Directed by Jafar Panahi and written by the acclaimed filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami, the Iranian picture, The White Balloon (2005), is talky but brilliant.  At the center here is the childish desire for a chubby, not a skinny, goldfish for an Iranian New Year’s celebration.  A childish desire, this, because in fact it belongs to a child—seven-year-old Razieh (Aida Mohammed-Khani)—who lives with her parents and her brother Ali (Mohsen Khalifi) in Tehran.

Rezieh’s hard-working mother un-eagerly gives Razieh money with which to buy the goldfish, but the girl loses the money down a grate.  Much of the film concerns the efforts of Razieh and her brother, aware of financial hardship, to retrieve the 500-toman note.

Though adorable, Razieh, like Ali, is being shaped by the prejudices of her society.  She will probably never respect, as Ali does not, a man like the one she encounters and talks with:  a non-Tehranian army conscript with an accent.  And she will probably never smile on an Afghan person like the boy who sells balloons on the Tehran streets for a living, who, indeed, offers the kind of white balloon found enticing by Ali.  But Ali never comments on the balloon since it is an Afghan boy who is selling it.  It is clear that the film is saying that Iranian society is one of prejudice and loneliness—even that it is damaging: e.g., Ali may have been hit in the face by his father.

Years after seeing The White Balloon at the theatre, surprisingly I saw it for free on YouTube.  Perfectly directed (with many a tight shot) and cleverly photographed, it is about children or childhood only on its surface.  It is beautifully subtle.

(In Farsi with English subtitles)

The 1933 British movie, The Private Life of Henry VIII, by Alexander Korda, ushers us into the awful sphere wherein Anne Boleyn (Merle Oberon) is executed, but, avoiding all genuine unpleasantness, the picture doesn’t make this very troubling.  The film is pure tragicomedy, yielding, nonetheless, a rueful message about marriage:  it is madness.  Little is said about Henry VIII’s marriage to Anne B., but what follows are dismaying details about the other unions with imperfect women, married to an imperfect man.  Charles Laughton (as Henry) is better here than he is in Rembrandt.  He is humbler, savvier, as well as commanding and rivetingly passionate.  Screenwriters Lajos Biro and Arthur Wimperis did quite well with drama and wit.

An English gangster, Jack Carter (Michael Caine), seeks to learn the truth about his brother’s death by investigating a rival mob.

Long before there was the British film Croupier, there was the British film Get Carter (1971), directed with flair by Mike Hodges.  Both films are harsh and violent, the Hodges concoction being rather uglier because it is mildly sexist.  I say this not because three female characters in the movie are plainly corrupt, but due to its suggestion that all that is needed to pacify a woman outraged by shady behavior in her home is an offer of copulation.

Caine is disturbingly spot-on, cooly potent.  Get Carter‘s acting is excellent.  Though it’s a movie hard to love, it is easy to respect in many of its particulars.  It even seems to tell us that if you’re a gangster, somehow you’re going to get it in the neck.

As the International Movie Database on the internet describes it, “A news reporter looks into who has been anonymously leaving large cash gifts on random doorsteps in New York.”  These are accurate words about the premise of the new picture, Good Sam (2019), in which the news reporter is enacted, solidly, by good-looking Tiya Sircar (who has numerous lines).

Conventionally directed by Kate Melville, this is middlebrow semi-drama, but what Netflix original film is not middlebrow?  At least it’s appreciably smart in its feel-goodism.  Too, it is very good-natured and free of coarse language as it raises the theme of kindly giving when nothing is expected in return.

Ivan Szabo’s Sunshine is a film I criticized, but not because of its deeply Jewish content.  In today’s America there are foolish people who would object to this content, as we are led to believe after reading such articles as David Marcus‘s “Skyrocketing Attacks on NYC Jews Ignored Because of Race” (from the Federalist website).  The information is all in the title.  Anti-Semitic violence (against Orthodox Jews) has increased primarily in Brooklyn, and many of the culprits are black and Hispanic men.  The ones ignoring it are, of course, members of a left-leaning media.

For the record, reality is darker than most leftists realize.  It’s only a matter of time before Hollywood refuses to make a film like Sunshine.