Since every one of Paul Thomas Anderson’s films is probably worth watching, I’m just filling in one of the blanks. Unfortunately in this case, I’m not quite sure what to make of this one. It’s basically something of a drug trip film which I tend to dislike and it has an overly complicated plot which makes things even worse. But from what I understand, it does seem to be rather faithful adaptation of the Thomas Pynchon novel it was based on and it does feature the director’s usual high standard of craftsmanship.

I haven’t been a big fan of director Lars von Trier, perhaps because I have yet to watch his earliest films that solidified his reputation. This one however I found absolutely mesmerizing and not just because it turns out to have a vaguely sci-fi theme. Of course that is not the point and the film has no pretensions about being scientifically accurate but it does make wonderful use of the imagery of stars and planets to illustrate its real object of exploration: individual reactions to the imminent end of the world.

Comedic farces are rarely considered great films and we watch few of them as they usually don’t stand up to the test of time. For that reason, we haven’t really watched much by director Mel Brooks as he is best known for this type of work. This particular film however reached my attention as it is considered one of the few film that make fun of the Western genre, directly aiming at the racism that lies just behind the white-oriented mythmaking of the American West.

This came out a little earlier than Marriage Story but we’ve only just now gotten around to watching it and having done so, it’s clearer than ever that Noah Baumbach is the modern Woody Allen. He’s in that sweet spot now where multiple big Hollywood stars are willing to sign up to act in small roles in a relatively low budget film just due to his growing reputation as a director of dialogue-heavy drama who gives interesting characters for actors to engage with. This film is a particularly good example with its multiple interwoven stories.

This Italian film by Alice Rohrwacher was good enough to be noted by critics and actually won the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival. However I felt that while it has some potential it is fundamentally ill conceived, torn between multiple themes and storylines that aren’t complementary. It compares particularly poorly with Honeyland in that both are about honey gatherers in the countryside. But the newer film has far better cinematography and a coherent vision, even if it may not be one I agree with.

I knew going in that this was a kind of musical, albeit a very long one at two hours forty minutes. What I did not expect was how insanely complex and ambitious it is with its large cast of characters and multiple interleaving storylines. As you might expect, there are many, many musical performances in here but all of it is original music with satirical lyrics and apparently much of it was written by the actors and actresses themselves. It’s a little overwhelming at first as you don’t quite get what it is trying to do but it can’t be denied that it makes for brilliant political commentary.

This post refers to a Japanese wuxia film released last year that was adapted from a manga and not the better known South Korean television series of the same name. I probably will watch that show sometime as I hear it’s good but I haven’t done so yet. Meanwhile its existence makes searching for information on this film difficult due to the shared single-word name and I suspect helped cause this to somewhat fly under the radar.