This subtly understated film is the directorial debut of Charlotte Wells and is so good that it instantly marks her as someone to take note of. The premise of a father and daughter visiting Turkey sounded great to me but I became less enthused as it became clear that they mostly just spend their time inside the resort. Yet we watch them engaging in a variety of mundane holiday activities, the full depth of the film emerges only slowly as the most important moments are actually the ones that are implied but never directly shown.
As I’ve always said, short stories are where the newest science-fiction ideas first appear and it’s been too long since I last read a decent collection of them. qntm is the pen name of Sam Hughes who seems to be a self-published author and makes many of his stories free to read on his personal website. I haven’t read those stories before but I do know that he is a contributor to the SCP Foundation website and I have read many of the stories there. This is a very short book and the individual stories are not so much stories as scenarios. That’s fine by me as I’m here for the ideas, not the dramatic arcs.
Continuing with my exploration of the works of Studio Ghibli, here’s the more childish Kiki’s Delivery Service. In terms of production values, this is a far cruder film than Spirited Away. There’s so little detail in the trees and landscape that Kiki whizzes past. Thematically it’s also much simpler, about a girl finding her independence and nothing else. Yet it’s so sweet and so heartfelt that I think I like it more. Spirited Away is objectively the superior film but this one is truer to itself, knowing what it wants to do and sticking to just that. My one major complaint is that Hayao Miyazaki is so obvious here about how he has a fetish for flying and wants to showcase it everywhere. Come on, there’s such a thing as too much.
I put this onto my watchlist purely because of how much I liked Metropolitan. This is the final part of Whit Stillman’s loose trilogy, skipping over Barcelona because I thought this one sounded more interesting. Just from the self-important dialogue of its young characters, this is recognizably the same type of film. Unfortunately the magic of the first film just isn’t here and the lines just fall flat. There are parts of it that I don’t quite get, It seems earnest about disco culture for example which I don’t understand at all so there may be more of merit here than I could discern. But that doesn’t change the fact that this was a disappointment to me.
I own a copy of the Twilight Struggle boardgame and though it mostly sits unplayed, I’ve always admired how it portrays real world history in terms of game mechanics. I was naturally intrigued when GMT Games later published a game about the US War on Terror using some of the same mechanics. This was long after I’ve stopped playing boardgames so I had to wait until this digital version to check it out. I had no illusions about the digital version being actually enjoyable as I know this should really be played against real people. I only really wanted to learn and understand the mechanics and in that I was satisfied enough.
This was made by Park Chan-wook and stars Tang Wei so we were always going to watch it. As expected of this director, it’s a tough film to talk about without spoiling anything important. I suppose it’s harmless enough to mention its dual murder structure and both are meticulously plotted out. Its heart though is a kind of mutual obsession that could be interpreted as love. This isn’t as striking and interesting as the earlier films that established Park’s reputation but I’d judge it to be a solid film and a worthwhile watch all the same.
This film was notable enough to attract the attention of international critics and it seems that the directorial duo of Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo have established a reputation for themselves in the horror genre. That’s enough for me to give this a chance but I don’t think it was worth it. The plot hook of clueless youths breaking into a haunted house is standard and while there is some startling imagery and interesting backstory, it’s barely coherent. Worst of all, there doesn’t seem to be any larger theme and not much point to the film at all.
