#joy arc

[bill-millions-movies]

HERE

"Here, look."

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HERE (2023)

May 31, 2026

I was completely unfamiliar with Belgian filmmaker Bas Devos (Here is apparently his fourth feature) and I am not even sure how this movie came across my radar, but I grew to be spellbound by it and now I treasure it like it's my own special glowing secret, hidden away. It's definitely a quiet film, spare in its dialogue, and it takes a moment to adjust your heartbeat to its special pace and viewpoint.

This story of a transient Romanian construction worker and his encounter with a Chinese graduate student in Brussels is a luminous study in being present and finding joy in everyday surroundings. There is a quiet magic at work here, and the photography is stunning, the lead performances winning. Even though the plot is spare across the film's brisk 84 minutes, you care enough about this people that you're engaged in their story. It's a special movie, I hope you can check it out.

"Here manages to present some of the most striking moving images in recent memory by leaning into the same minute details that its protagonist struggles to recognize in his own daily life. Devos’ soft directorial touch elevates what could have been a simple short film into a reflection on the small joys we choose to miss that packs a punch far greater than its runtime... Here is a portrait of Brussels that seeks to shine light on the corners of the city that we’d otherwise be tempted to ignore. But by painting such a rich visual world on the seemingly insignificant canvas of Stefan’s life, Devos offers an implicit challenge to everyone watching around the world. If we can just find ways to be here, wherever that is, we might stumble onto something just as cinematic in our own lives." -IndieWire [critic's pick]

"It’s a modestly proportioned movie of quiet magnificence, one that feels spun of gossamer summer light and rooted in unshakeable depths." -Hollywood Reporter

7:45 trailers 7:50 - 8:00 short film 8:00 - 9:24 Here

[Want to watch at home instead? Here is available on the Criterion Channel or you can rent it on your favorite streaming service]

[bill-millions-movies]

AFTER LIFE

"Most people don't leave anything good behind."

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AFTER LIFE (1998)

April 26, 2026

When I saw the Palme d'or-winning Shoplifters (which we watched last September in our Anti-Capitalism arc) in the theater in 2018, I had no clue that its director Hirokazu Kore-eda had been making movies in Japan for well over two decades. With Shoplifters (still the only Kore-eda movie I've seen) I thought the director was pleasingly un-showy and exceedingly adept at balance: a premise which could be cute on the surface was spiked with the right amount of pathos and moral ambiguity, and undergirded with beautiful, naturalistic performances and subtly perfectly-constructed shots.

After Life was Kore-eda's second feature film (of 16 and counting), made two full decades before Shoplifters. I haven't seen it yet, but its endorsement by the Criterion collection bolsters my optimism about it. The movie is set in a post-death realm (as you may have guessed from the title) where the recently deceased must choose a single favorite memory of their life which will be recreated to carry them into the next world. A documentary-style approach was informed by hundreds of interviews of regular Japanese citizens. We'll be watching this on the Criterion blu-ray so if we want we can sample some bonus material after the movie too.

"Kore-eda, with this film and the 1997 masterpiece Maborosi, has earned the right to be considered with Kurosawa, Bergman and other great humanists of the cinema... After Life considers the kind of delicate material that could be destroyed by schmaltz. It’s the kind of film that Hollywood likes to remake with vulgar, paint-by-the-numbers sentimentality. It is like a transcendent version of Ghost, evoking the same emotions, but deserving them. Knowing that his premise is supernatural and fantastical, Kore-eda makes everything else in the film quietly pragmatic." -Roger Ebert [4 stars]

"After Life is as much a movie about filmmaking as it is about memory. For what are movies, after all, but larger-than-life dream images projected on celluloid? In its modest attitude about the ability of movies to replicate dreams, After Life is the opposite of bombastic Hollywood kitsch like What Dreams May Come... A striking aspect of After Life is its utter lack of grandiosity. Visually the film doesn't try to ''poeticize'' any of the memories with glossy travel brochure images or romantic music: life and death may be serious matters, but they are also business as usual. Yet After Life has its own austere beauty in beautifully composed shots of silhouetted figures in bright doorways and other images that subtly portray the office as a metaphysical portal." -New York Times

7:30 trailers 7:35 - 9:23 After Life

[Want to watch at home instead? After Life is available to rent for $2.99 on your favorite streaming service]

[bill-millions-movies]

ALL WE IMAGINE AS LIGHT

"You have to believe the illusion, or else you'll go mad."

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ALL WE IMAGINE AS LIGHT (2024)

March 8, 2026

In movie club's Joy Arc, I'm enjoying exploring stories of characters that are often filled with sadness or longing, but whose moments of joy can shine through like woven silver thread. This humanist movie about three working class women exploring dreams and desires in sprawling Mumbai is a quiet and subtle stunner, a story of sisterhood which immerses you deeply in the lives of people in a richly vibrant modern world that yet feels so distant from our existence. We know these people exist, but rarely are we shown this kind of intimate window into this place.

All We Imagine As Light feels both as poetic as its title, and also quietly simple and stripped down. I've always been fascinated by India; I know movies about real Indian lives must be being created in the most populous nation in the world, but in the West we so often just are fed pop action movies or Bollywood (and, to be clear, I'm fully on board with those as well). The first Indian film selected to even compete at Cannes since 1994 (!), it became the first Indian film ever to win the Grand Prix (the second prize in the competition after the Palme d'or).

This incredibly assured and mature work is somehow the debut fictional feature of director Payal Kapadia (following one feature documentary in 2021) and she makes everything feel effortless. I put off seeing it for a while as I expected it to be slow and mostly admirable, but I was quickly engrossed. You won't regret your time invested in these characters and their stories.

"There is a freshness and emotional clarity in Kapadia’s Cannes competition selection, an enriching humanity and gentleness which coexist with fervent, languorous eroticism and finally something epiphanic in the later scenes and mysterious final moments... It is both dreamlike and like waking up from a dream. This is a glorious film." -Guardian (UK)

"There are a million stories in the naked city, and Kapadia is about to show you three of them in the most delicate, moving way possible. She’s also about to mount a quiet, sneak attack on your soul." -Rolling Stone

"All We Imagine as Light is the kind of movie one experiences in solitude even when sharing it with others. As with dwellers in a great metropolis, it makes strangers and accomplices of us all." -Washington Post

7:30 trailers 7:35 - 9:33 All We Imagine As Light

[Want to watch at home instead? You can stream All We Imagine As Light for free on the Criterion Channel or rent it on your favorite streaming service]

[bill-millions-movies]

PERFECT DAYS

"Next time is next time. Now is now."

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PERFECT DAYS (2023)

February 8, 2026

German director Wim Wenders's 24th feature, released at the age of 78, is, perhaps surprisingly, set in Tokyo, with a screenplay entirely in Japanese (which Wenders co-wrote with Takuma Takasaki). This is a meditative and patient film, celebrating the ability to find joy in an ordinary life. Somehow, anchored by an arresting lead performance by Kōji Yakusho (who won best actor for this role at Cannes), we are carried along by the quiet details, and the movie feels comfortable, rather than boring. The stillness is charged and even a bit haunting. And as a series of emotional encounters complicate our toilet-cleaning hero Hirayama's life, we learn more about where he has come from and who he is. It's also an exquisite portrait of life in Tokyo, and a tribute to legendary Japanese director Yasujirō Ozu, a filmmaker Wenders admires so much that he made a 1985 documentary honoring him (Tokyo-Ga).

Though I can generally find a way to adjust my perception and melt into the pace of slower films, I know that's not everyone's cup of tea (mmm, a cup of tea would be a nice companion to this movie!). But it's so beautiful to witness this character in this place, a rare and delicately crafted portrait of grace, I think this movie will have a broad appeal, even for you plot addicts!

"Without Yakusho, it would still be the German filmmaker’s strongest narrative feature in 30 years... With him, this small, unassuming tale turns into the kind of earthshaking character study that reminds us why we go to the movies in the first place." -Rolling Stone

"Wenders’ obvious affection for Tokyo itself, his keen feel for texture and neat avoidance of cliché all suggest Perfect Days is likely to age well as a portrait of a great city’s everyday side." -Telegraph (UK)

7:30 trailers 7:35 - 9:39 Perfect Days

[Want to watch at home instead? You can stream Perfect Days for free on Hulu]

[bill-millions-movies]

A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH

"After all, what is time? A mere tyranny."

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A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH (1946)

November 16, 2025

Well, the first movie in our Joy Arc (Umberto D) was pretty depressing... we had some tiny slivers of joy (mostly brought about by a dog) struggling to shine in a pretty bleak life. Our second Joy film, from the full-hearted legendary directing team of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, seems a little more promising in the joy department.

Powell and Pressburger are not household names in this country, but their work, beloved by revered filmmakers such as Scorsese and Coppola, and embraced by the Criterion Collection, includes celebrated classic films of soaring creativity, like The Red Shoes, and Black Narcissus. Making 24 films together in all, spanning from 1939 to 1972, they confidently explored special effects and innovative editing, and were early embracers of the revolution of color. A Matter of Life and Death, released the same year as Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life, is likewise a humanist story of near-death experience and heavenly intervention. When American studios retitled it as A Stairway to Heaven for the US release (and now maybe the movie sounds more familiar to you?), Powell wrote in his autobiography that he felt they had missed the point. In any case, I'm hoping this movie will be an escapist salve for our stressful year. And after, we can debate which is the better title.

"One of the most audacious films ever made – in its grandiose vision, and in the cozy English way it’s expressed." -Roger Ebert [4/4 stars]

"An utterly unique, enduringly rich and strange romantic fantasia" -The Guardian [5/5 stars]

7:30 trailers 7:35 short film 7:45 - 9:30 A Matter of Life and Death

[Want to watch at home instead? Apparently you can't, so you'd better come over. Unless you happen to have a fake-sounding app called Classix!]

[bill-millions-movies]

UMBERTO D

"I have no one, no son or brother, to help me out. I'm just a good-for-nothing old man."

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UMBERTO D (1952)

October 5, 2025

Time Out's surprisingly excellent 2006 guidebook 1000 Films to Change Your Life has a strong multi-cultural and decades-spanning scope, with the enlightened idea to organize itself in chapters based on emotional responses to movies. In the 2010s version of movie club we had successful arcs based on its "Wonder" and "Regret" chapter recommendations, and with the other somewhat dark arcs this season, I decided to have our third theme based on the book's "Joy"chapter.

I'll be drawing from their fascinating, curated list but also working in a couple of my own choices from the recent past. Umberto D is a Neo-Realist film by the Italian actor-turned-director Vittorio De Sica, best known for his moving film Bicycle Thieves (which shows up on every "greatest movies of all time list), for which he won his second Oscar (in 1949). Umberto D is new to me; the Joy list entry in the Time Out book says: "Is this the Italian Neo-Realist It's A Wonderful Life? A cash-strapped retired civil servant tries desperately to hold on to his dignity, but can't quite end it all because there's his little terrier to think of. It sounds sentimental, but De Sica's film is truly elemental in its determination to strip everything down to the urge to love that makes us human." Okay, sign me up.

"It's hard to think of a more remarkable tribute to the resilience of the human spirit than the one Umberto D. puts on the screen." -Los Angeles Times [5 stars]

"One of the great humanist cinema works: a portrayal of age, poverty and simple lives in postwar Rome that is both luminous and heartbreaking.' -Chicago Tribune

7:30 trailers 7:35 short film 7:45 - 9:15 Umberto D

[Want to watch at home instead? Stream Umberto D for free on HBO/Max]