Leonardo DiCaprio is a former revolutionary searching for his daughter in Paul Thomas Anderson’s exhilaratingly audacious counterculture epic
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Paul Thomas Anderson’s countercultural drama-thriller One Battle After Another, inspired by Thomas Pynchon’s novel Vineland, is a formal enigma that has perplexed, provoked and entranced, and the year ends with no definitive consensus as to its exact meaning. A rare naysayer is screenwriter and film-maker Paul Schrader, who commented tersely online: “Film-making at level A+, but try as I might I couldn’t muster up an ounce of empathy for Leo DiCaprio or Sean Penn. I kept waiting for them to die.”

But that’s why the film is gripping: there is indeed no empathy for its two unlovely leading males, and their mortality and vulnerability has a kind of unwinding, entropic energy. They are heading for disaster. And yes, the film-making is A+ or A++; it is supercharged with pleasure at its own audacity and expertise. It is moviemaking with a late-Kubrick elegance and a knowing theatricality, culminating in an exhilarating but also eerily strange car chase on an undulating freeway. This isn’t the same as style without substance, but it’s certainly a movie that can’t help but promote its self-aware style to equal status with its subject matter: a petty-tyrannical America of the present and future, and those who will grow old in resisting it from within.

Rejoining Erasmus should just be a first step – as the economic evidence piles up, the need for closer ties with Europe could not be clearer

Month by month, Labour is bringing us closer to Europe. This week, the UK announced it is rejoining the Erasmus+ youth exchange programme. This will open the door beyond the many young people who attend university – its remit includes FE students, apprentices, and youth and school groups. A whoop of excitement greeted the announcement, with opportunities for those involved in education, training, culture and sport, and a commitment to maximise take-up by disadvantaged young people. Widening experience, encouraging adventure: Erasmus+ may help cure Britain’s monolingual handicap and the catastrophic decline in language courses. Last year in the UK, less than 3% of A-levels were in languages.

This all eludes Europhobes such as Andrew Neil, who posted on X that “extra taxes now being inflicted on working people will be used to finance some ‘study’ in Barcelona for gap-year yahs from affluent families”.

Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist

Ousmane Dembélé becomes our seventh winner as he beats Lamine Yamal into second and Vitinha into third on our list of the best players on the planet

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We should have stayed in bed, recovering. Instead, we ploughed ahead with our cliff-jumping boat tour and found ourselves stranded in choppy waters …

It was probably the fish stew. We got it from a street food vendor on Ko Phi Phi, Thailand’s most party-centric island, and I remember it being absolutely delicious. Fifteen hours later, my wife and I were lying on the bare boards of a long-tail boat, rocking gently in the waves, huddled together under a blanket and regretting every single choice we’d made that Christmas Day. As the song says, we can smile about it now, but at the time it was terrible.

Thailand is a fantastic place to go for Christmas: it’s hot, the people are lovely, and there are plenty of fairy lights but not too much Cliff Richard. Ko Phi Phi is more of an acquired taste – it’s the sort of place you buy heavily diluted vodka by the bucket – but we were very much making the best of it. The night we arrived, in 2014, we watched a bunch of farangs (foreigners) flail away at each other in oversized boxing gloves, some of them chugging beers between rounds. For the big day, we decided to push the boat out: the limestone rock formations around the islands are a popular spot for deep-water soloing, where you climb up a cliff face with no rope and then leap (or fall) into the clear blue sea below. We hired a guide, had a light supper and hyped ourselves up for an unforgettable festive morning.

Red chicory leaves with blue cheese, honey and walnuts; a big jug of caramelised swede and honey soup; a turkey wellington with red wine gravy, cranberry relish and a hispi and sprout slaw; and a showstopping yule log to finish

Christmas lunch in my family is about as traditional as it comes, and is pretty much the same every year no matter who’s house we’re at (including at least three monumental rows about things that happened years ago). Everyone chips in, too, even the kids – well, they’ve got to earn their dinner somehow. Rather than shooing them off to watch cartoons while the adults do all the work, we make sure they’re hands-on in the kitchen alongside us, especially with the annual yule log. Not only is this a valuable life lesson, it also helps develop and strengthen our family culture. The children get to share in that sense of pride at a job well done, too, and everyone feels a part of the occasion. And isn’t that what Christmas is all about?

My heart skipped a beat. I felt quite light-headed. Finally, the moment I dreamed of had arrived

I can’t remember the first time I played the lottery – I was probably quite young. I’m an optimist. If you don’t play, you can’t win, and somebody has to win the big prize. Why not me? To me, winning would mean freedom – leave my job, have no debts and do exactly as I pleased.

I live in Norway, and every few weeks I’d buy a lottery ticket. I’d occasionally win 100 kroner (£7.50), which just covered the cost of the ticket. It kept the dream alive, though.

Ukrainian leader welcomes move and says it is critical Russian assets, which are not part of the deal, remain frozen

• EU leaders agree €90bn loan for Ukraine but without use of frozen Russian assets

In his first comments on Ukraine, Putin swiftly blames Kyiv for the continuing war, saying “they are basically refusing to finish this conflict via peaceful means” (whatever that means from the literally invading party).

But he says there are “some signals … indicating they are willing to engage in some type of dialogue.”

Exclusive: Labour says Nigel Farage’s party should swiftly condemn Chris Parry after further comments emerge

A Reform UK mayoral candidate who said David Lammy should “go home to the Caribbean” has suggested that at least eight other politicians from minority ethnic backgrounds do not have a primary loyalty towards the UK.

Nigel Farage’s party has so far refused to condemn Chris Parry, a retired naval rear admiral who has been picked to contest the now-postponed Hampshire and the Solent mayoral election for the party, over his comment about Lammy, the deputy prime minister.

Claudio Neves Valente, who was found dead in a storage facility, also killed an MIT professor at his Boston-area home

A man suspected of killing two and wounding nine others at Brown University, and then killing a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor, has been found dead in a New Hampshire storage facility where he had rented a unit, officials said.

Claudio Neves Valente, 48, a Portuguese national and a former Brown student, was found dead on Thursday evening from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, Oscar Perez, the Providence police chief, said at a news conference. Perez said as far as investigators know, the suspect acted alone.’

Huge archive – set to shed fresh light on Epstein’s misdeeds – legally obliged to be released before midnight deadline

Speculation surrounding the affairs of Jeffrey Epstein is expected to reach a defining moment of revelation on Friday with the much-anticipated publication of files relating to the disgraced late financier and sex trafficker.

After months of delay and stalling, the Trump administration is legally obliged to publish a massive archive of documents that could shine fresh light on Epstein’s misdeeds and his connections with key public figures, including Donald Trump himself.