch this one because it was directed by Dan Trachtenberg who made the excellent Prey. The twist here is that the protagonist is a Predator for the first time, teaming up with human-made synthetic to survive on an alien planet. It’s okay enough as an action movie but has too jokey a tone to carry any emotional weight and the predictable lesson of protecting each other belongs more in a Disney feature than a Predator movie.
After Jeanne Dielman unexpectedly topped a poll of the greatest films of all time in 2022, I’d bet I’m not the only person slowly working through the body of work of Chantal Akerman. This one is a very loose adaptation of a volume from Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time and knowing nothing of the novel itself, I am stunned by the intensity and alienness of the protagonist’s mindset. It actually made me want to read the book. I’m not certain that this is better than Jeanne Dielman but it is much less talked about and so I think severely underrated.
Being one of Ingmar Bergman’s early works, Summer with Monika is noticeably less refined and you won’t have any trouble understanding what it means. For that matter, it’s a familiar story that most will have seen many variations of already. Yet its rawness has its appeal and this can be considered a foundational film that inspired many others. I dislike its moralizing tone against so-called loose women as it seems unworthy of a director of Bergman’s stature so I would consider it a lesser work.
My wife and I are often leery of British comedies as we so often fail to get the humor but this is a sweet and relatively simple one. It seems this was originally a short film made by the two male leads Tim Key and Tom Basden. Now 18 years later, they’ve expanded it into a full feature film and it’s been a hit with the critics. The core idea of an aging musician performing for a single obsessive fan is just so cute. It’s very small in scale which I usually like but it’s not that deep either, so I’d call it a very pleasing distraction.
Again venturing a little outside our usual TV fare, this is a Taiwanese series based on the scam centres of Cambodia with a supernatural twist. I wasn’t expecting too much but it starts out strong with the titular resurrection happening early and moves at a good pace. Unfortunately while it would have been perfectly satisfying to have it play out as a straightforward revenge story, the writers insist on sudden, dramatic twists, resulting in an awful mess of ambiguous character motivations. They even flub the finale by angling for a second season that will likely never happen. It’s good in parts but still not really worth watching.
I’d read the novel some years back after enjoying The Martian very much so I was always going to watch this film adaptation. Given the thickness of the book, I’m amazed they managed to fit it into a single film at all. It does speed through most of the scientific trials and skips many of more minor crises to focus on the relationship between Grace and Rocky. But it does cover all of the major story beats and is perfectly paced without any egregious errors. It is in fact one of the most faithful, straightforward adaptations I’ve seen and gets a solid thumbs-up from me.
Though made by a Spanish production company, this animated film is set in a pre-9/11 version of New York City and is based on an American graphic novel. Not that it matters as there isn’t a single line of dialogue in it. The story is instead conveyed through nonverbal sounds, body language and on rare occasions text. The themes of friendship and loneliness here are simple and the plot a little silly. Still, the emotions are intense and both the visuals and the music are appealing, so I’d consider this better than what the big American animation studios mostly produce.
