Three months late but I'm back and will catch up on these threads this week.
First up:
Silence (2016) 8.5/10
I must admit I was kind of dreading this. Sure it could be great, but it could also be a preachy slog and I got the sense its reception was mixed so, especially given how little I've been watching this past year, it was hard to work up the interest. I do have some reservations, but they aren't really about the quality of the movie. Despite it's length and subject matter it never felt nearly as slow as I expected. It mixes faith and humanity and doubt and perseverance quite well and finds a way to build everything steadily, the stakes, the mystery and the insight into Garfield's character. Most interestingly, while I expected, and the undercurrent plays as, a film about faith it feels like the film is more about torture. About the many and varied ways the Japanese inquisition tries to stamp out dissent, where Christianity just happens to be the medium of dissent in this specific film. The most dialogue heavy scenes of philosophical/religious back and forth leave one wanting, neither side seems willing to state the most obvious rejoinders, like there's a mix of respect for conviction and disdain for ignorance and you never get the sense which is the primary driving force. On the whole I do think it works better for the film this way, but in those specific scenes I was really left wanting. I found the depictions of the Japanese peasants to be an interesting contrast to the cloistered faith of Garfield's character, but Scorsese uses it more for imagery than for meaningful reflection. There are windows into so many subjects but, much like god, the film is conspicuously silent on them. Probably none more so than the never mentioned but always in my mind Spanish inquisition; The lingering hypocrisy that reminds you everything could easily be flipped by changing the context. In the end it's a film that made me think and appreciate, and I really enjoyed (I don't know if that's the right word here) the experience, and the films sticks to what it wants to do and does it very well, but I was reminded often of the slightly different film I would have liked even more.