THE BRUTALIST ****

 The cinematic equivalent of those great door-stopper novels certain authors feel obliged to write from time to time, Brady Corbet's "The Brutalist" has a great deal to recommend it even if it does fall short of greatness, (a dip into melodrama slightly takes the edge off things near the end), and for a movie that runs for 3 hours and 35 minutes, (with a self-imposed 15 minute intermission), it fairly gallops along. Of course, it also leaves itself open to accusations of pretentiousness; this is a big movie with big ambitions, shot in 70 mm and in VistaVision.

It is the story of Laszlo Toth, (Adrien Brody in a career best performance), a Jewish Hungarian architect and a Holocaust survivor who, when the film opens, finds himself in America where he encounters the excessively rich Harrison Lee Van Buren, (Guy Pearce in another career best performance), who commissions him to design a building in memory of Van Buren's mother and basically that's it but if you think this might be just a long, boring film about buildings, think again. There is a depth and a depth of feeling to Corbet's film, (which he co-wrote with Mona Fastvold). rare in what we might describe as commercial cinema.

Toth has his demons and he carries them with him wherever he goes. He's an alcoholic and a drug-addict with a fierce temper and as it turns out those demons also make themselves manifest in the people around him and in particular in the man who might have been his savior. Pearce's Van Burren is a monster and it is his treatment of Toth that ultimately draws the film into the realms of melodrama. His wife, (Felicity Jones, very good), whom he left  behind in Europe, when she does finally arrive, (after the intermission), turns out to be a lot tougher than she looks and maybe not quite as simpatico to Toth as he would have hoped. In other words, life seems to have dealt him a bad deal.

For the most part Corbet treats all of this with the straightest of faces and a considerable amount of technical skill. This is an epic of the old-fashioned kind; long, sprawling and perhaps biting off more than it can chew. Toth is a 20th Century Job and his ills do tend to become wearying after awhile and somewhat circuitous. There were times when I thought, haven't we been here before; just give the guy a break. And yet it's never miserabilist; there's a streak of black humor running through the film and it does provide a sense of closure. In fact, this is just the kind of film the Oscar-givers love.

LONGLEGS no stars

 This hugely overpraised horror film sacrifices suspense and shocks for a nonsensical plot about a serial killer though it would appear it's the Devil who takes centre stage. It says he gets the best tunes but it's unlikely any of his tunes here will chart. "Longlegs" is nothing more than a pretentious and self-consciously arty horror movie with a woefully one-dimensional performance from Maika Monroe as the FBI agent on Longleg's trail.

If the film has a plus side you could say it's very attractively photographed and the casting of an almost unrecognizable Nicholas Cage as the serial killer gives the film a certain OTT liveliness but the psuedo-supernatural element and all that business with the dolls scuppers the film. Whatever happened to the good old bad old days of the likes of "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" when serial killers were serial killers and devil dolls were devil dolls and never the twain met. Mostly a load of codswallop.

THE GIRL WITH THE NEEDLE **

 Horror movies come in all shapes and sizes and there's no denying that black and white Nordic art-house movies, by their very 'look', can often be classed as horror movies particularly when set in the past and dealing with what we might call 'grim' subject matter.  Magnus von Horn's "The Girl with the Needle" qualifies on all accounts from the superimposed faces and silent screams of its pre-credit sequence to its attempted abortion with a needle in a Turkish bath and that's before we even get close to the film's real horrors; the ghost of Bergman is never  far away.

Karoline, (Vic Carmen Sonne,  excellent), is a young seamstress whose husband comes back from the Great War with most of his face missing while she's pregnant by her employer who drops her like a hot potato. She is saved from a botched abortion by Dagmar, (a terrific Trine Dyrholm), who seems to be running some kind of black market adoption agency and who takes Karoline under her wing but this so-called act of kindness isn't what it seems.

The horrors inherent here are the horrors of trying to survive in a cruel world in which survival doesn't seem like an option. This is the grimmest of morality plays in which every image feels like a slap in the face. It might look amazing but as we come to realize just how terrible the actions of these people are the further we withdraw from them and from the movie itself. As I said, horror movies come in all shapes and sizes.

MASCARPONE *

 So what have we here? "Mascarpone" is an Italian LGBTQ+ remake of "An Unmarried Woman", (well, perhaps not but we are in the same ballpark), as Antonio is dumped by his husband and partner of 12 years. For the rest of the movie he's basically having sex with a number of handsome hunks presumably in the hope that one of them will turn out to be Mr. Right. What little spare time he has he spends baking and looking for the perfect Mascarpone recipe until finally he realizes....

Well, that would be telling, wouldn't it. It's obvious the attractive cast were picked for their looks and not their acting abilities though the screenplay does provide a few laugh-out-loud moments. On the one hand, too explicit for mass consumption and on the other too coy, (no full frontals), for its intended audience so it's unlikely to find a market. Not bad exactly, just a bit ho-hum.

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!