Pomona Rewind

Paul Thomas Anderson is one of those directors who could devise a movie about a tax return and make it magical. Every three to five years when a film of his comes out, he garners considerable critical acclaim and his picture seems to be a big awards season contender. Yet Hollywood has never awarded the insanely talented 51 year old an Oscar. Any director would bite his or her arm off to have at least one film as good as 'Hard Eight,' 'Boogie Nights,' 'Magnolia,' 'Punch Drunk Love,' 'There Will Be Blood,' 'The Master,' 'Inherent Vice' and 'Phantom Thread'. And yet, just like Orson Welles, Alfred Hitchcock, Sidney Lumet, Quentin Tarantino Stanley Kubrick, Robert Altman and Spike Lee, it seems the Academy Awards are reluctant to recognise his considerable skill. Critical expectations are usually sky high for an Anderson movie and that has certainly been true for 'Licorice Pizza' - a coming of age tale about a teenager

Season Five of 'Peaky Blinders' finds Steven Knight back in very ambitious territory. After a nicely judged fourth series which focused on the basic dynamics of a classic gangland feud, Knight risks it all by going back to melding together the Shelby's gangland dealings with their role in global historical events. (SPOILERS ALERT!!) Having seen off the might of Luca Changretta by turning his Mafia associates against him, Cillian Murphy's Tommy Shelby has taken on the cloak of respectability by becoming a Labour MP. But it's not high office he has his sights set on. It is stopping the rising tide of fascism in Europe and specifically on Britain's own doorstep. Tommy being Tommy, though, he doesn't do it the simple way. Season Five begins with the Shelbys, though, under threat from a gang calling themselves the Angels of Retribution. The Peaky Blinders send Aidan Gillen's Aberama Gold and Daryl McCormack's Isiah Jesus along to deal with them. Arthur&#

If there was ever one motto 'Peaky Blinders' needed to take to heart going into Series Four, it would be "back to basics". In a bid to impress audiences with the scale of his ambition for the third series , Steven Knight cooked up an elaborate meal involving a jewellery heist, an Italian vendetta, a dodgy Catholic priest, a cursed sapphire and a plot about Russians on either side of the revolutionary divide. But instead of dazzling the audience, it confused viewers and proved hard to swallow. Things were undoubtedly much better when all Cillian Murphy's Tommy Shelby had to worry about was trying to outwit Sam Neill's Chief Inspector Campbell . Sometimes the best dishes really do turn out to be the least complex. And so Knight has pared back the international politics and concentrated on a good old fashioned gangster vendetta for Series Four, pitting the Peaky Blinders against the might of the US Mafia. Oscar winner Adrien Brody is the latest star to grace the

After two series of battling Sam Neill's twisted Chief Inspector Campbell, Series Three finds the Peaky Blinders with much bigger fish to fry. After encountering Winston Churchill and being spared a bullet in the back of the head from the Ulster Volunteer Force, Cillian Murphy's Tommy Shelby begins his third adventure in a state of marital bliss. He marries the love of his life, Anabelle Wallis' Grace Burgess but not even a wedding can take place without Birmingham's infamous cloth capped gang spilling some blood. This time it's Paul Anderson's Arthur who does the nasty deed, killing a Russian who appears to have infiltrated the wedding and made the mistake of giving the gang the wrong password. Jan Bijvoet's Archduke Romansov, a refugee from the Russian Revolution, is impressed and gifts Tommy a sapphire for killing the man. The Archduke also strikes a business deal with Tommy, introducing him to Gaite Jansen's Grand Duchess Tatiana Petrovna. Lurking i