After the awfulness of Jackie, it was delightful to watch the opening shots of Midnight Cowboy and immediately realize that this is the work of a competent director. I don’t recognize many titles from director John Schlesinger’s filmography but I certainly will be adding more of them to my usual list. When this film was made Dustin Hoffman was already a huge star due to the success of The Graduate but I believe that this is the first time I’ve watched Jon Voight in any serious film and I was blown away by how good he is here.
Whatever this film’s other merits, or lack thereof, you have to admit that its poster is distinctive and iconic. Reviews for this are a bit all over the place but in the end as its Rotten Tomatoes rating manages to hover around the 90% mark, I thought I’d give it a shot. Its director Pablo Larrain is a virtual unknown but it does have some serious names behind and particularly seems like it could be the ideal vehicle for Natalie Portman to transition to more mature roles.
As usual this was a pick gleaned from various critics’ lists of the world’s most notable films. I’m pleased that after only a few years of watching and writing about cinema seriously I’ve watched enough Brazilian films to actually have a general opinion of them. The Second Mother in particular conforms to the pattern I’ve noted previously about Brazilian films that while grounded in society relies too heavily on the feel-good factor to be a truly serious film.
Broken Forum has a thread in which the posters regularly list the works that are nominated every year for the Hugo and Nebula awards. Despite being nominally a science-fiction fan, it has been years since I’ve kept myself up to date with these picks so I thought I’d mix up my reading of older novels with newer releases. This one has the added benefit of not being too difficult to read as it’s described as being military science-fiction. In fact, one poster even likened it to the Warhammer 40,000 universe.
This is a Japanese animated feature that, unusually, has at least some historical basis. Like many such projects, it’s an adaptation of a manga. The central character is Katsushika Ōi, nicknamed Sarusuberi, which is the Japanese title for the film. Her father is called Tetsuzo in the film but he is better known as the famed Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai. Even if you think you don’t recognize this name, I guarantee that you only have to google some images of his paintings to realize how famous they are.
Obviously I’ve heard of the novel by Milan Kundera but not being the type to read serious literature, I’ve never read it. Nevertheless this is a very highly regarded adaptation and I’ve loved both of the films directed by Philip Kaufman that I’ve watched so far so I added it to our watch list. It’s worth noting that while Kundera himself served as a consultant for this project, he did not consider it to be a faithful adaptation of his novel so it’s probably best to see it as its own thing.
I’ve been a fan of the Codemasters racing games on a fairly consistent basis over the years. Between the Grid series of games and the Dirt series, I find that I even favor the rally games more. Notice however that this iteration doesn’t have a number next to it and that’s because this seems to be the start of a new series, one that is also about rallying but aims to weigh more heavily on the simulation than the videogame side of the scales. I have no experience in playing the truly hardcore racing sims so I have no idea how realistic this game is. But I can say that this is by far the hardest racing game I’ve ever played.
