STARVE ACRE no stars

 Nicely filmed if decidedly underwhelming slice of British folk-horror with a plot clearly influenced by both "Don't Look Now" and "The Wicker Man" as married couple Matt Smith and Morfydd Clark try to come to terms with the sudden death of their young son while living on a remote farm on the moors. It's a mostly low-key affair, strong on atmosphere if not on scares or suspense and relying too much on its over-emphatic score for effect.

Both leads are fine and Sean Gilder is good as the neighbor with a dark side but for too much of the time not a great deal happens making you think that this might have worked better at about half the length and once it moves into the realm of 'the supernatural' it really gets rather silly.

IDENTIKIT no stars

 Generally regarded as the worst picture Liz Taylor ever made "Identikit" aka "The Driver's Seat" barely saw the light of day and virtually disappeared until now but then Taylor was always a force to be reckoned with and the director Giuseppe Patroni Griffi was no slouch either so could it be as bad as its reputation? Well, frankly yes. Both the plot and the screenplay are preposterously daft but if you read it as the imaginings of a highly unstable woman, in its crazy way, perhaps it makes sense and when Liz goes over the top she's always worth a look.

On the other hand, for a film clearly dealing with mental illness, you could say it's in the worst possible taste. It plays in English with most of the supporting cast dubbed, (it's an Italian production), so maybe it suffers in translation. If there's comedy here it's mostly unintentional and God only knows what audience it was intended for or what author Muriel Spark thought of it, (she wrote the original novel). A curiosity at best.

ANORA ****

 There are very few directors who can make a scene feel both very funny and deeply moving at the same time and almost within the same frame and yet it's a knack that Sean Baker seems to have perfected over a remarkable if relatively short career. His new film "Anora" is arguably his best to date, (it won the Palme d'Or at Cannes), and like all his films it deals with people living, or perhaps just surviving, in the margins of society,

Once again a sex-worker takes central stage. She's Anora but who prefers to go by the name of Ani, an escort and lap-dancer at a club named HQ and who, because she can speak Russian, (her grandmother, she says, never learned English), is chosen as 'girl-for-the-night' for Ivan, the obscenely rich and very horny son of a Russian oligarch. They hit it off, fly to Las Vegas and before you can say 'Putin' are married.

It's then that all hell breaks loose in a magnificent extended sequence mid-movie when the heavies Ivan's parents have sent arrive demanding the marriage is annulled and it's here that Baker pulls his Antonioni or Hitchcock moment as Ivan flees and a new character, Igor, is introduced. Of course, as Ivan's physical presence is needed for the annulment everyone goes off in search of him but, unlike in "L'Avventura", he's found though you may ask yourself was he worth finding.

As our interest in Ivan wanes so our interest in Igor grows with Anora remaining all the while centre-stage and once again Baker has found the perfect actress for the role. Newcomer Mikey Madison is superb but then Baker has the uncanny ability to draw superb performances from all his actors, (Karren Karagulian is another stand-out). As I said it's very funny but also incredibly moving. For all her bravado Anora is damaged goods which the film's final scene amply demonstrates and although we leave her weeping at last she may be with someone who actually loves her and the film's end is just her beginning.

THE DIARY OF ANNE FRANK *

 George Stevens was one of the great American directors of the 1930's and early forties and some of the films he made around this time, {"Alice Adams","Swing Time", "Quality Street", "Woman of the Year" "The Talk of the Town", "The More the Merrier"), have become classics. However, it was clear that by the late '40's the rot was beginning to set in. "I Remember Mama" was heavy-handed and sentimental while the over-praised "A Place in the Sun" was a turgid version of Theodore Dreiser's 'An American Tragedy'.

Momentary redemption came in the form of "Shane", still one of the greatest westerns ever made but "Giant" was an elephantine version of Edna Ferber's novel only partly redeemed by James Dean's performance. Nevertheless, it won Stevens his second Oscar as Best Director and then in 1959 he turned his attention to "The Diary of Anne Frank", adapted not from the diary itself but from the Broadway play of the same name. The result was cloying nobility of the worst kind, reducing the tragedy of the Holocaust to the level of a cheap Hollywood entertainment.

Shot in Black and White Cinemascope, (totally the wrong format for the intimacy required), it was still handsomely photographed but very unevenly cast. An over-aged Millie Perkins made for an insipid Anne while Shelley Winters chewed the scenery all the way to an Oscar, (which she later donated to the Anne Frank Foundation). Ed Wynn, on the other hand, managed once again to steal all of his scenes though Stevens dragged the film out to an interminable three hours. Worse was still to come, of course, when Stevens decided to tackle the life of Christ with "The Greatest Story Ever Told". In 1970 he made a late gem with "The Only Game in Town" but by then it was too late.

GODSPELL no stars

 Never having seen this on stage I must admit director David Greene has done a very good job of opening up "Godspell" for the big screen. The question is, was it worth opening up in the first place? Like "Jesus Christ, Superstar" it's another hippie rock musical based on the life of Christ but whereas "...Superstar" stayed reasonably close to the 'facts' as we know them and adhered fairly closely to biblical locations this, like "Hair, transfers Jesus and his disciples to contemporary New York, turning them into hippies.

This might have worked had its score been on the same level as Andrew Lloyd Webber's classic or if it had a director of the caliber of Milos Forman but here the score is largely insipid and mostly forgettable and quite frankly, not the kind of thing to turn either a hippie or a Christian on and it's unlikely that this thoroughly banal film will convert anyone. In fact, if you are a follower of Jesus, after seeing "Godspell",  you might actually start looking the other way.

CONSEQUENCES no stars

 "Consequences" is well directed by first-time director Darko Stante and mostly well acted by its young cast but it is also thoroughly unpleasant and more than something of a downer. Andrej, (Matej Zemljic), is a young thug who winds up in a reform school where he falls in with Zele, (Timon Sturbej), and his group of bullies but Andrej is also secretly gay and it doesn't take Zele long to figure that out and use it to his advantage.

This is a Slovenian coming-of-age movie set in a world of violence and full of characters with no redeeming qualities and where, in view of everything else that is happening, the LGBTQ+ angle is spurious to say the least, Zemljic may be physically attractive but his performance carries no conviction and it's left to the thoroughly nasty Sturbej to walk away with the picture. Still, there are better ways to pass the time.

BAD BOYS **

 A prison movie with a difference. As the title suggests, "Bad Boys" is set in a reform school and while the boys are certainly 'bad' legally, morally and in the eyes of society the film's message is that they are the products of their environment. Sean Penn is the most recent inmate, a bad kid with a record who, during a botched robbery, accidentally kills the younger brother of a gang member. Of course, we know that while Penn acts tough he's sensitive at heart so what has to go down for him to redeem himself?

All the usual prison movie cliches are here albeit in junior form but director Rick Rosenthal handles them with considerable ease and manages to draw excellent performances from his mostly young cast. Penn, in an early role, shows real promise and young Eric Gurry is very good as his smart, street-wise cell mate. It's hardly ground-breaking but as genre pictures go it's definitely well above average.

HIT MAN ***

 Thanks in large part to an absolutely brilliant performance from Glen Powell, Richard Linklater's new comedy "Hit Man" turns out to be one of his very best films. It's something of a 'true' story since the character Powell plays, Gary Johnson, really existed. He's a university professor who also finds himself working for the New Orleans police department pretending to be a hit man so as to entrap potential killers who don't want to do the killing themselves.

It's totally far-fetched but who says that even 'true' stories have to be believable ; as a certain Mr. Hitchcock said, 'it's only a movie' and this 'screwball-rom-com-neo-noir' certainly is no documentary and as a genre piece it hits all the right buttons while still managing to appeal to the usual Linklater aficionados. Chuck in a star-making performance from Adria Arjona as the femme fatale that Johnson falls for and what's not to like.

POSSESSION no stars

 My Turkey of the Year back in 1981 I've naturally avoided watching "Possession" again during the last 40 plus years but then it has built up something of a cult critical reputation and Isabelle Adjani did win both the Best Actress prize at Cannes and the Cesar for her performance so perhaps I was wrong? Let's just say that it's definitely an acquired taste and one that I didn't have back in the day. Now, having seen it again, I can safely say it's a taste I have yet to acquire nor one that I want to.

Back then I thought it was just a 'bad' movie but now it's almost like a parody of a bad movie, part horror film and part send-up of those deeply serious Eastern European or Nordic sagas of failed marriages, shot in English, (big mistake thought I'm sure subtitles wouldn't work any better), and appallingly acted by both Adjani, (Best Actress? What were the Cannes jury thinking of?), and Sam Neill. I can understand it having a cult reputation in the 'bad movie' stakes but I certainly can't understand the critical praise that's been heaped on it over the years. Yes, forty years on it still stinks to high heavens!

THAT THEY MAY FACE THE RISING SUN ****

 Joe, (Barry Ward), and Kate, (Anna Bederke), have returned from London to rural Ireland. He writes, perhaps a novel, perhaps not, while she sketches and makes little decorative pieces from twigs and bits of wood. The rest of the time they simply try to manage the small farm holding on which they live, mostly with the help of kindly neighbors. The seasons pass and nothing out of the ordinary happens; one neighbor marries and another dies and we simply observe the small details that make up these people's lives.

Based on John McGahern's novel, Pat Collins' really quite extraordinary and quite extraordinarily moving film "That They May Face the Rising Sun" could best be described as Ireland's answer to the films of Ermanno Olmi or maybe the Taviani Brothers. Gorgeously shot on location in County Galway this is one of the greatest of films about rural life and the day-to-day existence of people who have nothing and yet who want for nothing.

Director Collins is fundamentally a documentary film-maker and he brings a documentarian's eye to bear on proceedings here drawing extraordinarily naturalistic performances from his cast. Veteran Irish actors like Sean McGinley, Lalor Roddy, Ruth McCabe and Brendan Conroy are doing perhaps their best work here and it's hard to believe that Phillip Dolan as one kindly neighbor has never acted in a film before. Leads Barry Ward and Anna Bederke are also superb in their quietude and their empathy, outsiders who nevertheless feel like the backbone of their community, magnets drawing others to them for help or just for a listening ear. A masterpiece that simply has to be seen.

AFIRE ****

 I still tend to think of Christian Petzold as a 'new' director though he has made 10 feature films in the past 23 years. German born, you might say he's an art-house director who makes commercial films or at least films that are accessible to a commercial audience but which are intelligent and more cerebral than anything you are likely to see in your average multiplex.

"Afire" begins and remains something of a chamber piece as holiday-makers Leon, (a superbly sullen Thomas Schubert), and Felix, (Langston Uibel), are forced to share their holiday home in a forest on the coast with Nadja, (Paula Beer), a friend of the owner who happens to be Felix's mother. Initially not a lot happens as the two men bicker over work assignments, (Thomas is a writer and Felix is a photographer), and household chores while Nadja is having rather loud sex in an adjoining room while the forest fires that have been plaguing the area move closer.

Petzold's genius is for taking the banalities of everyday life and building them into a series of little dramas helped considerably by the brilliant performances of his small cast and by not giving too much away. Are Leon and Felix lovers or just very good friends and who is Nadja and why is she even there and is Devid, (Enno Trebs from "The White Ribbon"), Nadja's summer fling or something more?

Petzold only lets us get to know his characters gradually just like we might get to know them in life and they turn out to be affectionate and funny people in what is really an affectionate and funny film but also a very sad one. Life may deal us a bad hand but we make the most of it just like the people in Petzold's lovely, if ultimately tragic, new film.

THE PROUD ONES **

 As Dilys Powell said, there are no bad westerns; there are great westerns, there are good westerns and there are just plain westerns and "The Proud Ones" is certainly a good one. The director was Robert D. Webb, hardly an auteur but a decent jobbing director and this thoroughly old-fashioned oater, nicely shot in Cinemascope, starred Robert Ryan, (the good guy), Jeffrey Hunter, (not quite the bad guy he first appears to be), and Virginia Mayo, (somewhat wasted as the girl in love with Ryan), while the fine supporting cast includes Walter Brennan, Arthur O'Connell and Robert Middleton, (the real bad guy), and thanks to an above-average screenplay from Edmund H. North and Joseph Petracca and highly watchable work from its highly watchable cast it's consistently enjoyable. As Dilys said, there are no bad westerns.

TOTEM ****

 Tona is dying and this is the day of his birthday and his family are holding a party for him. Lila Aviles' stunning debut feature "Totem" observes the events of the day in almost forensic detail and how they impact on all the participants; Tona's father, his sisters, his extended family and friends, his carer and most of all on his young daughter, Sol, who doesn't know her father is dying yet senses it nevertheless.

There's nothing sentimental nor particularly dramatic in Aviles' film. It's as if she and her camera just dropped by to record the events of just one day in these people's lives and what happens is both funny and moving like life itself. All the performances are superb and Naima Senties is often quite extraordinary as Sol. On the strength of this one film Aviles would seem to have quite a future ahead of her.