An experimental Soviet-era black and white silent film with no plot and no intertitles doesn’t sound like a lot of fun, even if it’s only an hour long. But this film, now considered one of the greatest documentaries of all kind, may surprise you. It does start slow with straightforward shots of inanimate objects and you wonder what it’s trying to do. Then it grows in scope and the shots become more sophisticated as if the cameraman is slowly learning as he goes until it becomes a joyous celebration of everything a camera is capable of.
I’ve read plenty of short stories by Harlan Ellison though I don’t consider myself to be much of a fan. His novels are not considered notable and I suspect that a large part of his legacy comes from his contributions to television shows like the original Star Trek and Twilight Zone. His Dangerous Visions anthologies were hugely influential however and this final book was announced in 1973 and never came out. Ellison died in 2018 but his estate’s executor J. Michael Straczynski continued working on it and so now here it is.
This is one tennis film that really is not about tennis at all. As the character played by Zendaya states it plainly, it’s about relationships. Luca Guadagnino is a director who seems to be specializing in erotic passion in all its forms and so this is right up his alley. Here the physicality of sports stands in for sex and their competitiveness fuels the passion. It’s a slick, bold and incredibly sexy film but I think it overdoes the stylistic touches and shifts in time.
I followed the Ukraine War religiously for months but even a news addict like me had to pace myself since it has dragged on for so long. This harrowing documentary takes us back to the earliest days of the war, focusing on one journalist’s perspective in the ill-fated city of Mariupol. Its narrow focus means that it makes no attempt to explain the broader context of the conflict. But being able to see the invasion of the city on a day-to-day basis gives it an authenticity and emotive impact like no other.
This turned to be a more commercial film than the titles that usually end up in my to watch list. I suppose I was misled by its sky high Rotten Tomatoes rating and the fact that actress Noémie Merlant who so impressed the world in Portrait of a Lady on Fire won a César Award for her performance here. In the end this is an entertaining, well-balanced crime comedy but it’s a little old-fashioned and not particularly artistic.
I’m terrible at platform games and terrible at roguelikes and this is both! I wanted to give this a go anyway due to its very interesting gameplay mechanics. It doesn’t look like much with old-school pixel graphics but that’s actually part of what makes it so special. Every pixel of the game world is physically simulated and so everything is potentially destructible with the right effects! The problem is that the environment becomes incredibly chaotic and combined with how little healing is available in-game, it’s a very difficult game. I ended up using a mod to give myself extra revives after dying just so that I could actually see more of the game.
This film is most often described as psychological horror but it really defies genres. It’s also hard to categorize in other ways as well, being an English-language film made by a Polish director that is set in Germany and features mostly European performers. One thing that’s certain is that it’s a genuinely horrifying film, if only due to Isabelle Adjani pushing her performance to extreme lengths. Critics have been struggling since it was made to make sense of it and I think it’s not really possible to nail it down to some particular intent on the part of the director but watching it is certainly an engrossing and disturbing experience.
