Like everyone else, we like to relax with some films that are pure fluff once in a while. For me however, I find that I’m unable to enjoy most action films apart from the superhero genre. It’s just really difficult to suspend disbelief for them and to take them seriously. Horror films still work on me though, which is why I pay attention to interesting new releases for that genre though it’s true that I probably like them a lot more than my wife does.
Strangers on a Train may not be one of Alfred Hitchcock’s best known films but it still appears to be quite highly regarded. I got it from Broken Forum when they were talking about some of the more unusual premises for a murder. It doesn’t star anyone particularly famous but it does star Hitchcock’s own daughter Pat Hitchcock.
This pick was made fill out my wife’s regular quota of animated films. The title in Italian translates as The Art of Happiness. Not coincidentally this is also the title of the popular book co-authored by the current Dalai Lama. That’s a pretty good hint that Buddhism figures rather heavily in the themes of this compact film.
This marks the last of the recommendations that I asked for on South American films from Broken Forum. I can’t say that I’ve liked everything on the list I was given but they sure have been interesting and many I would never have watched on my own. This particular film is a great example of this and it’s by a director whose work we’ve seen before, Argentinean Eliseo Subiela who also made Man Facing Southeast.
This is one that I picked up not too long after its release. It’s a small indie title that in my opinion is best described as Dungeoneer done right. The dealer lays out encounter cards that form a dungeon of sorts. You move between them, triggering bits of story or combat as stated. Rewards include better equipment, food, gold, blessings and permanent health increases and so forth. There’s only one hero so there’s no party system here and there’s no choice of classes either. Your character is basically a melee-based barbarian and you can’t even choose what he looks like, let alone the hero’s gender.
So I’m going to be a total fanboy here and admit that I’ve been looking forward to this one. I wasn’t much of a fan of the storyline in the comics but the idea of hero vs hero battles in cinematic form really appealed and Marvel’s marketing push for Civil War has been superb. It helped that this was directed by the Russo brothers again as I consider Winter Soldier to be one of the best of the MCU films made so far.
Ex Machina was probably the most interesting science-fiction film of 2015. It even won the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects, not bad in a year in which it had to contend with Mad Max: Fury Road and Star Wars: The Force Awakens. It was even the debut feature of its director Alex Garland and stars Oscar Isaac, who as I’ve said before, seems to be in everything these days.