I was a big fan of the Deadwood series but it was cancelled after three seasons without reaching any kind of resolution. This movie was made to finally give it a proper ending but it comes very, very late, and the various performers have all aged out of their roles. In fact, a few of them died in the nearly 15 intervening years. Unfortunately while the intent to finally provide closure to fans is laudable, this is simply not a good film and basically amounts to a rehash of the final season.

It’s always a real pleasure to watch cinema of a country to which we’ve had no prior exposure as it involves dipping into an entirely new culture and people. This one is not quite a purely Georgian film as its director Levan Akin and the production company are Swedish. Still the performers are all Georgian and it’s set entirely in the country so it counts. Of course it helps as well that this is a strong film that deserves the widespread acclaim it has received from critics.

This may be a David Lynch film but it’s also noted as being the film that is the most unlike his established style, so much so that people kept asking what prompted him to make it. Indeed with its opening score by Angelo Badalamenti and an aerial shot that immediately brings to mind Twin Peaks, it feels like classic Lynch but then the story proper starts with its determinedly positive message, it’s such a sharp turnaround that it’s almost enough to give you whiplash.

This is the latest of the recent spate of American Chinese films to receive critical acclaim and I admit that I have a particular fondness for them, being curious as to they might slowly shape the identities of ethnic Chinese in the United States. The Farewell is actually the most Chinese of these films yet. It does star Awkwafina who isn’t especially Chinese but the director here Lulu Wang was indeed born in China and only later moved to the US. The film itself takes place almost entirely in China, with only some brief scenes in the beginning set in the US.

Even after years at it, revisiting the great classics of cinema is a never ending affair and so here we have one of the earliest and most famous exemplars of the French New Wave movement. The director is of course Alain Resnais but I think we should also give due credit to screenwriter Marguerite Duras. I also note that the producers of the film stipulated that one of the main characters must be French and the other must be Japanese and scenes must be shot in both countries. So labouring under these restrictions, Resnais and Duras created this thoroughly unique film.