Thursday, November 09, 2023

Things I Like

I've been fortunate to see some terrific movies in the last week that you might enjoy seeing. All the links are to the IMDb page where you can see trailers.

The first is an adaptation of a Murakami short story, and it's titled Drive My Car. It was nominated for four Academy awards and won one, and was also the first Japanese film ever nominated in the Best Picture category. 

It's one of the most immaculately constructed films I've ever seen. It's also incredibly beautiful. It's one of my ten favorite films of all-time (and might be in the top five).

The second film is titled El Conde (the trailer is in Spanish, but I recommend the English audio because it's fantastic), and it's based on the entirely bizarre premise that Pinochet was a vampire, and present-day Pinochet is now 250 years old. It's a black comedy to the extreme, and I know it sounds ridiculous, but it's brilliantly written and acted, and beautifully filmed in black and white. It's funny and gory and incredibly striking.

The third film is Koshien: Japan's Field of Dreams, and it's a documentary on Summer Koshien, the  legendary Japanese high school baseball tournament with over 3,500 teams competing. It's both a tremendous baseball film and a fascinating look into Japanese culture.

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