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.

So it was inevitable that I would get around to watching this eventually even if it’s so much later than everyone else. I was amused that our cinephile hated this with uncommon intensity earlier this year. For my part, I love how it absolutely nails the Star Wars aesthetic, perhaps better than any of the new films, and it makes for a rather fun romp. However it is admittedly very shallow so it’s best to take this as light entertainment which is great as the episodes tend to be rather short.

This has been a year without summer blockbusters and I’ve read plenty of accounts from people online about how it feels so weird that there hasn’t been a Marvel or Star Wars tentpole film this year. Anyway this one is from last year and I heard good things about it plus we do like to watch the occasional action movie. I have not of course watched any of recent ones in the franchise and have totally lost count of what number they’re up to now. Turns out that this film ignores the existence of anything past Terminator 2 as well, which is fine by me.

The spoken dialogue in this film is almost entirely in English but that doesn’t change the fact that it is essentially a French film. The title refers to a remote village in Switzerland where most of the scenes were shot and which provides plenty of spectacular scenery to serve as a backdrop. But however beautiful the cinematography is, the real draw remains the scintillating character analysis that is the heart of this film, written and directed by Olivier Assayas.

This seems to be a fairly notable film and was commercially successful at the time of its release. I don’t think it is all that good of a film and that’s because of the numerous compromises that it has to make in order to be allowed to exist at all. It’s fascinating in how it has to twist and moderate its narrative to navigate the sensibilities of the US military and probably the general public and would have been a far better film if it had not been required to hold back so much and take matters more seriously.

I’ve had in my list for a while now but the huge explosion that took place in Lebanon earlier this year sure added extra impetus to get around to watching it. This is a harrowing film, about a child who is forced to fend for himself on the streets of Beirut, was made by Nadine Labaki, a Lebanese director. That kind of matters because no foreigner could make a film like this with such moral authority. Also, this film was apparently a huge hit in China, of all places.