This film by Ridley Scott features a triptych structure to tell its story from the perspectives of its three main characters. That instantly earns comparisons with Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon. Unfortunately this film is simply unworthy of the comparison as the treble format here is an unnecessary indulgence that detracts from the film instead of enriching it. The film is technically well made and the duel at its center is one of the most brutal and realistic ones I’ve ever seen. But it is confused about where its emotional and dramatic heart is and really only needs one point of view.
This is a meme game that was mostly popular on consoles and took a while to come to the PC. Even though it looks and sounds like a joke, it really is a game, with the gameplay being mostly puzzle solving with some light stealth elements. Finishing it takes only a few hours and the graphics are simple. But there’s so much charm and personality in it that I think it should win over just about anybody. As I understand it, this has been a real hit for children. Even if they’re too young to play it themselves, they seem delighted to watch their parents do so.
This film is mostly interesting as being of the very few comedies directed by Alfred Hitchcock. In keeping with the reputation and style of the legendary director, the plot still revolves entirely around what to do with a corpse. It’s amusing enough but it’s not laugh out loud funny and the plot is predictable once you understand what Hitchcock is going for. The colors of the fall foliage were so vivid I thought it must have been colorized after the fact but it seems that this was exactly the look Hitchcock wanted. As usual, the director’s execution is impeccable but this one is probably worth watching only for committed fans.
As many others have pointed, the past several years have been so tumultuous that we have mostly forgotten major events that happened only a short time before. Anyway there was a moment when the entire world was fully absorbed in the drama of the Tham Luang cave rescue in Thailand and this documentary tells the story from the perspective of the foreign cave diving experts who were essential to the rescue effort. It was made by Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin, the same team who made the immensely successful Free Solo, and it does a great job with the material. Note however that it omits the story from the perspective of the trapped children and their coach themselves because of complicated rights issues.
I’ve never watched a film by director Jiří Menzel before this but I understand that he and this film in particular is part of what is known as the Czechoslovak New Wave. I confess to having a hard time connecting to the film even if I mostly understood what was going on in the story. It was only by exerting myself to link its events to many possible themes that I realized what its trying to convey and really started to enjoy it. This actually isn’t a difficult film to grasp and it is very good. It’s just that I couldn’t intuitively understand it as Czechs and perhaps other Europeans would be able to.
The first novel by China Miéville that I read was Embassytown which I enjoyed but found that it wasn’t all that it was hyped up to be. I did love the book’s premise though and, if anything, that of this book is even more far out. The City and the City is first and foremost a police procedural but I’d say it counts as science-fiction as well as the entire book is really about its unique setting itself. In the end, I feel that Miéville still doesn’t fully justify how the city could possibly work as he describes it but damn if he hasn’t gone most of the way and thought up all kinds of possibilities that I’d never even imagined in fleshing out the physical reality of his city.
This film takes a while to get going and even then might mislead you into believing that it’s a historical account of the persecution of Catholics in Joseon-era Korea. It’s much more than that, amounting to essentially championing Western enlightenment values. At the same time it is respectful towards the teachings of Confucianism even if it is skeptical that Confucian values are really being practiced. I’m was shocked that it’s at least partially based on a true story as the historical Jeong Yak-jeon did indeed get exiled and spent that time writing Korea’s first treatise on marine life. This feels like yet another film that was perfectly tuned to accord with my own values, so yes, I loved it and I’m amazed that it even exists.
