Netflix released an updated American series of this name earlier this year but the reviews for it seemed mixed. So I thought it might be more interesting to go back to this original series made for Swedish TV and directed by Ingmar Bergman. Watching this is quite a draining experience as it feels more like a documentary than a television drama and it is so dense and intense, forswearing any kind of light distraction or entertainment to lighten the mood. It is an amazing showcase of writing and acting but I really would not care to go through this ordeal again.

Due to the pandemic, this marks the first MCU film that we failed to catch at the cinemas and we didn’t come back for the subsequent ones either. So this does kind of mark the passing of an era. No need to go into the kerfuffle between Scarlett Johansson and Disney about whether this properly deserved an exclusive cinematic release window, but it actually is a solid MCU film. It’s not exceptional by any means but it acquits itself well and I continue to be amazed by Marvel can get virtually unknown directors, in this case Cate Shortland, with no previous experience in making action movies to turn in respectable work.

Since Tsui Hark’s The Blade was interesting in many ways I thought I’d give more recent film a shot. This was reasonably well received in Asia and boasts of a star-studded cast. Unfortunately this is terrible film in all respects and it is difficult to find even a single saving grace in it. The plot is comprehensible enough even if there are inexplicable jumps here and there but it is just dumb and none of the performers in it acquit themselves well. Everyone involved should be ashamed of themselves, Tsui himself most of all.

This is Peter Jackson’s documentary about the experience of British soldiers during the First World War. While it features both archival footage and voice recordings of veterans, it is the voices that dominate this film, so much so that the images largely fade into the background. Used as we are to war films, there is little that is new to be learned here but hearing the first-hand testimony of the survivors of the war recount their experiences still makes this an affecting film.

Here is another Howard Hawks film starring Cary Grant and while you might expect this to be another romance in some exotic locale, it’s also actually a very serious film about what is now called the Golden Age of aviation. Hawks wrote this story himself after being impressed by some pilots that he has met in Mexico and so this film is set in some generic South American country. I’m not sure that the film is entirely realistic in portraying flying as being so dangerous but it certainly is full of tension and some of the flying shots are simply amazing given the technological limitations of the time.

Since I’ve been talking about minimalism in films recently, the works of director Hong Sang-soo so I haven’t previously described them as such. This one is even more minimalist with four characters and pretty much nothing in the way of background extras. This one embodies some of the director’s favorite themes about patterns and events recurring with small changes and the performances are strong as always. But the scenario here is so forced and simplistic that it borders on the farcical and so empty of establishing details that it’s not believable at all. I would consider this a weak film even if it does have artistic aspirations.