Everything That Dies, Some Day Comes Back

Somehow this 2019 film went under my radar despite it being right in my wheelhouse: a political thriller based on a real-life case of a whistle blower in the runup to the Iraq War. The whistle blower in question was Katherine Gun, a translator at GCHQ, and she leaked a memo which revealed that the US and UK governments were looking to dig up dirt on some UN delegates who were likely to vote against a vital UN resolution. She is played by Keira Knightley who gives the best performance I can remember by her.  She is ably supported by a fine cast, including Matt Smith, Matthew Goode and Rhys Ifans as Observer journalists, and especially Ralph Fiennes as Gun's defence lawyer when she is charged under the Official Secrets Act. I guess you could criticise it for being a little predictable but it has the merit of being an accurate depiction of a brave action which might have saved a lot of lives.  And I was certainly on tenterhooks as to how it would all end. RATING :  ✓   ...

My main reason for watching this film was to see Jodie Foster's performance.  Her recent film appearances have been few and far between, so I welcomed the opportunity to see her in a performance that garnered her an Oscar nomination (her first since 1994). However her character doesn't have a lot to do, and I came away more impressed with the lead performance of Annette Bening, and a supporting performance by Rhys Ifans. It's the kind of film that wouldn't normally appeal to me much, a sports drama of sorts about a real person, Diana Nyad, and her remarkable feat of endurance: in her early '60s she became the first person to swim the 110 miles from Cuba to Florida. Despite Bening's compelling performance, I always feel uneasy about celebrating someone's monomaniacal commitment to doing something which is, when you come down to it, essentially pointless.  But the film could be said to be a celebration of the human spirit and I  did find the conclusion of the ...