film/2021
Blade Runner 2049
Re-watched, held up well. Robin Wright and Jared Leto are great.
Serenity
Re-watched, meh.
John Wick (1 and 2)
A tiny bit cheeky, but mostly just high-budget, well-made, generic action. Entertaining if you like watching fight scenes. Airplane films.
Some Kind of Heaven
The documentary about “The Villages”, a city-sized retirement community in Florida. I expected to be a more direct documentary about the place, but this ended up being mostly a series of character studies. Some of the scenes and interviews were somewhat unbelievable; were they staged? Especially the unremorseful and blunt psychonaut husband.
Tokyo Story
Watched with L, B, and C on a trip to the Olympic Penninsula. Many classic shots. Slow, thoughtful. Apparently the creators didn’t think it would get much international reception because it was “too Japanese”, but I was surprised how universal it felt. Also surprised it was able to be produced at all in the near post-war period.
Sherpa and Fourteen Peaks
Two separate documentaries about Himalayan mountaineering, both pretty good. The 14 peaks story is almost unbelievable, and feels borderline foolhardy, he just climbs so fast and hard and takes risks to meet an arbitrary time limit.
Dune (2021)
Very pretty, some nice scenes, characters, costumes, and world-building. In the end felt like just eye candy and “entertainment” though, did not add anything special or new to the story telling. This is a finely executed and polished film, but David Lynch’s version brought a lot more to the table.
Following (1998)
The Thin Man (1934)
They Live
The Blues Brothers (1980)
Dead Pigs
Prisoners (2013)
Long Day’s Journey into Night (2018)
Incendies
This was very good, though parts of it were so brutal they felt like a stab in the back by the directory/screenwriter.
Black Bear
No Time to Die
Bond, not particularly memorable. Airplane film.
The Grandmaster
Will watch Tony Leung in anything. The early scenes were fun. Some characters were confusingly just pasted in to the film with no other context. Airplane film.
Suicide Squad
L liked this so I gave it a try. Was surprisingly enjoyable, especially the first 10-15 minutes.
