I’m still going to the cinema probably less often than I should but I really wanted to give this film a boost if I could. The trailer for this immediately grabbed my attention when it first popped up and the excellent reviews only cemented the deal. While multiverse stories are kind of the in-thing in science-fiction films right now, I loved how this was simultaneously both a very big and a very small film. I’ve never watched anything by new directing duo Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, credited collectively as Daniels, before and they sure seem like a team to pay attention to.
I’ve featured a few films by John Huston here already and likely there will be more down the line. This one though was his very last film. It stars his daughter Anjelica Huston and uses a screenplay by his son Tony Huston. It’s an adaptation of short story by James Joyce and it has pretty much no plot at all, which makes it hard to write about. It is of course a masterful work and though I have never read the original story, I can’t imagine a better adaptation than this. Even so it is obvious that this is something that would be better experienced in its original written form rather than as a film.
So this was another MCU film that we skipped over watching in the cinema due to the pandemic and the critical response was bad enough that I couldn’t muster much enthusiasm for it either. I would still eventually catch it up of course and so here we are. In the event, this film features surprisingly good action choreography and the moment to moment scenes are solid as well. It suffers though from shallowly developed worldbuilding and just trying to tell too large a story. I would have been happy with a street-level kung fu movie in the MCU but I guess they really needed it to be an epic fantasy movie to justify a big studio budget.
The war in Ukraine continues to dominate the world’s attention and I’ve probably been spending too much time reading up on it than is healthy. I’ve still been keeping up with science news and there are a few really interesting announcements over the past month.
For pretty much everywhere in the world apart from China, the covid-19 pandemic is just about over. But even as China engages in silly security-theatre by spraying large clouds of sanitizer liquids, not enough attention is being paid to area-effect measures that actually seem to work. This paper talks about lamps that emit far-UVC light and shows that rooms that are exposed to light of this wavelength have greatly reduced viral loads over extended periods. But note that the common so-called UV light disinfection devices on the market are fake ones. Far-UVC light is certainly not visible to the human eye and far-UVC wavelengths are achieved by using krypton chloride excimer lamps that are not commonly available.
A really scary announcement this month uses light at the other end of the spectrum, infrared. A team of researchers outfitted specific neurons in the mouse brain with a heat-sensitive molecule called TRP1. They could then later stimulate these areas of the brain with infrared light to alter the behavior of the mice, tickling the dopamine neurons to make them addicted to the light and want to go where the light is for example. In other words, by carefully treating a brain in advance, the team could then later control that brain later with infrared light, which is why this finding has been hailed with the alarmist cries of being a form of mind control over infrared.
Next up is a summary of some the latest findings on Alzheimer’s disease as more and more effort is focused on it. Previously it was not thought that the brain had a system to flush out dead cells and other organic waste as the lymphatic system does not extend there. Later it was found that the cerebrospinal fluid in the brain does perform this role and this is now called the glymphatic system. This system apparently helps flush out the amyloid-beta and tau proteins that lead to Alzheimer’s and a lack of sleep earlier in life is thought to contribute the problem by depriving the brain of this power wash effect. New drugs and other treatments to boost this glymphatic clearance effect are also appearing including drugs that promote sleep and devices that aim to directly stimulate this effect.
Research on Alzheimer’s matters because as this next bit of news notes, the leading cause of death among the elderly is increasingly some form of dementia. About half of those aged 67 or more now have dementia as a cause, up from about 35% in 2004.
That’s it for the biological stuff. We go big with this announcement that the Hubble Space Telescope has recorded observing the farthest star ever seen in the universe. Now nicknamed Earendel, it is 12.9 billion years away from us, meaning the light is showing us a past that dates only a few hundred million years after the creation of the universe.
Finally this last news item has the most far reaching implications of all even if most people haven’t heard of it. It’s about how the measured mass of a sub-atomic particle known as the W boson is not what it should be according to theory. The difference, around maybe 0.1%, is small but it’s enough to prove that something in the theory is wrong. Given that this theory is the current Standard Model of physics, that is huge. At this point, it could mean anything including the existence of a previously undiscovered fifth force of nature. But it’s also possible that it could be a measurement error with this one experiment. Needless to say, this is stuff upon which great careers in physics are forged.
This was a huge hit in Hong Kong both critically and commercially, a feat made especially impressive by the fact that it is an independent production made with a very low budget. Unfortunately this is the kind of film that I categorically dislike as it relies on an outdated understanding of mental illnesses and how they are treated in modern times. The fact that this is really more of a romantic film than one about mental patients in general doesn’t absolve it of responsibility in misleading a large audience and it is very obvious that at no point did the filmmakers ever consult with actual doctors or psychiatrists in making it.
So this is obviously a tribute to Ingmar Bergman and can be expected to full of references to the director. Our cinephile friend liked it but I can’t say that I do. It’s nice to see it set on Fårö, the director’s favorite island, but apart from that this seems very shallow with not even the film within the film being very interesting. The references too are disappointing, basically acting as a kind of repository about trivia of Bergman’s life rather than any attempt to emulate his work or his themes.
Well, it’s not everyday that you get a film that unabashedly champions the drinking of alcohol, but this really is what this is. The premise of this film by director Thomas Vinterberg about a group of middle-aged men who take to drinking to improve their lives sounded promising to me but I thought for sure that they would get their comeuppance at the end as is traditional. Indeed there are consequences but it’s hard to argue that the ending isn’t a net positive for the protagonists. I’m all for artistic freedom and this film is very watchable, but socially I feel that this film sends all the wrong messages.
