Weekly Goals 15-11-21

 It's the final week of the film festival so I'm not making any lofty goals.  Between work and trying to make it to all the films I want to see, that's enough.

So what films have I seen over the weekend?

Well, I saw a documentary called The Most Beautiful Boy in the World which is about the young boy in Visconti's Death in Venice.  He was a 15-year-old Swedish kid and being in that film changed his life, but not in a good way.  The documentary is basically about the way his life was ruined by being in the film.  I didn't love it, mainly because I didn't particularly like the subject and found it a little difficult to sympathize with him.

I also saw a delightful Norwegian film called Ninjababy.  It's about an unplanned pregnancy and the woman doesn't discover she's pregnant until almost 7 months.  This obviously sends her into something of a tailspin while she tries to figure out who the father could be and what she is supposed to do with a baby at this point in her life.  She wants to be a cartoonist so the film is partly animated as she works through these challenges.  I loved it.  It was hilarious, but also very real.  The characters spoke like real people speak and the emotions were very raw.

I also saw an Iranian film, A Hero by a director called Asgadar Faradhi.  I've loved all his earlier films, so jumped at a chance to see this one.  It was kind of a shaggy dog story with all kinds of wrong decisions being made.  I enjoyed it, but feel like I may have missed something really essential about it because I'm not Iranian and don't fully understand Iranian culture.  The whole film seemed to be about each character wanting to preserve their dignity or honor, but I never quite understood what that meant or why it was so important.

So that was my weekend.  I think I have another eight to see before it's all over.  Plus I managed to get a ticket to an encore screening of one of the ones I really wanted to see but couldn't fit into the schedule.

What are your goals this week?