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.

The French Dispatch

Don’t Look Up