I loved First Man when I watched it in the cinema a couple of years ago but do I really need to watch a documentary of the same events? It turned out that yes, even though it covers much of the same ground, the excellent editing here and the use of previously unseen archival footage makes this well worth watching for space fans and adds much of value even to those who are already familiar with the moon landing.

This is described as being a documentary out of Macedonia and it is certainly the first Macedonian film we’ve ever watched. However despite the cinéma vérité shooting method, it’s barely possible to believe that this is a documentary as it has characters, a plot and even a proper dramatic arc. Reading up on it, it seems that the filmmakers insist that it’s a documentary as the original intention was to make a film about the region but when they met Hatidže Muratova they realized that her personal story was too good not to tell.

I’m pretty sure I added this film to my ever growing list due to its specific notability as a war film. Its director Cy Endfield doesn’t seem to have made anything else of comparable stature and while the promotional materials for it now prominently feature Michael Caine this was actually his first major role and he only plays a supporting character here. Yet it is a fantastic war film and easily one of best I’ve ever seen about a single battle, while managing the almost miraculous feat of not being too racist.

This marks the third and last installment of Hou Hsiao-hsien’s coming-of-age trilogy. It’s interesting to note that each of the three films is about a main male character who is growing up, with the age increasing in each successive film though they are all different characters. Here the protagonist is a young man who must leave his home to make his own way in the world. Naturally this is also the age when he must deal with girl problems.

There is a kind of chilling resonance watching this amidst the coranavirus lockdown as the opening scene features someone in full hazmat protective gear and a doomsday sayer ranting on a soapbox. Still that’s not what this film is about though its message about gentrification and isolation amidst a rapidly changing city does have some thematic commonalities with our current crisis.