THE ROSE GARDEN **

 Yet another film on the legacy of the Holocaust. Maximilian Schell is the concentration camp survivor on trial for attacking the former commandant of the camp in which his sister was murdered and it's a great performance. There's fine work too from Liv Ullmann as the woman who takes on his defence, Hanns Zischler as the prosecutor and, perhaps surprisingly, Peter Fonda as Ullmann's ex-husband who happens to sway to the right.

Dutch director Fons Rademakers' "The Rose Garden", filmed in English, has its faults, (would a woman as supposedly intelligent as Ullmann really leave her young daughter alone overnight after their apartment had been attacked), but unlike other similar movies it's not exploitative nor is it overly melodramatic, at least not until it pulls its 'surprise' witness out of the hat. Indeed it's chillingly level-headed throughout, perhaps too much so; the flashback at the climax would have been better described rather than shown. A minor film then but both heartfelt and shocking which, in this case, is very much to its credit.

THE GOOD BOY ***

 After scrolling through about a mile of credits listing all the production companies involved two names pop up on the screen, Jeremy Thomas and Jerzy Skolimowski, and suddenly you sit up and take notice since both have the kind of pedigree you don't find too often in so-called commercial movies these days. "The Good Boy" (aka "Heel") is the new film from director Jan Komasa who also made "Corpus Christie" and it could best be described as a deeply unsettling horror-comedy about a demented do-gooder, (a terrific Stephen Graham) who kidnaps a sociopathic youth, (Anson Boon, also superb), and keeps him chained up in the cellar of his country house, aided and abetted by his initially near-comatose wife (Andrea Riseborough), 10 year old son (Kit Rakusen) and illegal immigrant Monika Frajczyk who comes in to clean two days a week.

Where "The Good Boy" differs from other films of its kind is in what lies behind Graham's actions. He's no ordinary psychopath out to torture and murder his victim but to rehabilitate him. "No-one is ever harmed in this house" he says at the beginning but he's just as mad, bad and dangerous to know as any serial killer and while Boon's Tommy might be a first cousin to Malcom McDowell's Alex in "A Clockwork Orange", like Alex,  it isn't long before your sympathies shift to him. He may be something of a monster but then so too is Graham and it's clear from the start that this brilliant film is never going to provide any easy answers. Yes, it may seem far-fetched at times but given the world we are living in, perhaps not that far-fetched after all.

BACKROOMS no stars

 "Backrooms" is the kind of horror film that throws everything into the mix including several kitchen sinks, or at least a lot of household furniture, in the hope that some of it sticks and I suppose you could say some of it does. You might even say that this is a film that displays a degree of imagination and giving credit where credit's due it marks some kind of achievement for first-time director Kane Parsons.

Of course, it's also way too long at almost two hours and despite casting two talented actors, (Chiwetel Ejiofor and Renate Reinsve), in the main roles it never displays any connection with them as people nor does ever attempt to work on any level outside that of a very predictable horror yarn and yet audiences and critics seem to love it. Am I missing something or have I just grown too jaded by horror films that are just basically nonsense? This may be Parson's nightmare but it certainly isn't mine.

SISU: ROAD TO REVENGE no stars

 The "Sisu" movies are like the Mad Max movies but for geriatrics, (their 'hero' is a cross between Walter Brennan and the Frankenstein monster with a large dollop of Superman). In terms of logic they don't make much sense but as Mr. Hitchcock might have said, it's only a film.

This one is called "Sisu: Road to Revenge" so you can expect the many gory killings of the first to quadruple at the very least. I admit the appalling action is virtually non-stop but since the whole film is like being stuck inside a video game the movie is mercifully short at 89 minutes and as Jean Brodie might have said, for boys who like this sort of thing this, most definitely,  is the sort of thing they like. Personally, I would flush it down the nearest sewer.

AMERICAN GANGSTER **

 American Gangster" is a perfectly fine crime movie but it's not a great crime movie and the reason is that Ridley Scott isn't Martin Scorsese and the best he can bring to the picture is a solid professionalism which, of course, is no bad thing. It's the story of Frank Lucas, (Denzel Washington), a New York drugs lord who was brought down by a dogged, honest cop, (Russell Crowe).

They are the lynch pins of an excellent cast that also includes Chiwetel Ejiofor, Josh Brolin, John Hawkes, Ruby Dee, Cuba Gooding Jr. And Armand Assante. If Crowe is clearly 'acting' his little cotton socks off, Washington is casually inhabiting his character, quietly beautiful and truly terrifying and owning every scene in which he appears. It's a beautiful piece of acting because he doesn't seem to be acting at all. So yes then, a very solid entertainment that could have been so much more.

FATHER MOTHER SISTER BROTHER ****

 Jim Jarmusch doesn't really 'tell' stories, at least not in any conventional sense. He simply places his characters in front of us for us to observe, listen to what they tell us and sometimes to infer from their silences what they might be thinking. In this sense Jarmusch is the most minimalist of directors and writers. His latest film, "Father Mother Sister Brother" is about family but it's not about the same family. This time he gives us three separate tales linked only by various motifs, here skateboarders, a rolex watch, water, photos of the characters as children and driving; there may be more if you pay close attention.

The first piece is simply called Father, the second Mother and the third Sister Brother. The first, the most accessible and also the funniest, has Tom Waits at his crustiest as a father living very much in the middle of nowhere, (it's New Jersey), visited by his overly generous son, (Adam Driver) and daughter, (Mayim Bialik) and it's clear to us, if not to them, that dad is stringing them along, getting money from Driver for house repairs that don't need doing and spending the money on a rolex, fancy furniture, which he tries to hide, and a new car. This is Jarmusch winking at us but taking his time as he always does and it's a deeply affectionate portrait of estrangement.

In the second piece, set in Dublin, two sisters, (Cate Blanchett and Vicky Krieps), approaching middle age, make their annual visit to their mother, (Charlotte Rampling), a famous novelist, for afternoon tea. Again very little is said, (the silences between these three seem to go on forever), but it's clear that the sisters don't really relate to each other nor do they get on with their mother and that mother still treats them like children, (neither sister has really 'grown up'). It's also clear that one sister is trying to hide her sexuality from ma who looks like she couldn't care less.

In the third and longest piece a brother and sister in Paris meet up to pay a final visit to their parent's empty apartment after their parents were killed in a private plane crash. Nothing much happens; they reminisce, particularly about the way their parents raised them, leaving them very much it would seem to raise themselves and leaving them, after their deaths, with unpaid debts. This is the most wistful piece, any humor almost accidental, (we keep watching and waiting for the motifs from earlier episodes).

If taken together these three stories seem amongst the the lightest and most inconsequential of Jarmusch films but individually their cumulative effect is quite overwhelming proving that what Jarmusch leaves out can often be much more profound that what he puts in and that sometimes it's really up to his audience to do the work. It's beautifully acted throughout and often very moving and personally I can't wait to see it again.

UN FIN DU JOUR ****

 One of the lost masterpieces of French cinema, popular at the time, (it was released in 1939), but not much seen since. It was directed by the great Julien Duvivier, perhaps the most underrated of all the early French masters, (he also did "Pepe Le Moko" and "Un Carnet de Bal"), and the setting is a retirement home for aging actors and it stars three of the greatest actors of European cinema, Michel Simon, Victor Francen and Louis Jouvet.

Jouvet is the vain newcomer to the home, a matinee idol with a large female following and the one-time seducer of the wife of another resident, (Victor Francen, who may have been a great actor but who was never popular), and who may have been responsible for the suicide of Francen's wife. Simon is the home's resident rogue and life and soul of the place and the film is a love letter to French theatre and the art of acting. Often very funny and deeply moving and magnificently played by the three leads.

SEBASTIAN **

 'Sebastian' is the name Max uses when he's working as an escort and Max, his real name, is the one he uses when he's writing his novel about Sebastian, a young sex worker. The film "Sebastian" doesn't really go anywhere we haven't been before but this one is intelligent, well acted and just explicit enough to ring true, (well, you can't really make a movie about a sex-worker without showing some sex).

Newcomer Ruaridh Mollica as Sebastian/Max shows real promise but it's Jonathan Hyde as the older man who becomes his #1 client and later his friend and mentor and, I suppose, his lover who steals the movie. As written, Hyde's character might just have been another 'John' but Hyde embues him with layers of feeling and a depth that is actually quite moving.

It's also a telling picture of the London literary scene, packed with hypocritical sycophants dishing out faint praise like crumbs from a table and it's a scene Max finally embraces not as Sebastian but as himself. The cliches of violence and abandonment are still there but at least he gets his happy ending.

WOLFS ***

 Watching "Wolfs" I kept asking myself why aren't all George Clooney/Brad Pitt movies this good. In fact, I kept asking myself why aren't all movies this good and what, if anything, could I compare it to. I tried to imagine a gangster comedy scripted by Samuel Beckett and that really only got me about half way there. 

Jon Watts' movie is funny, very smart and a terrific vehicle for both Clooney and Pitt. It's also got a great supporting turn from Austin Abrams and is brilliantly photographed, at night, by Larkin Seiple. As with Beckett, the plot matters not a jot; in fact, the less you know about it the better.

You might say it's like a series of surreal sketches so completely off-the-wall that they are both ridiculous and inspired while the fact that it also enticed Francis McDormand to make a cameo (non) appearance says a lot. Don't miss it.

THE NIGHTCOMERS no stars

 This prequel to "The Innocents", the film version of Henry James' 'The Turn of the Screw', doesn't come remotely close to the poetry or the terror of Jack Clayton's extraordinary film. In fact, Michael Winner's "The Nightcomers" reputation as something of a dog in justly earned since nothing here works. Surely the evil that permeated "The Innocents", enough to perhaps bring the corrupters of the children Miles and Flora back from the dead, deserved better than a grunting, miscast, (as an Oirishman, no less), Marlon Brando and a prim but panting Stephanie Beacham as the embodiment of all that's bad, (at worst, they just come across as a couple of free spirits who enjoy kinky sex).

So what's the reason for "The Nightcomers" since it adds nothing to what we already knew about the characters of Quint and Miss Jessell. It's certainly not a horror film nor, despite the grunting and the panting, a sex film and as a vehicle for Brando, in what may be his worst performance, it's an insult. As for the 'children', (Verna Harvey was 19 when she played Flora), I  would have dropped the proverbial 16 ton weight on them five minutes into the film. Even the great Thora Hird can't save this crock. Definitely one to avoid.

CODE OF SILENCE **

 An above-average Chuck Norris vehicle perhaps because it was directed by Andrew Davis who also made "The Fugitive". The plot, involving drug wars and corrupt cops, is nothing you haven't seen a hundred times before and Davis gives it a lot of zap and there are several first-rate set pieces as well as an excellent use of Chicago locations. Norris is as stiff and wooden as ever but it's always nice to see Henry Silva as a suave villain even if he's underused. In fact, this is a movie that does exactly what it says on the tin. Perfect Saturday night popcorn fare.

CICADA no stars

 "Cicada" is heartfelt and clearly autobiographical but also excruciatingly boring. Matthew Fifer and Sheldon B. Leonard are the lovers coping with the traumas of their past, both sexual and racial. They also wrote the film and Fifer co-directed it with Kieran Mulcare. I kept wanting to engage with them but they are very dull company and this feels like their home-movie, both a vanity project and a kind of exorcism as it flits back and forth through their relationship, feeling ultimately like a movie made for themselves and for their friends but if they do want anyone else to feel involved they need a much better script and maybe a couple of more polished actors to play them. I found this Dull with a Capital D.

BRING HER BACK no stars

 Children have been a staple in horror movies for decades bur rarely have they been used so offensively as they are in "Bring Her Back". After the death of their father Andy (Billy Barratt) and his stepsister Piper (Sora Wong) find themselves being fostered by Sally Hawkins' clearly deeply disturbed Laura whose own daughter Cathy has drowned in their swimming pool. Laura would appear to have one other kid in her care, silent Oliver who likes to put his hand through glass panels and chew on butcher's knives and who isn't above taking a bite out of Laura on occasion.

As Oliver Jonah Wren Phillips is extraordinary and yet I kept feeling his performance was almost tantamount to child abuse on the part of the films directors, brothers Danny and Michael Philippou. I don't know how old young Phillips is but surely no child should be put through the rigors that he seems to have been  put through. Barratt, too, is excellent and Hawkins is terrific, (but isn't she always), while the brothers direction is mostly first-class but the film itself is far too unpleasant to pass as entertainment. This is a horror movie, alright but not in a good way.