I had a busy April finishing my master’s thesis, so I am 4 movies behind. I’ve watched 2 movies this week and will be watching 2 movies next week to catch up. The first movie I’m starting with is The Sixth Sense. It stars Haley Joel Osment and Bruce Willis and was directed by M. Night Shyamalan.

Going into this movie, I only really knew the like “I see dead people”, and boy, this movie was great! Both Osment and Willis did phenomenal jobs in their roles. The movie was suspenseful and thrilling but still balanced. I really enjoyed it, and I give it a 5/5. The next movie is Memento!

Jojo Rabbit was a great experience. You experience the end of WW2 from the perspective of a 10-year-old German boy who is a Nazi fanatic, but soon grows to become disillusioned by it. Somehow, the movie was able to wrap satire and comedy around such dark tones. I thought all the actors and actresses did very well, and Stephen Merchant was exceptionally unsettling. I can understand the criticisms that the movie was making light of atrocities and humanizing nazis. In my opinion, it only seemed to be making light because of how absurd the propaganda was. The movie made some wildly anti-Semitic comments, and I couldn’t help but laugh. Not because the statement was funny, but the fact that people could have believed that. I think there is a difference between humanizing and empathizing, and the movie did a good job showing the propaganda that children would have experienced.

This week’s movie was Alien, the sci-fi horror from 1979. Make sure not to call it Aliens because that’s the sequel. This was a great movie, the pacing was slow and suspenseful. It doesn’t hold your hand through the scenes either. There are long, drawn-out scenes with no explanations, where the viewer must draw conclusions based on previous events as well as what they see on screen. It was refreshing. I really admired the set design of the movie. I don’t know how advanced CGI was at this point, but all the practical effects and actual sets were so cool to see. In the Mother communication room, someone would have had to program the circuits to make the lights blink in the pattern they did. I could go on about how much I love the sets. Overall, I give the movie 5/5. Next week is Jojo Rabbit!