Everything That Dies, Some Day Comes Back

Firstly, a bit of historical context:  Anastasia was one of the Russian Tsar's family executed in 1918, but thereafter rumours persisted that she had somehow escaped death, leading to various women popping up in the 1920s claiming to be her. In this film the title character Anna is suffering from amnesia and believes she might be Anastasia.  Of course she could be a con artist but given that she is played by Ingrid Bergman and this being 1956 we can rule out that possibility (sadly).  She is discovered in Paris in 1928 by a cynical Russian general, Bounine, who has been receiving money from the exiled Russian émigré community to aid him in a search for Anastasia.  He has no interest in finding the real Anastasia (even were she to exist) but is hoping to find someone who he can pass off as her because she would inherit a fortune, although quite how that would benefit him wasn't clear to me.   Anna is the most promising candidate he has come across and Bounin...

I stumbled upon this Norwegian supernatural horror film by accident when trawling through the C4 website for something to watch.  It's not the sort of thing I would normally go for, but I'm sure glad I gave it a go.  Reading the plot outline on Wikipedia one could be forgiven for thinking the story is quite silly, involving kids with ESP powers and the like. So it's to the credit of the writer and director Eskil Vogt that the film is so gripping, creepy and at times moving.  One must also acknowledge the fine performances of four child actors who almost  completely dominate proceedings, with their parents (the only adults of any significance) mostly on the periphery. Three of the four children, Ida, Ben and Aisha are of the same age (I would guess around nine years old) whilst Anna, who is Ida's older sister, is in her mid-teens.  Anna suffers from non-verbal autism (according to Wikipedia) which means she cannot communicate verbally, which is portrayed via an e...

This film follows Bob Dylan from his arrival in New York to the infamous appearance at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, infamous because he chose to be backed by an electric rock band.  The story of how Dylan moved away from his folk roots is one I'm familiar with having already watched the excellent Scorsese documentary 'No Direction Home'  but Edward Norton does a good enough job playing Pete Seeger to make this aspect of the film watchable.    There are two other relationships of note - one with Sylvie (a fictionalised version of a real girlfriend of Dylan’s) and the potentially more interesting one with Joan Baez.  I was pleased that Baez takes no nonsense from Dylan in this telling of his story - she's no victim.  Their scenes together are memorable even if their relationship doesn't get resolved in any emotionally satisfying way.  And that's the key problem with this film - it's all a bit bloodless and unengaging.   The title has a doubl...

In 1997 'Batman and Robin' was released to almost universal negative reviews, and is now often cited as one of the worst films ever made.   Given that a lot of the criticism was aimed squarely at its over-the-top campiness and jokiness, it is perhaps nor surprising that three years later the director,  Joel Schumacher, goes to the other extreme, here making a  film that is so determinedly gritty and low-key, that most of its dramatic juices have been sucked out of it. It's set in Tigerland, which was an actual U.S. Army training camp during the mid-1960s to early 1970s, the last stop for infantrymen on their way to Vietnam.  Here we  follow the experiences of a group of trainees, notably Bozz (played by Colin Farrell) and Paxton, an aspiring writer, who narrates the film.  Bozz starts the film as a rebel, not dissimilar to Paul Newman in 'Cool Hand Luke', who is unpredictable but can be relied on to fix things, such as helping other soldiers exploit le...

When I think of films by Terence Malick, such as 'Badlands', or 'Days of Heaven', or 'The Tree of Life', adjectives such as 'dreamy', 'philosophical', or simply 'slow moving' come to mind. So the idea of him directing a war movie is intriguing to say the least. From the outset it’s clear that we are in a Malick film, with some dream-like sequences involving a US private (Witt) on a South Pacific island.  Thankfully we do then move on to some actual combat - an attempt by a US company to capture a strategically vital hill on Guadalcanal, where the Japanese are very well entrenched in their defensive positions. Malick is happy to devote plenty of screentime showing us in great detail their gradual progress up the hill and eventual capture of it, but only after much loss of life.  I found this section of the film totally gripping in its brutal reality. Highlights include Woody Harrelson's character killing himself by  accidentally pullin...

A depressed person is probably not that concerned about his or her wellbeing.  How can we convey this in a film?  Well, why not take this idea to its absurd extreme - let's show a depressed person not caring about the end of the world.  It's no great insight into the condition is it?   But basically that's this film in a nutshell. But on the plus side the acting and directing is all top-notch, and there are many beautiful and striking images to enjoy. And I certainly enjoyed the first part of the film, entitled 'Part One: Justine', which is all about Justine's wedding to Michael.  Justine (played by Kirsten Dunst) has a history of depression, but I'm not sure that is sufficient explanation for her extraordinary behaviour - within a few hours of the marriage ceremony she quits her high paid job, calls off her marriage, and has sex with a stranger.   Then we move to 'Part Two: Claire'.   Claire (played by Charlotte Gainsbourg) is Justine's...

Paul Rudd's superpower (if you will) is his ability to elevate any film he is in simply by radiating his boyish charm.   So I was looking forward to this MCU outing - I thought it might be less ponderous, and quirkier, than the usual MCU fare - and as a bonus it features a heist. But it was a let-down.   The problems start with the three main characters: Scott Lang, who is chosen by Hank Pym to wear the Ant-Man suit that he invented, Pym himself (Michael Douglas) and Pym's daughter Hope.   The relationship between father and daughter should provide the film with some emotional heft, given that she blames her father for the death of her mother, but it doesn't.   Maybe it's the performances, maybe it's the screenplay.  It's all rather contrived and therefore unconvincing.  When Pym tells Hope the truth about what happened to her mother (she was trapped in the subatomic world, never to be seen again) it should be a powerful moment but all I...