Everything That Dies, Some Day Comes Back

The Wikipedia summary makes clear that this is a polarising film - either you think it's a clever homage to Agatha Christie's 'And Then There Were None', or it's a ludicrous rip-off.   There was only one way for me to to find out where I sat on this spectrum. Over the opening credits we learn that Malcolm is a convicted mass murderer who is about to be executed, and we meet Dr Mallick (Alfred Molina), his psychiatrist. We also learn that because of some last-minute new evidence, an emergency hearing has been arranged in the middle of the night, for the judge in the case to decide whether to stay Malcolm's execution. After this preliminary scene-setting we then switch to an isolated motel where ten characters take shelter from a torrential downpour which has rendered many local roads impassable.   Then one by one they start to get murdered.   Here I had a minor niggle: together with the dodgy motel manager we have eleven potential victims rather than the te...

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...

Although this 2005 film by James Mangold only covers Johnny Cash’s life up to the late 1960s it still manages to include all the familiar tropes that we expect from a music biopic: the early struggle to break through, followed by meteoric success, a broken marriage, drugs and other temptations on the road. The result is that I never got emotionally invested in the story.  In fact my favourite scene was a small and rather inconsequential one early on when Cash is auditioning to the legendary Sam Phillips (owner of Sun Records). After that I was entertained OK but nothing more.  Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon do a fine job of imitating Cash and June Carter on stage but their relationship offstage, which is the main emotional focus of the film, never achieved lift-off for me.  Ultimately I didn’t buy Phoenix as Cash, nor did I find him particularly engaging.  I would guess that the real Johnny Cash had presence and charm to spare but that didn’t come across to me...