Everything That Dies, Some Day Comes Back

Fun is not necessarily the first word that comes to mind when I think of Paul Thomas Anderson’s films, ‘Boogie Nights’ notwithstanding.    But right from the outset this film signals that it is going to have a comedic or satiric edge to it, with a frankly bizarre scene between a black and fearsome freedom fighter Perfidia (Teyana Taylor) and the very white Colonel Stephen J Lockjaw (played wonderfully well by an almost unrecognisable Sean Penn), in which the latter becomes sexually aroused in a ridiculous manner which had me worried about where the film might be going tone-wise. Perfidia is in a relationship with Pat (played by Leonardo DiCaprio), both of them being members of a resistance group named the French 75.  When she  gives birth to a baby girl he naturally assumes he is the father, oblivious to the fact that she has been enjoying sexual high jinks with Lockjaw.    We then get some quickfire scenes, leading to Perfidia ratting on fellow French 75 m...

I don't know which is more remarkable - this film or that it got made at all. It's about an Iranian family and the consequences for them of the protests of 2022-23. The head of the household Iman is a judge who has just been promoted which means more money and a bigger apartment.  There are a few downsides though. The first is that the job requires him to issue death sentences without him being able to exercise his own judgment.  This problem of course gets worse when the court becomes  inundated with arrests once the protests are in full swing.  Iranian judges aren't popular so he needs to keep a low profile, so low that his own two daughters don't seem to know much about what he does.  Then again they scarcely interact with him at all given that he comes home after they have gone to bed and leaves for work early in the morning.  This again is a problem that only gets worse when the protests get into their stride. Upon his promotion he is issued with a gun...

This 1964 World War II drama directed by John Frankenheimer is a beauty: lovely black-and-white photography including some great tracking shots, a gripping story (based very loosely on real events), a fine cast headed up by Burt Lancaster, Paul Scofield and Jeanne Moreau, and, for those who like that sort of thing, lots and lots of 'steam engine porn'.  The film covers similar ground to the more recent 'The Monuments Men', but is far superior in every way.   The source is a book by Rose Valland,  a  French art curator, a  member of the   French Resistance ,  and one of the most decorated women in French history.   Maybe she deserves a film in her own right?   Here she has to make do with a couple of scenes at the beginning.  (She fares even worse in 'The Monuments Men' where the screenplay makes her seem quite irrational in her behaviour.) There's an interesting moral question at the heart of both films: is great art worth...