Seven Samurai (1954), 9/10
The Akira Kurosawa classic about seven samurai being hired to protect a village from bandits. This holds up magnificently despite turning 70 next year. You could release this movie completely unaltered today by improving the sound and putting it in color, and it wouln't feel one bit dated. Yet at the same time it feels very much like a movie from a bygone age, but in a good way. What I perhaps like most about it is that it is a genuine undderdog story. It's about people either past their prime, or lost in their lives coming together for a good cause. At a mighty 210 minutes and a slow pace it's a big time investment, but not one second of it feels pointless or unnecessary. The characters are really engaging, the period details are perfect, the story is small scale yet feels huge, and the last hour is a masterclass in how to film an extended battle/siege sequence. The geography and progress of the battle is always crystal clear. All in all just a delight and a proper old school epic.
Tetsuo the Iron Man (1989), 8/10
In complete contrast to Seven Samurai (aside from these both being in black and white), this is a japanese body horror film that's frequently mentioned among the most disturbing films of all time. It's nominally about a man addicted to inserting pieces of metal into his body who gets run over with a car, which starts a downward spiral into madness. But that's like saying that Lord of the Rings is about hobbits going on a hike: it's there, but only a smart part of a larger whole. And that whole is the most batshit insane, intense audiovisual overload I've seen in a long time. This movie is remarkably short at only a paltry 67 minutes, but if it were any longer it would be unbearable to watch. It's full of frenetic editing and camerawork, disturbing imagery and horrific scenes. There's barely any spoken dialogue and the story is told only piecemeal, so it's very abstract and up to interpretation as well. You can pick up on themes of sexual repression, industrial anxiety, regret and more. Despite its reputation as a disturbing movie, it never feels like it's going for shock value or shoving it in your face: this movie is very purposeful in what it does and doesn't show.
Lords of Chaos (2018), 4/10
This is a dramatization of the infamous events in the norwegian black metal scene in the early 90s, which involved things like church burnings, murder, satanism and such fun stuff, culminating in one of the people involved, Varg Vikernes (aka Burzum), murdering the leader of another black metal band and going to jail. It's a pretty well known story in the metal music scene, but for people outside of it I don't really think this movie really does a good job establishing things. It feels like it's assuming that you already know at least some parts of the story. Well that, and the fact that this just isn't a good movie.
The biggest problem with it is it can't pick a lane or tone. At first it feels like it's going for a comedic bent, showing these people as just immature, privileged, pretentious edgelords. But then about 20 minutes in it hits us with probably the most gruesome and graphic suicide scene ever put to film, and it's played completely straight. It's genuinely one of the most shocking things I've ever seen in a movie: the guy slits his wrists, slices his throat, then writes a suicide note, and finishes it off with a shotgun in the mouth. And we see all of it, in gruesome explicit detail and bright closeups, including the shotgun part. I think that scene alone makes this movie in bad taste. But like I said, the movie just haphazardly stumbles through different tones, and it never feels like it's building any forward momentum. Things just sort of happen, but it doesn't feel like they really effect one another or build up to anything. I never felt sure if the movie wanted me to laught at these people, feel bad for them, hate them or relate to them, because it never commits to anything, and as a result a ton of it falls flat on its face. It presents the events very matter-of-factly, which just feels off.
So yeah, not a good one, skip it.
Barbie (2023), 8/10
The biggest movie of the year, this one sure went places. I already knew it was going to be different, but I had no idea just how different. Never could have I expected a Barbie movie to be this existential, political, meta and just plain weird. The story went places I never expected, and as a result I was glued to the screen. I'll bet you $10,000 that in 10-15 years the girls who are now seeing it at 7-12 years old are going to rediscover it and it will be lauded as a cornerstone of feminist cinema. Because I'm pretty sure most of this movie will sail straight over that age demographic's heads. It goes so hard into the politics of it with multiple firebrand monologues that I was constantly wondering how this ever got through both Mattel and Warner Bros. approval processes. It's also pretty damn raunchy for a PG film, though not in its content, but its subject matter. It's definitely pushing a lot of buttons on purpose, and that brazenness seems to have paid off. Ryan Gosling is a riot though, proving once again that his comedic talents go criminally underutilized.
