I don’t remember how this one got put on my “to watch” list. Probably a combination of seeing the trailer in the cinema and wanting to watching something a bit different from the usual fare. Romantic films very rarely make it onto the annual “best of” lists and for all of its quirks and faults, this one definitely does count as a romantic film.
Poetry is the first film I’ve watched by director Lee Chang-dong, upon the recommendation of my cinephile friend. Apparently his work is acclaimed both domestically and internationally, so much so that he served as South Korea’s Minister of Culture and Tourism from 2003 to 2004.
American Hustle is not a film that is meant to be taken seriously. If you couldn’t tell that from Christian Bale’s over-elaborate comb-over or Amy Adams’ deliberately horrible British accent, it must be obvious by the time Michael Peña quips, “Abscam? Arab scam? That’s racist.” Then when an uncredited cameo by a famous actor hamming it up in the kind of mobster role he is most recognizable for, you realize the film-makers are just having fun with you.
Like most gamers, I have always been fascinated by the Second World War, by far the largest armed conflict in human history. Unfortunately my education on the subject was somewhat scattershot, consisting of random readings here and there and lately enlivened by Wikipedia articles and, most of all, time spent on Paradox’s Hearts of Iron game. So when I heard about this series on Broken Forum and learned that it is one of the most highly acclaimed documentaries ever made, I suggested to my wife that we watch it.
When I first read the second book of the Martian Trilogy, I was immediately struck by the epic sense of history it embodies. Set fifty years after the end of the first novel, it shows how the real Martians are the children of the settlers who have never known Earth. Standing over two meters tall, they move with a grace that those born on Earth can never achieve. Moreover, their profound disinterest of all things Terran and unselfconscious Martianness marked the passing of an era.
Here is yet another entry that was explicitly selected to advance my still pathetic familiarity with the history of cinema. This film was originally made in 1963. The version we watched was digitized and restored in 2013, its 50th anniversary. This was necessary because the original version used vivid and supersaturated colours which were not able to survive for long as physical film stock.
It’s been a while since I last watched a Chinese language film, so this one got put on top of the usual list. Since I watch relatively few Chinese films, I’m not a good judge of them and in particular I’m not familiar with director Jia Zhangke’s body of work even though he appears to be highly regarded by international critics.