Drama, Movies, Uncategorized

One Battle After Another

by:
I watched the film after it had cleaned up at the Oscars.   Would I agree with how the members of the Academy had voted? I was so impressed by Hamlet that I was unsure whether I could recast my vote for another film. Already halfway through, I sensed that this is the very best film of the year. [Read More]
Drama, Movies

Hamnet

by:
Shakespeare and Hamlet are two names that you know. Maggie O’Farrell and Hamnet are two names you should know. Maggie O’Farrell is daring Shakespeare. She simply imagined the marital life of William Shakespeare and drew a connection between Shakespeare’s son, called Hamnet, and Shakespeare’s famous play Hamlet. For the first hour of this film, I grew [Read More]
Documentary, Drama, Movies, Phantasy

Sinners

by:
Sinners is one of the most creative films I’ve seen in a long time. It blends several genres at once: a 1920s period piece, Quentin Tarantino–style gangster violence, and—most surprisingly—a vampire film intertwined with a kind of documentary about how blues music traveled from the Deep South to Chicago.   One actor plays two characters simultaneously, and you find yourself [Read More]
Drama, Movies

Train Dreams

by:
Train Dreams appeared on a mini top-10 list for 2025. I was enticed to see the film by its promise to show life in nature in the early 20th century. Train Dreams initially keeps its promise and captures beautiful scenes of the Pacific Northwest that provided me energy and joy.  But over time, the philosophical [Read More]
Drama, Movies

Shameless

by:
A few weeks ago, I discovered the TV show Shameless. I am watching the US version, which is allegedly better than the original show from the UK. So far, I like the show very much. It follows a poor family living in South Chicago. The father is a narcissistic drunk. The mother is bipolar. Six [Read More]
Comedy, Drama, Movies

Home Alone after 35 years

by:
After 35 years, Home Alone holds up. It turns out I had never seen the original movie, only the sequel. The film is cute. Macaulay Culkin delivers a spectacular performance for a nine-year-old. If you want to enchant your kids, this is a wonderful holiday movie. I watched an interview with Macaulay Culkin recently on [Read More]
Drama, Movies

Anora

by:
Early on in watching Anora, I had the idea that this was a remake of Pretty Woman with a lot more skin than my grandmother would’ve appreciated. But the film then moved far away from a romantic comedy when the friends of the Russian billionaire’s son, Ivan, who plays the Richard Gere character in [Read More]
Drama, Movies

Departures

by:
For many years, I have recorded films that I want to see in a to-do list software called OmniFocus. There are 128 items on the films list. One of them is Okuribito (a foreign language film). It is in position No. 5, which means it was recorded many years ago. I searched for the film [Read More]
Drama, Movies

Romeo and Julia

by:
Shakespeare wrote his play Romeo and Juliet in 1596. I just learned that there have been at least 30 major motion pictures of the play. I once read that there is a new Romeo and Juliet film every year, but I could not confirm this. In any case, Shakespeare’s genius lies in his ability to [Read More]