As I’ve mentioned before, I simply adore the text-based storytelling games by Inkle and so just had to get this one. Unfortunately, while Heaven’s Vault had the problem of being too long and too ambitious, this one has the opposite problem of being far too short and too simple. You can be done with pretty much all the content in a couple of hours and even a simple first win will take no more than an hour. I do like the premise but there’s just too little content and the production values are somewhat lackluster as well.
This seems to have been a commercially successful film and the directorial debut of John Tsu. Its source material is a horror video game by a Taiwanese director and its premise is undoubtedly strong, being about students and teachers living during Taiwan’s White Terror period. Telling a story about political repression within the horror genre seems at first like a stroke of genius. But then it quickly becomes obvious why this is rarely attempted. The real event is such a weighty tragedy that the supernatural elements cannot help but feel farcical in comparison. Then there’s how the director plays up the horror imagery so blatantly, perhaps in order to be faithful to the video game, when a lighter touch would have been more effective. I really wanted to like this, but it’s much of a mixed bag to be considered actually good.
In so many of the Westerns he appeared in, Gary Cooper feels like he’s playing the same character and that’s the case here as well. Even though here he is a former outlaw who is forced to confront his old gang, the inner conflict and moral quandary are much the same as if he were the sheriff. This isn’t to say that it isn’t good because it is in fact a very solid Western. But it’s also a completely straight and stereotypical Western and its finale is a little underwhelming. I can see why it’s a classic of the genre but it’s not for me.
My wife has been raving about this one film since forever and it’s only just now that I’ve gotten around to watching it. Though this predates Studio Ghibli, it’s commonly considered their first film as its success was what made the studio possible. It was also based on a manga written and illustrated by Hayao Miyazaki himself so it’s a hundred percent his work. I found this to be far different from the later Ghibli films in so many ways: it’s explicitly violent with the heroine herself killing multiple people on screen, it depicts warfare and death on a grand scale and it’s straight out science-fiction. In fact, I’m pretty sure that Vesper was directly inspired by its imagery. As such, yeah, I’m pretty sure this is my favorite of the Ghibli films as well.
I’ve been a fan of Alexander Wales for ages since his fanfiction days. He dropped off my radar for a bit but since I finished the grimdark epic Worth the Candle I’ve been catching up on his other works. From what I understand he set out to write this less serious piece to decompress. There are adventurers and dungeon delving in it but as he puts it, this is mostly meant to be slice-of-life. It’s set in a pleasant, near utopia of a world and one of the main themes is that some characters feel that their world is so safe and so well understood that there are no mysteries and places to discover left. Anyway, Wales delivers exactly what he promised here. It’s not really about the worldbuilding or grand plots but about getting to know and fall in love with the cast of characters. It’s great comfort food and I really enjoyed it.
This was the directorial debut of Panah Panahi, the son of Jafar Panahi. Appropriately enough it’s a road trip film set largely within the confines of a car and about a family smuggling their son across the border, both elements that we’ve seen in his father’s films. It’s a rather grim scenario yet the film makes heavy use of dance and song to emphasize the humor in the situation. The use of music in particular and copious references to popular American movies ensure that Panah has difficulty establishing a style distinct from that of his father. I think the film lets the child actor steal the show too much but it is a fine film that surely presages an illustrious career to come.
I have no great love for the mobster films of Martin Scorsese, yet not having watched Goodfellas feels like an increasingly blatant hole in my cinematic education. It’s weird to see this now as so many of the shots from it are now memes in popular culture and the character archetypes Scorsese establishes here recurs so often in later films. There is no absolutely doubt that Scorsese is at the height of his powers here as he brings so much rich detail and life to the stories of the gangsters. Yet it’s also pure glorification of a lifestyle that revolves entirely around being unrepentant murderers and robbers. Sure they get their comeuppance at the end as is traditional but you can tell that Scorsese has no enthusiasm for that part of the film at all.
