Recent Films We've Seen [Bryan]

Notice that the sidebar dealing with recent films we've seen has been updated. Here are some films I would recommend, if you haven't seen them.

Not One Less. A Chinese film by Zhang Yimou, one of my favorite directors (he did Hero, and House of Flying Daggers). It is about a young, thirteen-year-old girl who is called to substitute teach in a poor, country school. It has interesting things to say about money, the difficulty of social change, the murky nature of our motivations, and the value of dogged persistence. While not as visually interesting as Yimou's other work, the pseudo-documentary style is interesting, too. Some moments, such as when the young teacher meticulously makes by hand sign and after sign in a desperate attempt to find her lost student, are really touching in their powerful simplicity.

Doubt. A film adaptation of a play by John Patrick Shanley. Meryl Streep's performance is absolutely breathtaking. Most interesting, though, is that the theme of doubt is taken up in an interesting way. Does doubt push us apart or pull us together? Is doubt better or worse than absolute certainty? Can we ever be sure we are doing the right thing? The film explores the nature of doubt by immersing the audience in doubt. Who is telling the truth? Who is the bad guy and who is the good guy? How are we supposed to feel about what happened? And what even happened? What did she really mean at the end?

Thirteen Conversations about One Thing. This is one of my old favorites that we just watched again. The "one thing" the film deals with is happiness. The visuals are stunning and the dialogue thoughtful and penetrating, and Alan Arkin plays a very believable scrooge type character. Philosophically rich observations on the machinations in our lives that determine our happiness and on how people respond to such machinations.