This trilogy is so long that it became a bit of a slog towards the end but I’ve finally reached the end. This is my least favorite of the three books as there are entire plotlines that I feel are ultimately pointless such as Louise and Genevieve’s adventures on Earth and the Skibbows’ vendetta against Kiera. On the other hand, there are also some spectacular setpieces. We get to visit the true homeworlds of the Kiint, and there are multiple first contact scenarios with alien civilizations both more and less advanced than humanity. As the title suggests, the crisis is resolved by a literal deus ex machina. That’s never great but it’s especially egregious here as one hero singlehandedly flips the table for everyone.
A film about Palestinian refugees in Greece made by a Danish director of Palestinian origins Mahdi Fleifel can be expected to be sympathetic to their plight. Making your characters flawed is fine and even adds credibility. But I was very shocked that whether intentionally or not, he has delivered a film that effectively warns Europeans that these refugees have been reduced to such desperate straits that they are capable of anything. The premise and the characters are fine but the plot goes so far off the deep end that I wondered if Fleifel knows what he wants to say here.
Dora the Explorer is way past my childhood so I have no familiarity with the franchise and I wouldn’t ordinarily choose to watch a kid’s film like this. What convinced me is online word-of-mouth and the fact that this film’s reputation seems to have improved over time. The fourth wall breaking jokes I remember seeing in the trailer helped too. In the event. this is exactly as advertised a kid’s adventure film that embraces the fact that it was adapted from an animated show. It’s unashamedly positive, pointedly runs on cartoon logic and I love how it has the storyline of a children’s show, yet never considers the audience to be stupid.
I last played Spintires years ago. Since then the series has grown from strength to strength with a dedicated fanbase. This current version of the game has a whopping 18 seasons worth of additional DLC content. I noped out of the previous game before too long because it started to feel too much like real work. The new version has so much more content, a bewildering variety of vehicles and customizable options for them, larger and more complex maps and that means lots more work to do!
Digging deeper into the history of cinema and especially the works of not-so-well-known directors can be hit and miss. But every so often it pays off in spades. Tampopo seems to be Juzo Itami’s best known and it is so delightful that it immediately made me want to check out the rest of his filmography. It’s already pretty rare that a Japanese comedy can work for international audiences and what’s more fun is that this is food-themed. I didn’t find all of the jokes funny as some seem rather dark. But it’s wonderfully creative, irreverent and has a heart of gold without being sentimental.
Dancer in the Dark is one of my major omissions from the filmography of Lars von Trier. My wife had already watched it by herself a while back plus it was surprisingly poorly reviewed despite being quite a famous film. It’s not a very good looking due to being shot using a handheld digital camera and the main story of a mother doing everything she can to save her son is crude emotional manipulation. Yet the character played by Björk is so fascinating and framing it as a musical is darkly imaginative of Trier. It’s definitely a lesser work but still one worth watching.
I first heard about this film from the news about it being a surprise sleeper hit in China and decided to watch it as it is about the history of Chinese migrants to Southeast Asia. Arriving in the cinema, I saw that plenty of other Malaysian Chinese had the same idea and this is a huge hit in Singapore as well. It’s overly long, heavy-handed in its sentimentality and glosses over the reasons for so many migrants leaving China. But it’s well-made enough to be a tear-jerker, its predominant use of Teochew lends it authencity and to us Southeast Asians, it feels like acknowledgement.
