Category Archives: Movies 2026

Jean Valjean comes over as the real good guy in the musical Les Mis but in this backstory, which actually appears in the original book, he’s no good guy. It’s 1815 and he has just been released from prison. Penniless, homeless and marked by his yellow convict passport, he is treated with suspicion by the villagers of Digne. He is taken in by Monseigneur Bienvenu, who lives with his sister and servant. He is a violent, frightening presence and he takes advantage of the opportunity to steal the silverware, only to escape punishment when the Monseigneur claims that he had given it to him.

This story was actually reprinted as ‘The Bishop’s Candlesticks’ in an anthology of children’s stories that my mother had before me and my husband said that he read it as part of a school reader when he was a kid. With its religious overtones and rather heavyhanded ethics, I don’t know that it would make it as children’s reading today (to say nothing of the language level). Although it’s an engaging exploration of forgiveness and redemption, which a child would benefit from, this is not a children’s film, with a fairly graphic depiction of imprisonment and menace.

My rating: 4/5

Seen because: it was a preview for the upcoming French Film Festival. It has English subtitles.

Filmed clandestinely in Iran (as the director Jafar Pahani had already been imprisoned for criticizing the Iranian regime) this movie somehow manages to combine farce with political commentary. Vahid, an ethnic Azerbaijani auto mechanic, recognizes a man who brought his car to his garage, as the man who had tortured him in an Iranian jail. He kidnaps the man, and is ready to kill him, when he starts to have doubts over whether it is the right man or not. His torturer had a prosthetic leg, and this man did too- but was he the same man? He carts his hostage to various people who had been in jail with him and who had suffered at the hands of the same torturer, and most of them, too, are not absolutely sure. But if they kill an innocent man, doesn’t it make them as bad as the torturer?

This is an excellent movie. In the last minutes of the film, I could hardly breathe. It won the Palme D’Or at Cannes as well as a special award at the American Film Institute, and was shortlisted for many other awards. It’s good.

My rating: 4.5/5

Seen because: I enjoyed his earlier film Taxi and I knew that this one had won many awards. I saw it as part of our Second Saturday Sinema with my Melbourne Unitarian Universalist Fellowship friends. Seen at Palace Westgarth.

SPOILER-ish

It’s just as well that I usually (not always) keep note of films that I have seen, because it was only by consulting this blog that I discovered that I had in fact seen the first Knives Out movie, just as my husband said I had. And it seems that I enjoyed it, too, just as I enjoyed this third movie in the series. As with the first movie, it has a brilliant cast including Daniel Craig as detective Benoit Blanc, along with Josh O’Connor, Glenn Close, Josh Brolin and Andrew Scott).

Josh O’Connor plays ex-boxer turned priest Jud Duplenticy who is assigned to the parish of Our Lady of Perpetual Fortitude after punching another deacon. There he finds a small congregation in the thrall of the vindictive and thundering Monsignor Jefferson Wicks (Josh Brolin), who had taken over the parish from his grandfather. (Not quite sure how these familial links work with a supposedly celibate priesthood?) When Monsignor Wicks is found murdered in a small anteroom adjoining the altar, in full view of the congregation, which of the misfit congregation could have done it? Or was it Fr Dupenticy himself, even though the congregation could see him sitting there beside the altar?

Actually, I guessed who the murderer was early in the movie, which is most unusual for me. However, I was glad that the end of the movie tied up the convoluted plot neatly. Good fun.

My rating: 4 stars (out of 5) And it’s on Netflix already!