Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s film Drive My Car is one of the most haunting films about grief, art imitating life and the mystery of human beings that I have ever seen. Based on the short story of the same name my one of the great authors Murakami, the slow burn plot follows the journey of a screenwriter/actor mourning the recent death of his wife who is directing a play of Uncle Vanya and through a growing bond with his young female driver simultaneously comes to terms with his wife’s death and uncovers mysteries she left behind. The film is very long, almost 3 hours, though never feels unnecessary, each scene building slowly towards a profound conclusion that brought me to tears. As an adaptation of a short story the film’s power is less in its visuals and more in its dialogue, slowly revealing itself like a novel. Ryusuke cleverly intertwines the lines from Uncle Vanya into the narrative as the main character rehearses the lines via a tape in the car. As the production of the play takes places the lines from the play seem to mirror the interior lives of characters in the film. Chekhov’s play is not for the faint heart and grapples with the mysteries and suffering of life as much as the film does. In reserved Japanese emotions we incrementally peel away layers of meaning to get a portrait of heartbreak, of love and of living on after the death of a loved one. Epic in its scope and study of human emotions the final destination will confront you with hard truths as it comforts you with wisdom. This is a long film full of mysteries to solve and hidden meanings to analyse. The film makes you work as a viewer, but if you submit yourself to its runtime and enigma the reward is profound. With Sonyas monologue from Uncle Vanya, one of the most profound and moving in all literate, as an epitaph to the film we come to terms with our suffering and sorrow: ‘And when our final hour comes, we shall meet it humbly, and there beyond the grave, we shall say we know suffering and tears, that our life was bitter. And God will pity us. And then dear, dear Uncle we shall enter on a bright and beautiful life. We shall rejoice and look back upon our grief here. A tender smile – and we shall rest’. One of the best films of the year 10/10

Don’t Look Up has to be the most disappointing film of 2021. With some of the best actors in Hollywood, Adam McKay the director of Vice and the Big Short and an important and timely premise it promised to be the Dr. Strangelove of our time. I wanted to love this film. How did it end up so horribly wrong? In one of my all time fav films, the 1964 black comedy masterpiece Dr. Strangelove, Kubrick addressed one of the most dire issues of the time: mutually assured destruction through nuclear war between the US and Russia, through comedy. The film artfully reduced the two opposing superpowers into squabbling ego driven children, loaded with dark political satire, a comedy of errors that never lost sight of what was really at stake, with one of the best endings in film history. Hoping to be the Strangelove of our time McKay’s vision of our modern world faced with the impending annihilation from an asteroid which is a metaphor for our global inaction on climate change. Instead of biting political satire we get a insufferable movie long joke that gets less and less funny. Trivialising the dire climate change to the point of a cartoon with a totally ridiculous ending. The brilliant cast cannot save the film from its heavy handed metaphor, cynicism and tritness. It revels in its own ugliness and itself becomes part of the endless culture war it portrays. The people who need change their beliefs and behaviours won’t watch this film as it’s smugness and depiction of them will turn them off. And for the rest of us who actually care about the situation it leaves us with a hollow joke that isn’t funny or true. Cheap, crass, cynical and most depressing of all a great missed opportunity. 5/10