(dir. Wim Wenders) Hirayama (Kōji Yakusho), a reticent toilet cleaner in Japan, enjoys a simple daily routine that rarely changes. The film shows us this routine, and then shows a number of events that upset Hirayama’s carefully-arranged “perfect days”.

The meditative pace reminds me of The Taste of Things, but while that film showed showed how the slow preparation and enjoyment of food was intertwined with personal relationships, this is a much more solitary film. Hirayama’s combination of work, 60s & 70s American music, photography, restaurants, and reading is his way of finding contentment, but the life of this “urban hermit” in ultra-modern Tokyo seems far less appealing to me than being in love with your cook in the Loire Valley.

Putting aside the comparison, however, some searching about the film took me to an interesting article by Luca Galofaro on ArchDaily, pointing out Perfect Days’ connections to Moriyama-San, a 2017 documentary about a Japanese “enlightened amateur” living in Tokyo, and to an article about the Buddhist possibilities of being an Urban Hermit by Mu Soeng. Well worth a read if you enjoyed the film’s tranquillity. ★★★★☆

(dir. Martin Brest) What could have been a hokey and familiar drama about a scholarship kid at an elite high school taking on a Thanksgiving job looking after a blind man becomes far more affecting because of a good script from Bo Goldman and a mesmerising performance from Al Pacino. ★★★★☆

(dir. Coralie Fargeat) Elisabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore) is an aging Hollywood star who decides to take “The Substance” to try and retain her job and celebrity. She spawns a second, younger self, “Sue” (Margaret Qualley), but the delicate balance between these two selves cannot be maintained indefinitely….

I was unimpressed by the first half of this film, which seemed unoriginal in conception and execution. However, the second half gleefully takes its body horror to a degree that is both deeply revolting and hilarious. I am not squeamish, but some of this I had to watch between my fingers. This will become a cult classic, at least for those with strong stomachs. ★★★★☆

(dir. Steven Soderbergh) George Woodhouse (Michael Fassbender) is a British intelligence agent tasked with discovering which of his fellow agents has stolen a classified piece of software code-named ‘Severus’. The first step in his investigation is to throw a dinner party at his home, inviting all the suspects, including his wife (Cate Blanchett)….

Soderbergh (also handling the Director of Photography and Editing roles) is very effective here with a tight, dialogue-heavy script from David Koepp (Mission: Impossible, Jurassic Park, Raimi’s Spiderman and more). Its London spies are a blend of John le Carré and modern Bond film, with the casting of Pierce Brosnan and Naomi Harris a not-so-subtle metatextual wink about its inspirations. The film is more funny than tense, but a speedy 94 minute running time and a cast clearly enjoying themselves make the time fly by. ★★★★☆

(dir. Hirozaku Kore-eda) This tells the story of a poor family living in cramped conditions in Tokyo; the father, Osamu (Lily Franky), has taught son Shota (Kari Jo) to shoplift to supplement their limited income. One evening they find a young girl left outside her apartment, and after taking her home discover that she has been abused by her parents.

Despite their various flaws and criminality the film portrays a loving family who care about one another in the face of society’s indifference. The state’s eventual breaking apart of the family is legally correct but leaves the viewer regretting the severed bonds between adults and children, all in need of love. ★★★★☆

(dir. Andrew Niccol) Vincent Freeman (Ethan Hawke) is a genetic “invalid” in a world of gene-engineered perfection. He borrows the identity of Jerome Morrow (Jude Law), a paralysed “valid” to be able to work at Gattaca and dreams of making it into space on one of their missions. The investigation around the murder of a Gattaca administrator, however, threatens to reveal his secret identity.

I hadn’t seen this since around its release in 1997 and remembered very little. It is still visually striking–not for its sci-fi special effects, but for its careful photography and heavy use of colour filters that render the film off-putting but beautiful. The distinctive faces of Hawke, Law, and Uma Thurman add to the otherworldly intensity of the visuals. Sławomir Idziak (Three Colours: Blue) was the Director of Photography.

The film is really not interested in creating a plausible vision of the future–the cars and fashion are retro-styled, the astronauts wear suits and ties, and it all seems more 1950s than 2050s–but that’s perhaps because the real interest is in sibling rivalry, human frailty, and imperfection. From Vincent, to Irene, to the mission director, all the characters fail to hide their flaws from those around them.

Michael Nyman’s music is also key to setting the melancholic tone of the film. It all should seem portentous and heavy-handed–it even has bookending voice-overs!–but there is nothing wasted here. It’s an exceptional film, and I won’t wait twenty-five years before watching it again. ★★★★★

(dir. Quentin Tarantino) There are two stories of wartime France here that join together in the final act: Lieutenant Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt) leading a team of Naxi-scalping soldiers behind enemy lines and Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz) as the polyglot ‘jew hunter’ for the Reich.

Pitt is the funniest he’s ever been, Michael Fassbender relishes his role as German-speaking film critic & commando Archie Hicox, Daniel Brühl is hilarious and terrifying as sniper hero Zoller, but it is Christoph Waltz who steals every scene with a charmingly sociopathic performance as Landa. He quite rightly won nearly every supporting actor award the year the film was released.

Tarantino’s talent is evident from his dialogue writing to his shot composition to his anachronistic but excellent use of music. Here he crafts numerous smart, funny, and tense scenes. Ultimately, though, I found this a rather slight film that, while entertaining to watch, didn’t leave me feeling like I hard learnt anything new. ★★★★☆

(dir. Ken Loach) This is the story of Daniel Blake (Dave Johns) who, after suffering a heart attack, is refused the UK’s Employment and Support Allowance and told to go back to work. He goes on to meet Katie (Hayley Squires), a Londoner single mum who has moved to Newcastle, hundreds of miles away from home but the only place where a house is available for her and her two children.

The scene with Katie in the food bank is the most disturbing and horrifying moment in film I have seen for a long time. Hayley Squires’ performance there was outstanding. Even gloomier, though, is that Katie never gets a neat resolution–as far as we know she ends the film still doing sex work so she can feed herself and her children without the food bank’s help.

Daniel’s story is also grim. My only critique would be that I felt the timing of his death and the discovery of his letter slightly undercut the verisimilitude that Ken Loach had crafted so well in the rest of the film. The film didn’t need to be that dramatically neat to make its heartfelt and important points about the cruelty of unemployment bureaucracy. ★★★★☆

(dirs. Matthieu Delaporte & Alexandre de La Patellière) This is a glorious and thoroughly entertaining version of Alexandre Dumas’ novel. The sumptuous costumes, sets, and cinematography elevate the familiar tale, and Pierre Niney captures both the wounded and vengeful sides of Edmond well. Laurent Lafitte also clearly relished playing the mustachioed and detestable Villefort. Great fun. ★★★★☆

(dir. Brady Corbet) From the disorienting first shot following Lázlo below decks on a ship arriving in New York to the slanted credits at the end this is a visually striking film. This works with David Blumberg’s unsettling but propulsive score to establish a tone of wrongness that undercuts the prosperous 1940s and 50s American setting.

Adrien Brody as Lázlo is good, as is Felicity Jones as his wife, but it is Guy Pearce’s weird performance as Van Buren that was the real highlight for me. He is always nearly charming, but with something lurking beneath that surface that only reveals itself more clearly near the end of the film.

It is a film that seems to wants to challenge simple interpretation, so if you are someone who is frustrated by a lack of clarity it will likely irritate more than please over its three-and-a-half-hour (plus intermission) runtime. It is a gruelling watch in many ways–the sex scenes are particularly difficult–but I never found it anything less than fascinating. And it is also occasionally also very funny, with Lázlo’s putdown to a rival architect delivered perfectly:

Everything that is ugly, cruel, stupid — but, most importantly, ugly — is your fault.

★★★★☆

(directed by Yan Fei 闫非 and Peng Damo 彭大魔) This is another absurd comedy from the directing team who made Hello Mr Billionaire and Goodbye Mr Loser. Here the target is helicopter parenting, and the scenario (rich parents pretending to be poor to instill good values in their son) produces some very funny moments of Truman Show-esque manipulation. Silly but entertaining. ★★★☆☆

(dir. Shao Yihui 邵艺辉) This is a comedy-drama focusing on the lives of a single mother, her daughter, and her neighbour in Shanghai. Song Jia 宋佳 should win every award going for her driven and hilarious performance as the mother, Tiemei, but Zhong Chuxi 钟楚曦 is also excellent as the neighbour. The script, written by the director, is witty throughout and there are some genuinely funny scenes–the noodle dinner with the ex-husband and the new boyfriend is a particular highpoint.

The ending leans a little too much into cliché and sentimentality for me, but Shao is clearly hugely talented and has made one of the funniest Chinese films in years. ★★★★☆

(dir. James Hawes) This film is based on Nicholas Winton’s role in the rescue of children from Czechoslovakia in 1939. The recreation of occupied Prague is impressive, and Johnny Flynn’s performance as the young and awkward Winton is very appealing. Anthony Hopkins as the older Winton is–as you might expect–well-judged, and the script gives him room to portray the complex feelings that came from saving six hundred children from the Nazis, but failing to save many more. It may not be especially original as a film, but the story it tells deserves to be told over and over. ★★★★☆

(dir Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger) I have mixed feelings about this film. On the one hand, I appreciated its beautiful cinematography and glorious early Technicolor, and admired Roger Livesey’s performance as Clive Wynne-Candy all the way from the Boer War to the Second World War. I was less impressed, however, at the argument it seems to be making about the failure of “gentlemanly warfare” in the face of the Nazi threat (it seems self-deception to pretend there were any “gentlemen” in these twentieth century wars), and was disappointed the film did not take the opportunity to develop the post-war resentment of Anton Walbrook’s Theo Kretschmar-Schuldorf into support for Nazism.

Perhaps a more self-critical film could not have been made in Britain in 1943–it was still criticised for the mild critique it did offer–but it does not go far enough for me in 2025. ★★★★☆

(dir. Josh Margolin) This is a sweet comedy about a ninety-three year-old (played by June Squibb) falling victim to a scam and vowing to find those responsible. The script is funny throughout and the gentle spoofing of Mission: Impossible action scenes adds to the pleasure. I think anyone with an older relative will relate to Thelma’s determined resistance to being patronised (and her struggles with computers!). ★★★★☆

(dir. Alexandre Espigares) This is a breath of fresh Yukon air compared to most animated films for children–no rushed plotting, comic-relief characters, talking animals, or mediocre songs. It’s beautifully animated, tells an interesting historical tale, and is a perfect eighty-five minutes long. After suffering through the entirely unnecessary Mufasa in the cinema yesterday, watching this with my five year-old today was sweet relief. ★★★★☆

(dir. Takashi Yamazaki) This is a reboot of the Godzilla story, and certainly succeeds in creating some impressive moments of monster destruction. The postwar Tokyo setting allows the writers to explore themes of trauma and sacrifice, but unfortunately I found the dialogue a bit heavy-handed and the resolution too neat to satisfy. That said, Godzilla looks great and if you are a fan of kaiju 怪獣 you will enjoy this. ★★★☆☆

(dir. Joseph Kosinski) This is better than I remembered–at least until the last act. The cinematography–even in the real world sections–is all cold shiny symmetries, and together with Daft Punk’s electronic score it works to create a unique style for the film. The main problems, though, are with the characters: Garrett Hedlund’s protagonist lacks charisma; Jeff Bridges is a hokey The-Dude-in-Cyberspace; and every female character is a robotic cipher. The dialogue in the final third is also atrocious (the “warm, radiant, beautiful” line about the sun must rank up there with Anakin Skywalker’s musings on sand).

I watched in 3D on a VR headset thanks a MakeMKV rip processed with BD3D2MK3D. The 3D looks good but is not transformative. ★★★☆☆

(dir. Jean-Pierre Melville) This film was not well-received at the time of its release, but its rerelease in 2006 led to it being widely hailed as a classic of cinema. Melville (Le Samouraï) creates a grim tale of Resistance members in occupied France. Pierre Lhomme’s cinematography is striking, and he was involved in the absolutely gorgeous remaster available on Bluray. As gripping as any spy thriller I’ve seen. ★★★★★

A road trip movie in an America fallen apart. The lead performances are very different but all work together to show how the horror of war leaves its scars. Slow sometimes and breakneck at others, it builds to a ruthless climax that regrettably makes great sense.

The sound is very well designed, veering between near silence, music tracks, and gunfire. The cinematography is sometimes gorgeous, and sometimes shocking.

Well worth your time. ★★★★★