I like to think that at this point I’m pretty on top of who’s good in cinema but I still keep getting caught by surprise. This film by Mexican director Carlos Reygadas is so superlatively good that I am aghast I have never watched any of his films before this. At three hours in length, this is a daunting film to take on but watching it is such a powerful sensory experience that I can’t help but wonder what it would be to like to see in a cinema hall. I do suspect that if I had followed the director’s career before this I may be less impressed as this is apparently derivative in some ways of his earlier work. But being hit with a distilled superdose of essentially Reygadas’ favorite themes and settings for the first time has just blown me away.
All memories about this game are now forever tied up with the suicide of one of key creators Alec Holowka. I don’t really have anything to say about that but I do think that is very unfortunate as this game was a solid success and deserves to be remembered on its own merits. This still isn’t a game that I would have ordinarily bought for myself but I did remember the praise it received when it was offered for free on Epic and I wanted an easy game to decompress a little with after the intensity of Dirt Rally 2.
Most of the short, independent horror films we take a chance on turn out not so well but occasionally we do get something like this which makes it all worthwhile. This is the feature debut of its director Rose Glass and it works both as a horror film and as an aperçu into the mind of someone suffering from an all encompassing delusion. While there are plenty of seemingly supernatural phenomena, this film is unambiguous in showing that it is all in the mind of the main character but that actually adds to the horror.
This is a thriller that is highly regarded by some, but I really don’t know what to make of it. On the one hand, it’s such an 80s film, with its synth music, fashion styles, lazy tropes and all, that it’s hard to take seriously. Yet it takes such a cynical view of the police to the extent that I don’t think we’re supposed to be sympathetic to the main characters at all. Plus the plot takes some odd, unexpected tangents here and there. On balance I have to say that I was disappointed, as this was made by William Friedkin who established his reputation with The French Connection.
This is the first time we’ve watched a film by director Kaneto Shindo though if the quality of this one is any indication we should have done so much sooner. It seems that the director specifically wanted to make this as a film with no dialogue at all and indeed there isn’t any. The only spoken words in the film are songs and chants yet there is no difficulty in understanding this simple but emotionally resonant piece.
Ever since I made a more concerted effort to keep up with the winners of recent awards, I’d had mixed success. It’s probably because I prefer hard science-fiction above all and this preference doesn’t track very closely with the type of work that usually wins in awards ceremonies. This book won a lot of awards and was Ann Leckie’s debut novel to boot. It’s more space opera than science-fiction and I have some issues with how casually it treats the existence of AI. But it is a very strong novel that does make me want to read more about the universe it is set in.
There are an awful lot of documentaries about photographers but I believe that this one, even though it is supposedly about Pete Souza, really has Barack Obama and his presidency at its center. As Obama’s official White House photographer for both of his terms, Souza was basically present at every key moment. Yet after the end of Obama’s presidency, Souza was so angered by what he saw Trump doing that he used those photographs to essentially troll Trump and thereby became a celebrity in his own right. There are some bits about Souza himself in it but mainly this is about reminding everyone of the essential humanity and empathy that should be in the office of the US president but is wholly absent from Trump’s White House.
