Catch this if you can

Today I watched a really good movie. This past year or so I've watched a spate of movies, some good, some not so good, and some pretty darn good. But Doubt was really surprisingly good.

I suppose I should have anticipated it, with Meryl Streep acting in it. But the only reason why I watched it, at least at first, was because the person I was watching it with wanted to watch it. I mean, you'd think a movie about nuns and monks in the 1960s would have little relevance in today's context.

Yet the challenge of living a moral life is just the same for a person of the cloth as it is for a normal person, and the movie peels away those layers of the habit to reveal the humanity in both priest and straitlaced nun.

Beyond the good acting, the direction itself blew me away, and it was not just the motif of wind that did the trick. Although translating from a play to the screen might seem easy, the finesse of direction was palpable. Almost every scene was very deliberately and delicately orchestrated, without being cliched or overly arthouse or sentimental.

I won't belabour you with a bad pun on the movie's name, but I do encourage you to watch Doubt if you feel like a thought-provoking, aesthetically- and dramatically- satisfying movie, that's not in Chinese (the other movie to catch is Red Cliff).