This film made it onto the lists of many critics’ best films of 2016 though it actually made its debut at a film festival in early 2015. It has a 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes and boasts of being the only film ever made in the Kaqchikel language, apparently a branch of the Mayan family of languages that is spoken in Guatemala. Needless to say I watched this with a fair bit of anticipation.
As you might expect this rereading of the stories of Ted Chiang was prompted by watching Arrival. In fact, I didn’t just read the eight stories collected in this book. I read pretty much everything that I could find by Chiang since plenty of his stuff is readily available online and easily found via the author’s Wikipedia page. I’ve read almost all of it before of course with the notable exception being The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate and The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling.
After having watched the original twice and being occasionally reminded of the existence of this version by a poster in a local restaurant here in Seremban 2, I thought it was high time that I got around to watching this. A major impediment to this endeavor is that its running time is nearly three hours, requiring some scheduling to achieve.
When I first added this to my list, I thought this was a movie. I only learned on the day I watched it, from a blog post by economist Scott Sumner, that it’s a documentary by Russian director Alexander Sokurov. Upon watching it, I found it utterly unlike any other documentary I’ve ever seen and has decidedly movie-like qualities.
So I bought this by mistake. I have fond memories of a game that I eventually remembered is actually called Necromunda from my stay in France and thought this was the videogame adaptation. Same squad-level tactical game by the same company, wrong setting. This one is based on the Warhammer Fantasy setting, not the Warhammer 40,000 setting. Being stubborn, I decided I’d play through it anyway though it ended up being a real chore.
I’m pretty sure that this one was added to our list simply because my wife has to watch every last Studio Ghibli film, especially one that was directed and written by Hayao Miyazaki himself. Upon watching however, I found that it’s probably one of his least notable films and is completely missable.
This isn’t an especially notable documentary but it is extra relevant considering how prominent American politics are this year. Anthony Weiner isn’t an especially prominent politician on a global basis but he was considered a popular and up and coming Democrat until his career was derailed by a sexting scandal. This documentary covers his attempt to revive his career by running for mayor of New York City in 2013.