Everything That Dies, Some Day Comes Back

A few years ago I had read the source novel for this film ('Munich' by Robert Harris) but having forgotten much of the detail I was able to enjoy the story all over again. Given that most people have some idea as to what happened at the 1938 peace conference ("peace in our time" and all that), Harris has to create dramatic tension by inventing an espionage plot involving two fictional protagonists, both young men who were friends at Oxford University - Hugh, now private secretary to Chamberlain, and Paul, a German who is now a junior diplomat. Paul is part of an anti-Nazi group who is trying to get to Chamberlain a document proving that Hitler won't stop at annexing part of Czechoslovakia.  The German actor who plays Paul, Jannis Niewöhner, gives a compelling performance as someone desperate to avert the catastrophe he knows is coming if Hitler isn't stopped now. Among a strong cast Sandra Hüller appears in a minor role, two years before making a huge  impact ...

In 1976 Brian De Palma made 'Obsession', a film inspired by the Hitchcock classic, 'Vertigo', yet eight years later he directed and co-wrote this thriller, which has a similar plot device.   It's a bit odd and smacks of De Palma churning something out while he was waiting for the green light on a more personal project. Whatever the truth, this is a bizarre variation on 'Vertigo', with echoes of 'Rear Window' and  (in one short scene) 'Dial M For Murder'. The main protagonist is Jake, a struggling actor who suffers not from a fear of heights but instead claustrophobia.  He becomes obsessed with a rich woman Gloria, who he spies on at night when she cavorts half-naked in her apartment.  In ‘ Vertigo' the protagonist is played by the great James Stewart, who can engage our sympathies no matter how creepy or odd his behaviour.   Here even Stewart would struggle in the icky scene where Jake spies on Gloria trying on new underwear in a shop, an...

This 1944 Powell and Pressburger film is an oddity even by their standards. It starts off promisingly with a narrator taking us back to the time of The Canterbury Tales, before a kestrel in mid flight is replaced by a Spitfire as we are suddenly transported to the present day, reminiscent of a similar transition in '2001: A Space Odyssey' two decades later. Then we move to Chillingbourne, a small village just outside Canterbury, where we first meet the three modern day 'pilgrims' we are going to get to know: Alison (a 'land girl' assigned to a local farm), Bob (a US Sergeant) and Peter (a British Sergeant).   They arrive late at night and almost immediately Alison is attacked by a mysterious troublemaker (the 'glueman' as the villagers call him) who puts glue on her hair. We also soon meet the other main character, Mr Colpeper, the JP, who has an almost mystical obsession with the local countryside and with the continuity between past and present.   At 1...

This instalment of the franchise (a directorial debut by J.J.Abrams) has some problems.   I get that the plots in these films are never the main reason to watch them but in this case the plot is so weak it barely suffices as the skeleton on which to hang a rapid series of action set-pieces.  It revolves around a weapon codenamed 'Rabbit's Foot' which is such a MacGuffin that we never even find out what it is (or care).  In between the action there's very little time spent on characterisation or building suspense.   I didn't much care for Abrams' visual style here which often reminded me of pop videos.   And I found all the scenes involving Ethan's wife to be a bit of a drag, even those at the end when rather implausibly she takes out a couple of bad guys. And it's a shame that Keri Russell is killed off so soon since she would make a great kickass IMF agent. But there are some positives.   Firstly Philip Seymour Hoffman makes a much bigg...

Having just watched the original 1957 version I rewatched the 2007 remake, for comparison. Unsurprisingly the later film is 30 minutes longer, and more violent - which are not necessarily advantages.  In particular the transportation of Ben to Contention is now full of all manner of shenanigans - involving Ben first escaping, killing some Apache Indians, and then having to be rescued from being hung.  Although all this does detract a little from the basic story, it does allow the relationship between Ben and Dan to develop. One of the main differences between the two films is that Dan's older son William is now a major character.  He starts off openly contemptuous of his father, for being (as he sees it) such a loser.  He disobeys his father by tagging along, and this creates the opportunity for a very effective payoff at the end. Acting-wise Christian Bale is fine as Dan, although I think Van Heflin in the original is more believable as a downtrodden rancher. ...

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 :  ✓   ...

OK, be warned  - this is a heavy film.  That's partly down to the subject matter (marital abuse) but mainly it's because of its style.   For no good reason I was expecting an up-market and progressive version of 'Death Wish' except in this film it would be a female vigilante who takes down a series of bad guys, but in an entertaining way, although now that I think about it that would make for a fairly gross film. So quite rightly writer and director  Sarah Daggar-Nickson  treats the subject with the seriousness it deserves, but possibly overdoes it. The protagonist Sadie is helping women and children escape from abusive husbands or fathers, which sometimes means she has to use her martial arts training to inflict violence on the abusers.  At the same time she is trying to locate her abusive husband who killed their son and then went off-grid.  Somehow she knows he is in a particular forest, which she is scouring methodically. We also get some flas...