This is the follow-up to the surprisingly good Chinese animated film Nezha and part of what they are calling the Fengshen Cinematic Universe. In truth, it doesn’t look like there is much connection between the two films save that they are set in a sort of mythological version of China. If anything this one is even more fantastic and, yes, it is just as good. The art looks amazing and more importantly has a single consistent style and there’s certainly no begrudging the soaring ambition of its story.
It’s safe to say that everyone has heard of Anton Chekhov if only because of his famous dictum of creative writing using a gun as an example. But I don’t believe that I have actually read or watched any of his work. So it’s neat to watch this adaptation by essentially the same core team who made My Dinner with Andre. As usual, this is a talk fest that threatens to be deadly boring at first but it is very engaging once you know all the characters.
This has a slick, instantly memorable title that brings to mind perhaps a light, romantic comedy but I would never in a million years be able to guess the context in which the phrase is actually used. It is in fact a serious film about pregnancy and abortion and is shot from such a studiously objective point of view that it sometimes feels like a documentary. Nevertheless it makes for a powerful statement about the needless pain to which America subjects its young women in deliberately making it difficult for them to get an abortion when they want to.
Cabaret is another famous musical with particularly iconic imagery featuring Liz Minnelli sitting behind a chair. However unlike other musicals, you never hear its songs being played outside of the show itself. Watching this, I understand why. The songs themselves are nothing special but combined with the visuals and dance choreography, each has a unique effect. Similarly, the film affects a tawdry, tasteless look but actually harbors surprising emotional depth and insight.
This is Akira Kurosawa’s second last film and generally the last few films he made were not very well received. This one is conventional in terms of story and style but was nevertheless criticized at the time for serving an anti-American agenda, something which Kurosawa has never been known to do. Personally I thought this might have been a little too heavy-handed in its messaging but it’s far better than I expected and does exactly Kurosawa set out to do: restore the power of the atomic bombings to shock and terrify modern audiences.
This purely black and white film is an amazing exercise in photography and with only two actors, Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson, it’s a tour-de-force of acting as well. It was made by the same director, Robert Eggers, who made The Witch. Unfortunately this is one of those films that is so jam-packed with hallucinations, insanity and symbolic references that one never knows how much of what we see is real or whether that even matters, and I tend not to like this kind of film as much.
Given that these historical epics seem to do well at the South Korean box office, it’s no wonder that they keep making them. This one is about the invasion of the Goguryeo kingdom by the Tang Dynasty in the 7th century and is rather cool if you like siege battles as the whole thing is one long extended siege. It goes too far in hyping up the exploits of the heroic commander Yang Manchun but does boast rather decent action movies and more interestingly, doesn’t go overboard on the nationalism.
