I’ve known about James Blish’s Cities in Flight setting for ages but never got around to reading any of the books, save a couple of short stories collected in anthologies. But it was this 1958 novel that won him a Hugo Award. It’s a very short book and unfortunately very much a product of its time in its depiction of the state of society and fears of nuclear weapons. But at its heart is a crisis of faith in Catholicism, arriving at a conclusion that is mind-blowing. This truly is one of the more unique pieces of science-fiction out there and deserves its place in the sci-fi Hall of Fame.
As a film that is all about a hiking trip, Good One invites comparison with Kelly Reichardt’s Old Joy that I so loved. I didn’t much care for it at first. It felt that there was little hiking compared to everything else, sitting around a campfire, by the river, in the car. But of course I’m a clueless guy just like the two men on the trip with the lone girl and missed the character dynamics until the issue was shoved straight into my face. This was the directorial debut of India Donaldson and I do still think the pacing issues are real. But it brilliantly dissects how men are sometimes blind to everything but their own problems.
Films that provide the Japanese perspective of the Second World War remain comparatively rare, reason enough to watch this. It was also made by Kon Ichikawa who made the more famous The Burmese Harp. Both are anti-war films but while there was something transcendent in the earlier film, this later film is viscerally and unrelentingly bleak. It graphically depicts the Japanese soldiers suffering in the worst ways imaginable and committing atrocities in order to survive. No one would want a repeat watching of the horror shown here, but it is worth watching once.
I generally dislike online games but this is free and very popular, so I thought I should at least check it out briefly. After all, I rather the idea of a wuxia action game and it’s not like any Western game developers are going to offer something decent in that genre. Now more than fifty hours later, I’ve still playing and nowhere near the end. As far as I know, the main quest isn’t even complete yet as updates are still adding new content to the game. I’m not sure how long I’m going to keep playing because it’s very time consuming and there’s so much to do. But it is a fricking awesome action and it being free is a fantastically good deal.
Watching Ennio was like a quick refresher on the Westerns of the 1960s so it’s fascinating to compare them to McCabe & Mrs. Miller. In making this, Robert Altman’s guiding principle seems to have been to identify the common tropes of the genre and do the exact opposite. This plays out so slowly and unremarkably that I was getting bored until I realized what it was trying to do. It’s not even gritty or anti-heroic. It’s that the characters are all cowards, there are no higher ideals and there is no glory whatsoever in violence. Its commitment to what I might call anti-Romanticism is total and that’s what makes it so unique and memorable.
Looking through the body of work of Hirokazu Kore-eda, this film starring Catherine Deneuve, Juliette Binoche and Ethan Hawke sticks out like a sore thumb. I have no idea how he even managed to write the script but this is indeed a perfectly cromulent French film. It also falls in line with the director’s other work in diving into the sins of parents. Unfortunately while I loved the premise and the presence of these star actors working together, the denouement is somewhat pedestrian making it more of a mid-tier Kore-eda film.
I decided to add this to my list after watching the new The Naked Gun. I must have seen Airplane! as a child at some point and I keep coming across clips of it online but it was worthwhile for me to watch the whole thing as an adult. This is now considered one of the greatest comedies of all time and practically pioneered a genre of its own. This slapstick parody style isn’t my favorite type of comedy but I have to admit that it pulls it quite well. Particularly delightful are the sex jokes and racial humor that would never pass muster these days but don’t feel too hurtful either.
