Fun fact, the part of Sleepers where they had the kid prison was filmed in the town next to me in Connecticut… Fairfield Hills (formally an insane asylum campus now houses several business and youth soccer leagues). I was in middle school when it came out and a few boys I was in school with were extras as fellow juvenile delinquents.
I just watched both versions of Payback this morning, and it made me wish that all parties could have worked together and compromised and finished the project working together instead of being stubborn and fighting and ultimately making two radically different versions, because I think there was one good movie somewhere between the two. I do think it's kinda cool that Mel Gibson let Brian Helgeland go back after the fact and finish his version of the movie, but I can't definitively say it is better, aside from just visually. Getting rid of the weird blue bleach thingy they did is the only area where the director's cut is absolutely 100% an improvement. It's probably the better movie, but it's not as much fun, and from a business standpoint they probably made the right call releasing the one they did.
Rewatched Zhang Yimou's Not One Less today. Haven't seen it in a good long while, but a proper unheralded masterpiece in my mind. Alongside The Story of Qiu Ju, Zhang Yimou only really two films like this, stories of rural China meeting the cities, filmed in neo-realist style. They're his best films IMO. I have no idea exactly how drawn to life this is (I assume very, but I have no clue really), but it's a fascinating look at education - a child substitute teacher living at the school, sleeping in a bed with 3 students and teaching by writing a lesson on the blackboard. She's personally responsible if one of the kids (genuine kids) runs off to the big city, where there seemingly is enough work for children to find. The teacher's qualifications are basically being a literate 13 year old, and having finished elementary school. Maybe in other hands, it'd be a story of how an unconventional and inexperienced teacher connected with the kids, and they both grew because of it blah blah blah, but she remains an ineffectual teacher. It's a slight film, a film made up of lovely little moments, the kids spending their money on a can of coke to pass around, or the final scene with the little girl who can't write yet drawing a flower on the blackboard, or Wei Minzhi hassling every man with glasses in the city in case he's the station director. Beautiful stuff, would highly recommend it.