HEDDA no stars

 If Henrik Ibsen's masterpiece "Hedda Gabler" didn't exist there is a remote chance that I might have enjoyed Nia DaCosta's film "Hedda" which updates the play, changes the setting and the sex of one of the main characters, messes with the plot and makes Hedda bisexual but since Ibsen's masterpiece does exist there is no getting away from the fact that DaCosta's film is a travesty of the original.

It certainly looks fabulous and Tessa Thompson is a suitably sardonic Hedda while Imogen Poots works wonders with the part of Thea. Nina Hoss, on the other hand, in the Ejlert Lovborg role, ('he's' now Eileen), feels totally lost and the overall effect of the film is akin to drawing a mustache on the Mona Lisa. Of course, anyone not familiar with Ibsen's play might enjoy what is basically a high society bitchfest. Everyone else should give it a wide berth.

THE WOMAN IN CABIN 10 no stars

 "The Woman in Cabin 10" unfolds like an Agatha Christie story, the one Agatha chucked in the bin after deciding it wasn't fit for publication.The setting is a super yacht on its way to the fjords, owned by billionaire Anna and her slimy husband Guy Pearce with the usual assorted invited guests on board including investigative journalist Keira Knightley. It's Keira who stumbles on the woman in cabin 10 and is convinced she's been chucked overboard while everyone else including the crew try to convince her it's all in her mind.

A decent, if underused, cast that also includes Hannah Waddingham, David Morrissey, Art Malik, David Ajala and Gugu Mbatha-Raw just about keep us watching but the plot is paper thin. The real star of the picture is the yacht itself, just the thing for that luxury holiday you know you'll probably never be able to afford. Keira, meanwhile, goes about her investigating with the vigor of a sexy Miss Marple finding clues and meeting obstacles, including the obligatory attempt on her life, at every turn. Since the whole cast act suspiciously there's a little fun to be had in guessing whodunit, at least until about thirty minutes from the end when the killer is revealed leaving Keira with not much else to do but fight for her life and us to wonder why such talented people agreed to appear in this rubbish in the first place.

THE MASTERMIND ****

 Kelly Reichardt's most accessible film is also her finest by some distance. Set in 1970 "The Mastermind" has both the look and the sound, (a superb jazz-tinged score from Rob Mazurek), of the films of that period, ("Five Easy Pieces" comes to mind), as gormless would-be thief J.B. Mooney, (another terrific Josh O'Connor performance), plans and executes a heist of four paintings from his local Museum of Art.

Unfortunately planning and what to do next don't really figure in J.B.'s universe and, this being a Kelly Reichardt film, the heist itself fades into the background as we get to know J.B., a thirty something man who's clearly in arrested development and again, being a Reichardt film, it takes its time reaching what may seem like an anti-climax and yet I found it a joy from start to finish, unlike other Reichardt films which I found interminable.

As has so often been the case recently O'Connor carries it; his shaggy dog amiability makes him excellent company even if he does have loser tattooed on his forehead and the film is full of lovely cameos from the likes of Hope Davis and Bill Camp, (his parents), and John Magaro and Gaby Hoffmann, (the counter-culture couple he briefly hangs out with after going on the run), and as O'Connor and the film amble from place to place it perfectly evokes those seventies road movies that brightened our cinema-going back in the day. Not much happens and it's certainly not a suspense film but in its sad/funny way it's a real charmer. More like this please, Kelly.

JAY KELLY *

 "Jay Kelly", (the movie), is, for the most part, beautifully acted but highly sentimental in that 'wear-your-heart-on-your-sleeve' kind of way that redemptive Hollywood crowd-pleasers so often are and it's really quite a difficult movie to like. Has Noah Baumbach sold his soul for a mess of George Clooney's pottage? Why, I kept asking myself, did Baumbach make such a lifeless picture and why is Clooney playing such an egotistical asshole who goes on a redemptive journey to Italy to bond with his daughter? Surely Clooney the actor is nothing like Jay Kelly, (the man), so is this finally nothing but his Oscar-bait role? It might have been had Baumbach given him something to chew on but his screenplay here, (co-written with actor Emily Mortimer), is his most insipid to date.

What keeps the movie chugging along, (barely), is a superb supporting cast headed by a world-weary Adam Sandler and a more than usually subdued Laura Dern and if Jim Broadbent, Emily Mortimer, Stacy Keach, Patrick Wilson and, best of all, Billy Cruddup contribute nothing more than glorified cameos they are, at least, superb cameos and deserving of a lot more than the treacle that has been poured over them. Another 'movie about the movies' but one of least of them; something of a mess, in fact, from start to finish.

EDEN ***

 Perhaps the biggest and best surprise of the year so far and the last thing I might have expected from Ron Howard, "Eden" is fact-based although I knew nothing of the original story which naturally helped my appreciation. In 1929 the German philosopher Dr. Friedrich Ritter and his partner Dore Strauch moved to the uninhabited island of Floreana in the Galapagos where he planned to write his masterpiece on the state of the world and how he could 'heal' humanity. 

He claimed he needed and wanted solitude yet he sent letters back on passing ships building up a reputation as a visionary living in the wilderness and developing something of a following. Before long he was joined on the island by Heinz Wittmer, his wife Margaret who got pregnant there, and their son Harry. Needless to say they were not welcomed with open arms. In 1932 Ritter, Strauch and the Wittmers were joined by the so-called 'Baroness' von Wagner Bosquet and her three male companions. She planned to build a luxury hotel there and soon claimed the island for herself triggering a virtual war between the inhabitants.

Unlike previous Howard films "Eden" is both truly strange and beautiful and doesn't shy away from the horrors of life in something considerably less than a paradise. Was it madness that drove these people to act as they did or the environment or was it the environment that drove them to madness? If the film is to be believed both Ritter and the Baroness were already delusional before coming to the island and although the Wittmer's motives were questionable at least it was they and they alone who seemed to possess 'the pioneering spirit'.

Howard certainly handles difficult material with a genuine commitment and the film is superbly shot by Mathias Herndl but it's the cast who carry it. Jude Law makes for a grim and dangerous Ritter and Vanessa Kirby is suitably volatile as Strauch but it's Ana de Armas as the Baroness and in particular Sydney Sweeney as Margaret Wittmer who really own the film. They are both terrific with de Armas proving to be terrifyingly unstable and Sweeney being remarkably resolute in her resolve to do whatever she can to keep her family alive, (the scene in which she gives birth is the most frightening thing I've seen all year). "Eden" may not be an easy watch but it would be shameful if it doesn't get the recognition it deserves.

THE PASSAGE no stars

 It's hard to believe that this mediocre wartime thriller was directed by the man who made "Ice Cold in Alex", "Northwest Frontier", "The Guns of Navarone" and "Cape Fear".  J. Lee Thompson's "The Passage" boasted a starry cast, (Anthony Quinn, James Mason, Malcolm McDowell, Patricia Neal, Michael Lonsdale, Christopher Lee), all wasted playing various peasants, resistance fighters and Nazis as Quinn shepherds Mason, Neal and family over the Pyrenees pursued by McDowell's sadistic SS officer.

It's the kind of film that might have been made in the fifties but which was tarted up with large dollops of gratuitous sex and violence for the late seventies. In other words, it's not just poorly executed but thoroughly tasteless with everyone involved looking very uncomfortable, the exception being McDowell who camps it up no end and clearly relishes being the villain. One to avoid.

A WANT IN HER **

 How much private pain, if any, should we put into the public domain? You might say I stumbled on Myrid Carten's documentary "A Want in Her" almost my accident because a long time ago I knew her father Paul and have been aware of events in his life since, (his marriage, a stroke at a fairly early age), through a mutual friend but I didn't know his wife, Nuala, his daughter or anything of their lives.

Carten's film is fundamentally a study of her mother, an alcoholic who became a street drinker, (she and Paul separated some time ago), and it consists mainly of conversations between Myrid and her mother, telephone calls and 'home movies' courtesy of footage shot by a teenage Myrid on the camcorder her parents got her and it seems Myrid has been recording life and the world around her ever since.

Of course, there are other people in the film, too chiefly her two uncles, (her father Paul is never seen nor heard), and Carten's camera is like a scalpel taken to a festering wound. The Gallaghers, (Nuala's maiden name before her marriage), are shown as definitely dysfunctional but perhaps as we watch them squabble and bare their souls we could ask ourselves aren't all families a bit dysfunctional?

As a piece of film-making it certainly shows Carten's skill but I also found it deeply intrusive.  Carten herself has defended her film by saying it's cathartic and helps people in a similar situation, (showing they are not alone? But then do people in that kind of situation really believe they are alone?), but personally I found much of what Carten shows us as simply too private, too painful and something that perhaps should have been worked out within the family circle and far from the camera's gaze and in the end I think it told me more about the film-maker than the subject, (both her uncles tell her to switch the camera off on separate occasions). It ends on a positive note; Nuala is now sober but is she happy? We can only guess.

WITNESS TO MURDER ***

 One of those great little B-Movies that not many people have seen. Barbara Stanwyck, (excellent as usual), sees George Sanders, (also very good), murder a girl in the apartment opposite but no-one believes her except, of course, the killer who goes out of his way to convince the police she's insane.

Ok, so "Witness to Murder" may not have the most original of plots but it's certainly a tale well told and what it does have, as well as a bona-fide star turn from Stanwyck, is some stunningly good atmospheric black and white cinematography from the great John Alton, a very good screenplay by Chester Erskine and first-rate direction from the underrated Roy Rowland. A real treat.

HOT MILK ****

 The matter-of-factness of the relationship that springs up between Sofia, (Emma Mackey) and Ingrid, (Vicky Krieps), is what distinguishes first-time director Rebecca Lenkiewicz's feature "Hot Milk" from other recent LGBTQ+ films. It begins with the kind of casual pick-up that suggests both women's gaydars are working at full throttle. Sofia is in Spain, (though the film was shot in Greece), with her domineering mother Rose, (an absolutely superb Fiona Shaw), for a 'cure' at a clinic presided over by Gomez, (Vincent Perez), since Rose can't walk and Gomez believes her problems are psychosomatic.

Fundamentally Lenkiewicz's film is about women who have no control over their lives. Though clearly independent-minded Sofia can't break free of her mother just as Rose is unable to divest herself of her own past and while Ingrid would appear to be the film's free spirit she is also in a relationship with Matty, a black man she seems happy with but almost certainly doesn't love and the movie is a little gem. Sofia is studying Margaret Mead and like Mead, Lenkiewicz is allowing us access to these characters as if we are interlopers or just eavesdroppers in their lives.

Dramatically for a lot of the time not a lot happens. Ingrid admits to killing someone 'a long time ago' which makes her character the one most prone to melodrama and there are intimations that the unorthodox clinic and Gomez and his daughter/nurse, (Patsy Ferran), aren't quite what they seem but it's ultimately Sofia who begins to unravel, not surprising you might think given she is Rose's daughter, and the film begins to play out like a thriller you can't quite get your head around. In the end what is resolved? As Hitchcock said, it's only a movie but for at least nine-tenths of its length it's a very fine one.

THE SURFER no stars

 Are Australians really the least hospitable people on the planet or is that just in the movies? Or is just me who thinks every Australian film features nothing but psychos, serial killers and the kind of weirdos you certainly don't want to run into when you decide to go surfing at a local beauty spot which is what Nicholas Cage as "The Surfer" chooses to do in Lorcan Finnegan's movie of the same name.

Arriving at the beach with his surfboard and son in tow Cage very quickly finds that as an outsider he is not welcome but being beaten up and robbed, (of his surfboard, phone, watch and car), doesn't deter our Nick who perseveres until what, they take his life as well? As a thriller, Finnegan's film doesn't stand up because it's all too far-fetched to ring true but then is any of this true or, like in Frank Perry's "The Swimmer", is it all in Cage's imagination and if it is, do we really care?

Maybe what "The Surfer" needed was an actor less associated with being crazy on camera, something Cage has made his speciality. Maybe what this movie needed was a Ralph Fiennes, an actor we might more closely identify with, (even if I can't see Fiennes on a surfboard). Unfortunately as Cage suffers everything God and the world can throw at him he not only loses it but his audience as well. In the end this never amounts to anything other than another Crazy Cage movie, a little more original in the telling perhaps than your usual multiplex fare but also both pretentious and hard to swallow.

THE HOUSE ON CARROLL STREET **

 Enjoyable sub-Hitchcockian thriller that manages to combine Nazi war criminals with the HUAC hearings. Kelly McGillis is the uncooperative witness who starts playing amateur detective when she stumbles on some very unsavory Germans in league with one of the senate committee.  "The House on Carroll Street" was directed by Peter Yates who brings his customary level of professionalism to proceedings, (it's a period piece and the period detail is first-rate).

Of course, all amateur detectives need a professional in their corner and Kelly finds hers in Jeff Daniel's FBI man. It may fall well short of "Notorious" or indeed any other similarly themed Hitchcock movie but it's got a good plot and a fair quota of thrills and as well as Daniels and McGillis it's also got a splendidly sleazy villain in Mandy Patinkin, (the nasty committee guy) and Jessica Tandy doing her spunky old lady bit. The fine screenplay is by Walter Bernstein.

AGAINST ALL ODDS **

 As long as you don't compare "Against All Odds" with the original this remake of "Out of the Past" is a perfectly serviceable neo-noir with just enough changes to its tortuous plot to keep our interest for all of its two hour running time. A well-cast Jeff Bridges is now in the Mitchum role while James Woods is a suitably sleazy stand-in for Kirk Douglas. Rachel Ward doesn't quite cut it in the Jane Greer role but in one of those movie homages Greer is now cast as Ward's mother, the kind of rich bitch any daughter would run away from and she may be the best thing in the picture. There's also a nice turn from a then 70 year old Richard Widmark as another villain. 

If it has a fault it's that the pace is too languorous for the material nor can director Taylor Hackford resist a pretty picture, resorting every now and then to music video imagery, quite literally in a scene with Kid Creole and the Coconuts. It may be better than its reputation but if you also feel its been undervalued, considering Tourneur's version is a film-noir masterpiece that might be understandable.

I SAW THE TV GLOW *

 Another Indie movie that has garnered high praise from those bowled over by its strangeness and its refusal to conform to narrative norms, "I Saw the TV Glow" is certainly different and doesn't fit into any preconceived genre. Perhaps best described as a Young Adult Coming of Age movie rather than the 'horror' film it was sold as though unlike most 'coming-of-age' movies this one definitely errs on the side of the phantasmagorical if sadly rather pretentiously so. However, it is visually superb and often highly imaginative but what it lacks is substance. LGBTQ+ issues, while fairly central to the plot, are underdeveloped while the one-dimensional performances of the leads might only make you want to shake them out of their stupor. Good score, though.