Father Mother Sister Brother (2025): review: 8/10

 *

Three films, inter-related, by Jim Jarmusch, set in a country town in the USA, in Dublin and Paris, and featuring Tom Waits, Adam Driver and Cate Blanchett among others. 

The film concern relationships, small deceits, hypocrisies, and dishonesty across generations. All feature cars as visual devices, homes in states of dilapidation, as upper-middle class showcases or for sale.

The least satisfactory of these is Father, featuring Tom Waits and Adam Driver: unsatisfactory because of the clumsy performances both from Waits and Driver. Waits really is a dreadful ham.

The film suggests, with the Paris section, that only with the death  of their parents, can children live freely from a parental web of half-truths.

The film is beautifully shot.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008): review: 7.5/10

A foundling, born with the bodily condition of an old man, becomes physically younger as the years pass. He is captivated by a dancer.

This is an elegantly filmed fable with striking effects and much to divert, but little depth, reminiscent of Forest Gump in it's large scale and ingenuity.