Chuck Chuck Baby (2023 | UK | 101 minutes | Janis Pugh)

A jilted housewife, now taking care of her ex-husband, his new wife, their new baby and ex-mother-in-law, acts as everyone’s doormat with little respite. She supposedly only stays for the close bond with her dying ex-mother, but she’s more afraid of the bigger world than she admits. A new relationship looks to flip that life upside down if she’ll only let it. While this film wasn’t the most dynamic or memorable of those I caught, it was well-done with moments of true sincerity and revelry. It’s too bad it didn’t get more attention.

Bonjour Switzerland (2023 | Switzerland | 88 minutes | Peter Luisi)

Switzerland famously celebrates its linguistic diversity with more languages than you’d imagine spoken regularly throughout the country. Well, a new mandate is trying to change that by “uniting the country through one national language”. An older government employee rails against it, but when he’s forced to join in, he finds it’s too difficult to assimilate. With only one chance to secure his job into the future, he’ll do anything to succeed.

I was so excited about this film, I thought it would be one of the funnier and heart-felt indie films that I so look forward to. While there were some great scenes and you empathized deeply with the protagonist, especially if you’re middle-aged and life is in upheaval. However, the second half started going downhill falling into tropes and sickly sweet “life just works out for the good guys” kind of ending.

The Box Man (2024 | Japan | 120 minutes | Gakuryû Ishii)

A man and his box. What can you make of a storyline so simple and so complex at the same time. The box man walks around stalking the bigger world from the tiny one he has created for himself. With camera in hand and the ability to escape almost any situation, he finds himself observing the world instead of being in it. The unique life he has created for himself is threatened by another who seeks to take his place, but it won’t be so easy to take him down.

I’ve used the phrase “I had no idea where this film would take me” as a tongue-in-cheek way of chatting about a surprising and fun storyline, but when I say The Box Man took me places I never expected… I mean it in the straight-forward, what the hell did I just see, way. At first I was completely immersed and on board for the weird and sometimes silly storyline Gakuryû Ishii has created, but around the middle of the film, things went sideways; not for the protagonist (though that’s true also) but me as a viewer. I was baffled, but still intrigued. Then, as the story went on and it got weirder, possibly just for the sake of being weird, and I felt like I was watching some experimental work by a filmmaker totally disillusioned by mainstream entertainment. All I could do was allow for it to flow through my brain and hopefully make sense of it later. I can say, even after a week, the sense still hasn’t come together. If you walk into the theater with that in mind, I think you’ll fully enjoy yourself, or at least experience something you haven’t before.