This is the first time I’ve watched a film written and directed by Jesse Eisenberg and he even stars here as one of two cousins on a trip to Poland. It’s effectively travelogue which is always nice to watch as you feel like you’re part of the group tour with them, seeing what they see. More importantly, it’s a deep dive into the relationship between the two. It’s quietly understated, restrained in its ambitions and painfully authentic, all excellent reasons for me to love it.
Amidst all the much more well-known animated shows, this one seems to have fallen under the radar and ultimately failed. I was drawn to it both by its sci-fi setting of survivors trapped on an alien planet and its art design. Its visuals are reminiscent of Western graphic novels and indeed the immediate inspiration is the work of French artist Jean Giraud. I’m always keen on animated speculative fiction shows that are made for adults and this certainly counts. Unfortunately this is a show about vibes, not cerebral ideas, and once it became obvious that it has no interest in offering grounded explanations for anything, my opinion of it dropped by a few notches.
I’m continuing my deep dive into great science-fiction books that I missed out on back in the day so here’s one that was first published in 1993. It’s another book that is difficult to read because it’s full of slang words whose meaning you’re expected to infer from the context, there are no chapter breaks and it freely segues between the perspectives of different characters. Working one’s way through it is well worth your while however as it is simultaneously a very science-fiction novel, being a very detailed account of ordinary life on the surface of the Moon and a very mainstream one as it is an old-fashioned coming-of-age story.
Continuing the string of films that show the darker side of Japan, especially under US occupation, here’s one by ShÅhei Imamura. The title sounds ridiculous but makes complete sense given the context and even earns its comedic tone. At its heart is a rather old-fashioned love story between a girl and a bad boy but the incisive message about cultural imperialism elevates it above the usual fare. It’s rather cleverer and more multifaceted than it initially appears even if the moralizing is a tad obvious.
I consider the Knives Out series to be the best detective films currently being made so I’m always down for more of them. This one is especially delightful for me as it pits the atheistic and rational Benoit Blanc against the mystery of religion. It does take a while to get going as a dead body doesn’t even show up until maybe an hour in. I think it falls short of the cleverness of the first film in how the murder was carried out but the motivations of the characters, the religious theme and how it ties in with current events all make up for it.
As I noted earlier, Alex Garland’s work gives me mixed feelings yet here I am back again watching his latest. He does share directorial credit here with Ray Mendoza who helped advise Garland in the making of Civil War and more importantly was a participant in the real-life battle that this film is based on. The result is a stunningly authentic recreation of the incident and probably the single best portrayal of what modern urban warfare is like on film. True, it has no wider ambitions and says nothing about why the US is even in Iraq, but it doesn’t need to as what it does is perfectly fine and even much needed. The question is, why didn’t Garland aspire to this level of realism in his earlier film?
I like to try weird and novel games. Sometimes this is rewarded when I come across unexpected gems. Often this is not. Kenshi is a game that unfortunately falls into the latter category for me. Yet if I’d encountered it at a much earlier age, I can see myself falling in love with it. The game is advertised as a kind of RPG in which you can do almost anything and that’s largely true. But it’s also rather ugly, has a terrible interface, and is fully of janky, inconsistent mechanics. You can get all kinds of amazing stories going with your characters, but you’d also have to put up with a lot of grinding and boring moments in which nothing happens and I’m just too old for that now.
