This is the second film we watched by the Danish director Carl Theodor Dreyer and it is once again a masterpiece even as it extols a cause I dislike. It is tempting at first to view the subject of faith in this film with some ambiguity as even the characters who profess the strongest faith are mired in pointless bickering. But as the film builds in intensity, it leaves you in doubt whatsoever where it stands and overwhelms you with the sheer force of its message.

I suppose reinventing old fairy tales is all the rage these works and returning them to their horror roots seems like an obvious choice. Unfortunately this one doesn’t quite work, being mostly focused on the superficial cues that evoke horror while not investing in worldbuilding at all and having a childishly straightforward plot. The result is a strange mishmash of Disney-level horror aesthetics with real murders and gore.

This is only the second Charlie Chaplin film I’ve covered here but this was considered his first talking film. Here Chaplin plays dual roles both as an ordinary Jewish barber and a dictator of a fictional country who is of course a parody of Adolph Hitler. While Chaplin’s audacity to make this, at a time when the US was still at peace with Nazi Germany, is commendable, I don’t find this to be a very effective comedy and I prefer him in his silent roles. Furthermore as satisfying as it is to imagine this driving Hitler into paroxysms of rage as doubt Chaplin intended, no amount of mockery of evils such as his can replace actual armed resistance and the true horrors of his regime simply renders any attempts at humor feel simply inadequate.

We’ve watched a fair few Iranian films so far and all of them are essentially arthouse drama films. This one by a heretofore relatively unknown director Saeed Roustayi about the police chasing after a drug dealer seems at first to be a more commercial movie. But it turns out that the Iranians treat even a crime thriller more seriously than most and takes care to present events from the perspective of the drug dealer. I think that in end, it still toes the Iranian government’s line on drugs but it’s tone and the turns it takes makes it feel different in some surprising ways.

It’s a little difficult to tell if this is a Hong Kong film or a China one, but perhaps the point is that these days there is no real difference. It is the debut feature of its director Xiao Bai who is a mainlander but this film is shockingly good at capturing life in Hong Kong. Unfortunately the way it rushes towards an ending that feels at odds with the rest of the film has all of the signs of government interference and suggests that this isn’t the kind of ending the director would have chosen if left to her own devices.