THE PINK PANTHER **

"A Shot in the Dark", the follow-up, was funnier but it was "The Pink Panther" that introduced Inspector Clouseau to the world and while much of the humour is visual and of the slapstick variety, this is the altogether more sophisticated film, a veritable throw-back to the romantic comedies of the thirties but in gorgeous colour and on the widescreen. The Pink Panther itself, and this is aimed at anyone who has been living on Mars or some such place for the last 50 years or so, is a diamond belonging to an Indian princess, (a seriously miscast Claudia Cardinale; she's the wrong colour for a start), and David Niven is the diamond thief who wants to woo her away from it. Peter Sellers, of course, is the accident prone Clouseau, on Niven's trail without knowing exactly on whose trail he's on, and Capucine, displaying real comic potential, is Seller's wife and Niven's mistress. A surprisingly good and affable Robert Wagner is also involved as Niven's nephew out to woo Capucine. Director Blake Edwards handles it all, if not quite with a Lubitsch touch, then with enough comic prowess to earn him his kudos and his reputation as a major stylist. The overly familiar theme is by Henry Mancini and the credit sequence alone is almost worth the price of admission.

FAME IS THE SPUR **

Before they started sending up British institutions The Boulting Brothers actually took them seriously so that while, in the late fifties they might have been satirising British politics, in 1947 they were looking at politics with a very straight face. "Fame is the Spur" was their screen version of Howard Spring's novel about an ambitious Labour politician who grows increasingly more right-wing as he moves up the political ladder. It begins in the late 19th century and ends somewhere around the middle of the 20th. It's a reasonably powerful film and a somewhat dark one and it's certainly not without the Boultings' customary cynicism.

As the vainglorious Labour MP, Michael Redgrave is superb and he is ably backed up by the likes of Rosamund John as his suffragette wife as well as the great Bernard Miles, Hugh Burden and Marjorie Fielding. Of course, the actual premiss of the picture is a bit far-fetched and today it would be the stuff of soap-opera but you have to consider when it was made and the audience it must have been aimed at and even at its most melodramatic, you can't say the Boultings weren't afraid to take a chance. Not the best thing they ever did but also sadly neglected.

KILLING THEM SOFTLY ****

The great gangster films of the thirties were firmly set in the Depression at a time when, economically, the country had basically gone down the tubes and when, in the sixties, movies like "Bonnie and Clyde" and "Thieves like us" revived the genre they, too, acknowledged that criminals didn't always commit crime for power or profit but just to survive. Andrew Dominik's sublime "Killing them Softly" is set in the America of the economic melt-down that saw out the Bush years and saw in Obama's presidency and money, taking it, keeping it, getting it whatever way you can, is again at the heart of the picture, (and both Bush and Obama figure prominently throughout on any available television screen).

It begins when small-time hood Johhny Amato hires a couple of drugged-up, spaced-out and even smaller-time hoods Frankie and Russell to hold up a card-game run by Markie Trattman who had previously organized the robbery of another of his own games. But while they get away with the money things start going wrong for them very early. In no time hit-man Jackie Cogan is hunting them down and never mind the collateral damage.

Written and directed by Dominik, who also gave us that great elegiac western "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford", "Killing them Softly" may be the first great gangster film to come out of the current economic recession. It's based on the novel "Cogan's Trade" by George V Higgins, who also wrote "The Friends of Eddie Coyle" all those years ago, (this, too, was written some time ago and updated by Dominik), and talk, really good talk of the kind the movies used to give us a lifetime ago, is as vital to the film as the several spectacularly executed killings, one filmed in slow-motion showing the bullet leaving the gun before crashing, first through a car window and then through the victim's skull. And talk of this quality needs good talkers to carry it off and it gets them in the ensemble of Brad Pitt, James Gandolfino, Richard Jenkins, Ray Liotta, Vincent Curatola and two brilliant, relative new faces in Scoot McNairy and Ben Mendelsohn as the bubble-headed robbers. Indeed this may be the best thing Pitt has ever done and in a just world Gandolfino should be clearing space for his Best Supporting Actor Oscar. Come to think of it, this may be the best film I have seen so far this year; yes, it really is that good.

THE RECKONING *

Jack Gold made his name on British television and "The Reckoning", which he made in 1970, often has the feeling of television drama about it and this is both something of a compliment and a curse in that, while it often displays a certain intelligence in its handling of the relationships on view, it is also blighted by a shooting style more in keeping with the small screen than the large.

It is adapted by John McGrath from Patrick Hall's novel "The Harp that Once" and centres on working-class Liverpool lad Mick Marler, who has made it big in the world of London business and who has returned home for his father's funeral. It's a strange, somewhat schizophrenic film, part thriller and part character study, reasonably entertaining on one level and yet constantly misfiring. Nicol Williamson, who plays Marler, was at the time considered to be the finest stage actor of his generation but you would never guess it from his performance here. It's an hysterical, over-played piece of acting; a juicy slice of ham and he's virtually never off the screen. He's half sympathetic anti-hero and half hissable villain and he plays to the gods. It's left to Rachel Roberts in the much too small a part of an oversexed doctor's receptionist to walk off with the picture. She certainly looks like she's enjoying herself and is having a grand time upstaging the male lead. Other fine actors like Paul Rodgers and Ann Bell are wasted. A curio at best.

THE FAMILY FRIEND ***

With only 6 full-length feature films under his belt Paolo Sorrentino has already established himself as one of the cinema's greatest stylists. Indeed, I think Sorrentino will turn out to be one of the great directors and not just in his native Italy. His first foray into English, "This Must be the Place", was an extraordinary American road-movie and a very worthy addition to both that genre and to those visions of America, (and in that particular case, Ireland as well), as seen through the eyes of an outsider.

"The Family Friend" was his third film and it, too, is astonishing. It's about a loan shark, the thoroughly despicable Geremia, (a wonderful performance from Giacomo Rizzo), who could have come straight from the pages of a Dickens novel and, though himself in middle-age, lives with his ancient, bed-ridden mother and is on the look-out for a wife or at least a woman. He is a man who takes no prisoners and is certainly not the kind of man you would like to cross. Then one day he meets Rosalba, the daughter of a couple who have borrowed money from him to pay for her wedding, and he is smitten, even though she despises him.

This is a dark and very funny film; a variation on "Beauty and the Beast" where the beast really is a beast, a "Phantom of the Opera" where the phantom is as hideous on the inside as he is on the outside, told in the same gloriously broad strokes that Sorrentino has brought to all his films. Critics have compared him to Fellini, (and his most recent film, "The Great Beauty" is a "La Dolce Vita" for the 21st century), but Sorrentino is much too original a talent to be compared to anyone and "The Family Friend" is a true original. Right now I think the only director turning out movies this good, on such a consistent basis, is Paul Thomas Anderson. For starters, they both share the same sense of the absurd though when it comes to the use of music in his movies I think Sorrentino has the edge on all his competitors.

STRETCH no stars

The first 30 minutes or so of this black comedy sucks, big time, before rather weirdly picking up with the appearance of an uncredited Chris Pine as the mad, bad and very dangerous to know billionaire limo driver Patrick Wilson is tasked with driving around LA. Of course, there is more to it than that; this is a crime caper and in poor taste and while there are no belly-laughs there is a good deal of sick humour as well as a surprisingly good performance from an unlikely cast Wilson. There's also a neat cameo from Ray Liotta who plays himself as the smug, arrogant actor I'm sure he's not.

THE AWAKENING **

"The Awakening" may not be "The Innocents" but this stylish ghost story, set in a boarding school not long after the end of the First World War, delivers the requisite scares very nicely and even the somewhat convoluted twist is handled with considerable aplomb. It's another 'murdered-child-haunting-the-corridors' yarn and at its heart it's got a sceptical ghost-hunter who happens to be a woman. As played by Rebecca Hall she's a steely adversary for any ghost, that's until she starts to see the thing herself. Others in the fine cast include Dominic West as a teacher with his own demons to deal with, Imelda Staunton as the pragmatic matron and Joseph Mawle as the school's less than trustworthy handiman. Of course, the real star of the picture is the school itself, a stately pile that wouldn't disgrace Downton Abbey and director Nick Murphy uses its nooks and crannies to maximum effect. It's also nice to see a chiller that doesn't rely on gore to give us the willies. Very good.

BORN TO BE BAD **

Taking her 1940's films into consideration the only thing Joan Fontaine might have been born to be was a mouse or, as she was portrayed in 1939's "The Women", a deer but as Joan got older Joan got bolder and by 1950 she was "Born to be Bad" and was holding the likes of Robert Ryan, Zachary Scott and Mel Ferrer in thrall. The director of this 'woman's picture' was Nicholas Ray who brought a steely edge to proceedings. Actually I've always thought Joan was born to play a bitch; that patrician air of hers was never suited to being simply 'nice' and it was to her credit that she could slip so easily between darkness and light, Here, though, she's almost too good to be true and I'm surprised no-one, other than good girl Joan Leslie, saw through her scheming earlier. Performances throughout are uniformly good; even Ferrer is first-rate here, (he hadn't yet developed that stiffness that marred his later work). Interestingly his character is probably meant to be gay but you really have to read between the lines and use a lot of imagination to get that. From a novel called "All Kneeling" by Ann Parrish.

GRAND PIANO **

When pitched the idea might have seemed novel if hardly riveting, (a concert pianist about to perform finds a note on his sheet music telling him that if he plays a wrong note he and/or his wife will be killed), but this thriller, penned by current Hot Young Thing Damien Chazelle and directed by Eugenio Mira, is surprisingly suspenseful. Indeed this is the kind of conceit that Hitchcock might have toyed with, (something similar was seen some years back when Colin Farrell found himself trapped in a phone-box with a sniper's rifle trained on him). Of course, that movie, "Phone Booth" had the streets of the city to play with; the problem facing Mira is how to keep us glued to a limited set, (in this case a concert hall), and a fixed time span, not to mention 'inflicting', on perhaps a less than enthusiastic audience, a lot of semi-classical music. That he, and lead actor Elijah Woods, as well as the off-screen voice of potential killer John Cusack, pull it off is a credit to them all. Also, for something so seemingly insular, Mira makes excellent use of the widescreen. Perhaps more destined for cult status than mass consumption but certainly worth seeing.

BY THE BLUEST OF SEAS **

There isn't a great deal to the Russian 'classic' "By the Bluest of Seas" other than its remarkable use its location around the Caspian Sea and yet its reputation is extremely high. Unlike the propaganda films of Eisenstein and Dovzhendo, this is a simple love story and a tale of friendship that owes more to Hollywood than to early Russian cinema. Two sailors are washed up on an island where they both fall for the same girl, thus testing their friendship. It's a very simple-minded picture, luminously photographed by Mikhail Kirillov, charming enough but hardly worth the critical plaudits that have been heaped on it.

CRAZY RICH ASIANS *

"Crazy Rich Asians" is a rom-com with a difference, the difference being that this one is about crazy, rich Asians. It's hardly ground-breaking while at the same time is a lot less offensive than it might have been. Indeed it's extremely formulaic; there's nothing here you haven't seen a hundred times before, a two-gag movie, the gags being, you guessed it; they're rich and they're Asian. (the 'crazy' bit hardly registers). It's nicely played by beautiful people in very opulent looking settings and Singapore looks amazing, (I wouldn't be surprised if the Singapore Tourist Board had paid for it all), and it's mildly amusing at best. As Miss Brodie would say, 'For those who like this sort of thing, this is the sort of thing they like'.

THREE LIVES AND ONLY ONE DEATH ***

I suppose you could describe Raoul Ruiz's "Three Lives and Only One Death" as a surrealist portmanteau horror-comedy; what is certain is that it isn't "Doctor Terror's House of Horrors" or even "Dead of Night". The Chilean-born director is once again indulging himself with a labyrinth that could have come from the pages of Borges; four stories, all interlinked, and starring Marcello Mastroanni in his penultimate role, playing four parts, (or is he?), as as always he's wonderful doing as little as he has to in order to get by. This is a funny, hugely imaginative and very likeable picture on the nature of story-telling and if it's the only Raoul Ruiz film you ever see you know you are in the presence of a master.

A BRIDGE TOO FAR ***

As a director, Richard Attenborough had the knack for making, what I suppose might be called, 'intimate epics'; in other words he could muster massive, often 'all-star' casts without losing sight of the human element. He made "A Bridge Too Far" in 1977 and it's a splendid war movie with battle scenes and action sequences good enough to satisfy any aficionado of such things without in any way glorifying war itself. As in "Oh! What a Lovely War" the emphasis here is on the horror and the futility of battle and it's interesting that Attenborough chose what was fundamentally a British defeat as his subject,

He was blessed, of course, by a superb William Goldman script that allows for the individual stories of the protagonists to come to the fore, (not easy in a film of this scale). Goldman adapted Cornelius Ryan's book about Operation Market Garden and the Battle of Arnhem, doing a much finer job than Ryan and a multitude of other writers did with "The Longest Day". As with "The Longest Day"

this, too, is chock full of big names, all giving very decent accounts of themselves. The best of them are Dirk Bogarde, Anthony Hopkins, Sean Connery, Michael Caine and a somewhat surprisingly good Ryan O'Neal though it is Edward Fox as Lieutenant General Horrocks who steals the film, picking up a BAFTA at the same time. Geoffrey Unsworth did the splendid cinematography and John Addison composed the superb score.

TWO DRIFTERS **

The grimness of the pre-credit sequence of Joao Pedro Rodrigues' "Two Drifters" isn't maintained though what follows is hardly a barrel of laughs. This is a film about people who are emotionally damaged and who are overwhelmed by grief. Odete, (Ana Cristina De Oliveira), is the beautiful but lonely girl who works in a supermarket and longs to have a baby. Rui, (Nuno Gil), is the young gay man she meets at the wake of his lover, Pedro, and who holds himself responsible for Pedro's death and nothing is quite what it appears to be on the surface.

For example, Odete is far from a conventional heroine. Her neuroses, indeed you might even say her madness, doesn't make her particularly sympathetic and her relationship with Pedro is never really explained. Rui, on the other hand, despite all his guilt, is the more empathetic of the two characters and it is he, rather than Odete, we root for.


Because of the darkness of the subject matter this isn't an easy film to like but Rodrigues handles the material beautifully and all the performances are first-rate. It never really saw the light of day and has largely disappeared and while it strictly doesn't fall into the category of New Queer Cinema it is, nevertheless, a welcome addition to what I would consider 'gay-themed' cinema.

VILLAIN *

Richard Burton as a mother-obsessed gay gangster modelled on Ronnie Kray. It wasn't the worst part he ever had and to be fair he does what he can with it but as British gangster pictures go, "Villain" has very little to recommend it. The director was Michael Tuchner who doesn't appear to have much interest in the material, though he does handle the film's heist scene with more brio than it or the film probably deserves.

The script was by Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais who were better suited to comedy, (there aren't many laughs in this one). On the plus side, Burton was always worth watching, even when he was bad, while Ian McShane is fine as the pretty boy Burton likes to have rough sex with, discreetly off-screen, and Donald Sinden is excellent in much too small a part as a corrupt Member of Parliament. Watchable then, but certainly not memorable.

THE DEFECTOR *

"The Defector" was Montgomery Clift's last film; he would be dead shortly after the film's (very limited) release and in the UK it was heavily cut. It is, as the title suggests, a spy picture but it's a deadly dull one and Clift is terrible here. Watching him in this film it's hard to imagine that he was once the handsome and brilliantly talented young star of "A Place in the Sun" and "From Here to Eternity" Here he's almost comatose as a university professor spying for the CIA in East Germany where he encounters, amongst others, Hardy Kruger, never much of an actor but running rings round Monty. Even better, but in much too small a part, is Roddy McDowell as the unlikely CIA man who blackmails Clift into doing his nefarious deeds.

Considering Clift's mission is fraught with danger, the film totally lacks suspense, an element the director Raoul Levy seems singularly ill-equipped to handle. And yet, terrible as this film is, (and it is terrible), it's not completely without interest. It's fascinating, if more than a little sad, seeing fine actors make such fools of themselves as we watch them fall flat on their once-handsome faces. This one is for Clift completists only.

YOU, THE LIVING ***

You can't really call Roy Andersson prolific, (6 films in 37 years). Nor can you accuse him of being conventional; he doesn't do 'straight-forward', at least when it comes to narrative. "You, the Living", his first film in seven years, is like a surreal documentary in which a large number of characters are observed doing nothing very much and if that sounds off-putting, let me assure you it isn't. This is a funny, accessible and surprisingly warm-hearted movie, a slice-of-life far removed from that which we normally see on the screen.

Of course, 'slice-of-life' is hardly the proper moniker to apply to this movie since most people's lives are unlikely to be anything like this. The incidents on the screen run the gamut from the almost terrifyingly ordinary to the downright wacky and while characters may flit by, sometimes never to be seen again, others to reappear as if anxious for approval, Andersson bestows on them all a kind of benign affection. That, and some rollicking music, ensure the time we spend with them is time well-spent.

YOUNG APHRODITES no stars

This Greek film was obviously marketed as a piece of soft-core porn about nubile young Greeks getting it off when, in fact, it's a reasonably serious, and incredibly boring, account of ancient Greek shepherds struggling to survive or at least cope with a lack of water, which may or may not be symbolic.

The "Young Aphrodites" of the title are rather comely maidens and certainly not the type to entice you into the porn cinemas of Soho or should that be downtown Athens and yet I am sure this is just the kind of 'art-house' movie that once upon a time was squarely aimed at what was affectionately known as 'the dirty mac brigade', at least here in the UK, (and if that were the case, they would have been severely disappointed).

There isn't much of a plot, (there isn't much of anything really), but at least it nicely shot in black and white and has an easy-on-the-ear score by Yannis Markopoulous. Still, I can't imagine when this was being made who the producers imagined their intended audience might be or that it won the Best Director prize at the Berlin Film Festival. I gave up before the end.

SHOCKPROOF **

This strange hybrid of a B-Movie is a cross between a film noir and a 'women's picture', with a screenplay in part written by Samuel Fuller yet directed by Douglas Sirk, two directors whose work you might think couldn't be more different. It's a film that never quite goes the way you expect it to as former prisoner Patricia Knight, (a kind of poor man's Gene Tierney), is released into the custody of parole officer Cornel Wilde who soon finds himself falling for her, despite the fact that her former lover and bad guy John Baragrey is waiting to claim her.

There's hardly a believable moment in the entire picture which still manages to cram an awful lot of plot into its reasonably short running time and it's certainly stylish as befits an early film from the man who went on to make "All That Heaven Allows" and "Written on the Wind". It's harder perhaps to get a handle on Fuller's contribution, except maybe in the total lack of sentimentality in the central relationship while the audacity of the ending is undeniably novel; it's as if they filmed several endings and settled on the one on view.

A GUIDE TO RECOGNISING YOUR SAINTS **

Movies don't come more autobiographical than Dito Montiel's  "A Guide to Recognising Your Saints". He's his own central character played in the present by Robert Downey Jr and in the past by Shia LeBeouf, who really is superb. The movie is based on his book about growing up in Queens and the style owes something to the French New Wave, not to mention early Scorsese. There isn't much in the way of plot but it's very well made, (Montiel develops his own style), and it's very well acted. The young Scottish actor Martin Compston contributes a brilliant turn as a boyhood friend and both Dianne Weist and Chazz Palminteri are terrific as his parents. It came and went without too many people paying very much attention to it but it
really is worth seeking out.

BECKET **

Among the most intelligent of all historical epics. Edward Anhalt did a splendid job of adapting Jean Anouilh's play, (he won an Oscar), and Peter Glenville did an equally splendid job in opening it up. It's the story of the conflict between Thomas Becket and King Henry 11 of England which lead eventually to Becket's martyrdom in Canterbury Cathedral.


It's a long film and a wordy one, but such is the quality of Anhalt's script it's a film that is well worth listening to. It's also splendidly acted. This was the first great part Burton had in the movies and he was wonderful. It was the closest Burton had come on screen up to that point in showing what he was capable of on the stage. O'Toole, of course, was simply magnificent as Henry. (He was to reprise the role four years later in "The Lion in Winter"). It's a grand-standing performance that comes perilously close to ham on occasions but it's far too intelligent for ham and O'Toole is far too intelligent an actor to over-indulge himself. In a splendid supporting cast John Gielgud, Donald Wolfit and Martita Hunt are outstanding. It is also superbly photographed and designed.

THE DESERT RATS **

It wasn't a great part and it wasn't a great film but this early performance from Richard Burton showed just how great an actor he might become. Unfortunately Hollywood, Taylor and the bottle often seemed to get in the way. In "The Desert Rats" he is the young officer leading his men into battle or more specifically, into the battle for Tobruk and he really is very good and as war films go, this is a tight and exciting picture, (it clocks in at under 90 minutes). Robert Wise was the director and you can tell this movie was directed by a great editor; there isn't a wasted moment in the whole film and the action scenes are brilliantly handled. James Mason once again appears as Rommel and there's a fine supporting performance from Robert Newton as Burton's old schoolmaster, now a private in his command.

THE TERROR *

Before Jack Nicholson was catapulted to stardom when he took over the role of George Hanson that was ear-marked for Rip Torn in "Easy Rider", he appeared in movies like "The Terror" in what you might call the juvenile lead. The actual lead, or at least the name above the title, was Boris Karloff, being given something of a new lease of life by producer/director Roger Corman. (When Peter Bogdanovitch made "Targets", Corman insisted he use footage from "The Terror" in the film being 'revived' to honour its star, played naturally by Karloff).

Actually "The Terror"isn't quite as bad as has been made out, at least when set beside the the appalling quickies Corman had been turning out previously and while it may not be quite in the same class as the Poe movies, it's surprisingly professional, looks good and is very entertaining. As well as Corman, others involved behind the credits included Floyd Crosby and Monte Hellman.

I STAY WITH YOU ***

Esteban invites Natalia to come all the way from Madrid to Mexico City just to be with him but when she gets there he's off filming in the jungle leaving her to spend time with the girl-friends from hell. Artemio Narro's "I Stay With You" is a delicious and very nasty little thriller that could go any way. One minute it's "Heathers", the next it's "Thelma and Louise" and then it's torture porn but all the while feeling a true original.

Narro directs his mostly female cast brilliantly, (you really wouldn't want to mess with these girls), making this a chiller with as much brains as brawn. An unedited single take mid-way through is worth the price of admission alone in a movie shot mostly in single takes. Totally neglected, this has cult movie written all over it. It's funny and deeply disturbing in equal measure.

LE SOLEDAD ****

Third World poverty is a subject the cinema seems unwilling to tackle, perhaps understandably so since the movies are fundamentally a commercial enterprise and 'entertainment' is the name of the game. When 'western' cinema tackles the subject, (and I am thinking here of Hollywood cinema), it tends to romanticise it or make it the subject of a thriller so it's often left to 'native' cinema to deal with their own issues and a lot of the time, when they do, the subject is turned around and treated as an 'action' flic or simply ignored altogether. "La Soledad" is mercifully, and thankfully, the exception.

Jorge Thielen Armand's film hails from Venezuela where poverty and crime are debilitating issues. In a society ruled by violence Negro and his family have virtually nothing, living on the edge and with the likelihood of being thrown out of the crumbling mansion where they are virtual squatters. There is no melodrama in the telling of their tale and little drama either. Armand simply observes his characters as they struggle from one day to the next. This could be a documentary and his cast, all playing themselves, respond with extraordinarily naturalistic 'performances'. The tragedy lies in our knowledge that for many people in Venezuela life is unlikely to get any better than it is shown here. 'Action', for want of a better word, when it happens does so off-screen and yet, never for a moment, could you describe this film as boring; the potential for violence never actually seen is never far from the surface. Let's hope this extraordinary film finds the audience it deserves.

ALL NIGHT LONG **

"All Night Long" takes "Othello" and transposes it to a jazz setting in contemporary London, or at least the London of the early sixties. It's a great idea, has a terrific cast and how could any jazz  aficionado not like any movie that features this much jazz and a cast that includes Charlie Mingus, Johnny Dankworth and Dave Brubeck all playing themselves but there is a but... In place of Shakespeare we get jive and nothing dates as badly as the kind of hip dialogue that jazz musicians are reputed to have used back then. Cool just isn't cool anymore.

On the plus side, it's a Basil Dearden picture so as well as great jazz, and lots of it, we also get intelligence. Dearden knows the pedigree he has here and treats it with due respect and Patrick McGoohan is superb as the Iago figure. Others in the cast include Richard Attenborough, Betsy Blair, Keith Michell and in the Othello/Desdemona roles, Paul Harris and Marti Stevens. Unfortunately Harris and Stevens are the weakest things about the film; their lack of acting experience shows.


It is, however, a brilliant looking picture. Producer Michael Relph designed it along with Art Director Ray Sim and Edward Scaife supplied the superb black and white cinematography and, as I said, the jazz is terrific. However, it wasn't really successful and is among the least revived of all the Dearden/Relph movies but it's certainly worth seeking out and if you love jazz it is simply unmissable.

A SHOCK TO THE SYSTEM **

Michael Caine made "A Shock to the System" in 1990 and I must have blinked and missed it, (me and a lot of others). He's Graham Marshall, a corporate businessman who is passed over for promotion in favour of his hot-shot subordinate Peter Riegert. Naturally, he doesn't take this too well. In fact, he feels that he's cursed in some way and he really should do something about it. As it turns out, "A Shock to the System" is a deliciously funny and dark comedy about a man who will go to any lengths, including murder, if it means getting ahead and Caine is terrific, (it's actually one of his best performances), and he's backed by an equally terrific supporting cast. Riegert is superbly slimy as Caine's new boss; then there's Elizabeth McGovern as the colleague who takes a shine to him, Swoosie Kurtz as his social-climbing wife, John McMartin as the out-going head of department and Will Patton as a very inquisitive cop. The director was Jon Egelson who doesn't revert to any tricks to tell his tale but rather relies on the quality of his material and his cast and it and they don't let him down.

NORWEGIAN WOOD no stars

"Norwegian Wood" is a tale of amour fou or whatever the Japanese equivalent is. It's very well acted by its young cast, directed with a great deal of fidelity and imagination by Tran Anh Hung and beautifully photographed by Mark Lee Ping Bin but it also moves at a snail's pace and it seems to last forever (well, 130 or so very long minutes). It's taken from a highly acclaimed novel by Haruki Murakami and I'm sure it's the kind of film that will appeal to young intellectuals who think that talking about sex a lot is 'cool', but then it's also set in 1968, a time when 'the sexual revolution' was at its height which might explain the relative sexual honesty but hardly excuses the film's slowness. Indeed, it's the kind of art-house movie Woody Allen might have taken the piss out of it once upon a time and as it wound down to its grim conclusion I kept thinking what the Monty Python team might have done with this material.

BERBERIAN SOUND STUDIO **

Ever wondered what a 'dangerously aroused' goblin sounded like or having a red hot poker inserted into the vagina of a witch? Hopefully not, but if you have and it's in a movie then "Berberian Sound Studio" should go some way to explaining it. Peter Strickland's film is set entirely in the studio of the title or in the drab little room where its 'hero' Gilderoy is staying. He's in Italy to record the sound effects for a horror film called "The Equestrian Vortex" and the experience isn't doing him any good at all. Indeed poor Gilderoy is taking all of this very much to heart and by the end neither he, nor us, can be sure of what's real and what isn't.

Cinephiles should appreciate "Berberian Sound Studio" more than your run-of-the-mill Saturday night crowd. After all, it's a film about making a film and they are more than likely to get the references to Dario Argento and Brian DePalma and even to Antonioni's "Blow Up". I found it both funny and unsettling and I admired its technical virtuosity and Toby Jones' superb performance as the sad little sound recordist going way off the rails but I'm not too sure it's a movie I would want to sit through again, at least not anytime soon.

IN THE CITY OF SYLVIA *

Almost wordless and plotless, more of an observational documentary rather than a conventional narrative Jose Luis Guerin's "In the City of Sylvia" is certainly not like other films. How much you respond to it depends on how much pleasure you get from simply watching people rather than interacting with them. There's a central character, a handsome young man who sits and watches, looking we discover for the elusive Sylvia, finally settling on one particular girl whom he follows around the nameless city before finally confronting her.


It's a creepy scenario, if it's a scenario at all. Are his motives romantic or menacing? Hardly menacing you might think, given the almost lackadaisical style employed by Guerin. There are other characters on the periphery but they are not on screen long enough to concern us. Visually, it's very attractive. Our handsome hero does like to look at beautiful young women and sketch them. The unattractive don't really figure. Since nothing actually happens you may find that, even at less than 90 minutes, this is something of a long haul. This is the kind of art-house cinema perhaps best viewed in a gallery and dipped in and out of; never quite boring but hardly

THE INTRUDER *

Guy Hamilton's "The Intruder" is neither fish nor fowl. Jack Hawkins is the ex-colonel who comes home to find one of his former soldiers breaking into his home and sets out to discover what it was that drove him to it. It's told largely in flashback as Hawkins tracks down the survivors of his battalion so the film is part war movie, part psychological drama and part comedy. The story is interesting enough and it's generally well played by a fine cast of British character actors. Hawkins is excellent as always and Michael Medwin is surprisingly good as the intruder and there's nice work from the likes of Dennis Price, George Cole and Dora Bryan. Unfortunately the film takes a bit too long in getting to the point and remains something of
a curiosity at best.

THINGS TO COME ****

I have to admit I haven't seen any of the other films to have been directed by Mia Hansen-Love but if they are as good as "Things to Come" she will already have made her mark as one of the great directors working today, not that a great deal happens , in the conventional sense of 'cinematic action', in "Things to Come". This is simply a portrait of a woman, (Isabelle Huppert), who has settled into middle-age, neither particularly happy nor particularly unhappy. She is a teacher and writer of philosophy who uses the philosophical treatises she's always lived by to get through her largely uneventful life.

She has a dull, middle-aged husband who also teaches, two grown children and an ageing, ill mother, (Edith Scob from "Eyes Without a Face"), when suddenly her life is thrown into disarray, Nevertheless she copes, mainly due to her friendship with a younger man who was once one of her students, There is a suggestion that they might become romantically involved but it's just a hint in a film full of hints.

This is serious stuff, intellectually rigorous and yet full of humor; a film for intelligent, grown-up audiences who like to take their brains with them when they go to the pictures and Huppert, who is never off the screen, is stunningly good. Every gesture she makes, the way she walks, tells us something about this woman as much as what she says. This is great acting.



Everyone else follows suit. Roman Kolinka as Fabien, the New-Age would-be anarchist she comes to rely on, if only for company, could have been such a cliche but Kolinka brings depth and shadings to the role and makes him likeable and interesting. Even Andre Marcon as the dull husband is dull in a way that makes him sympathetic rather than a figure of fun. By now you might have realised that I loved this film as much as any I've seen this year. Is it a masterpiece? Probably not. In the end it's gossamer thin but it is also a gem, a beautiful uncut diamond of a movie. See it at all costs.

CALVAIRE **

"Calvaire" is a horror film and it hails from Belgium and it is very, very weird. The title means 'the ordeal' and you may indeed consider it an ordeal depending on your tolerance for something that is a cross between Bunuel, Bela Tarr and torture porn and yet I rather liked it. It's about a singer called Marc who finds himself stranded in a far from welcoming village over the Christmas holidays after his van breaks down, the weather turns bad and he finds himself lost. He holes up for the night at a strange inn run by Bartel only to find himself taken prisoner, dressed up in drag and forced to act like Bartel's faithless wife and that's even before the mad, bad and murderous villagers turn up for more fun and games, (this is when things start to get really nasty). It marks the feature debut of director Fabrice Du Welz and it shows considerable promise. It's often as funny, (intentionally, thank God), as it is unpleasant, though in the end it's the gross out scenes of horror you're likely to remember. Bound, almost certainly, for cult status.

LA CEREMONIE ***

A late Chabrol but no less devastating for all that, "La Ceremonie"
transforms Ruth Rendell's "A Judgement in Stone" into yet another typically Chabrolian attack on the less than discreet charms of the bourgeois as maid Sandrine Bonnaire, with the help and encouragement of her less than staple friend Isabelle Huppert, decides to turn the tables on the not-quite-nice family who hires her. From the moment Jacqueline Bisset offers Bonnaire the job you can see where this is heading but the outcome is surprisingly chilling nevertheless. As a director faithfully following in the footsteps of Mr Hitchcock, Chabrol certainly does not disappoint while his cast rise spectacularly to the occasion. Both Huppert and Bonnaire are superb while Bisset and Jean-Pierre Cassel as Bonnaire's far from sympathetic employers hadn't been this good in ages.

WE OWN THE NIGHT **

The theme of brothers on opposite sides of the law is nothing new in movies so if you are going to make another movie on the subject you better make it a good one. Thankfully James Gray's "We Own the Night" is very good indeed. This time it's the Russia mafia who are the bad guys and Joaquin Phoenix is the brother who is caught up with them. The 'good' brother, Mark Wahlberg, is a New York cop, (the title, 'We own the night' is the motto of the New York police force), and when he's gunned down, Phoenix changes sides. 

It's a smart, old-fashioned movie that, minus the sex, swearing and extreme violence, wouldn't have disgraced Bogie or Cagney back in the day and Phoenix in particular is splendid in his role. There's also a very good performance from Robert Duvall as their father, who also happens to be a cop while Joaquin Baca-Asay's location photography of, mostly night-time New York, is outstanding. See it.

MAD LOVE **

"Mad Love" was the film that launched Peter Lorre on his Hollywood career and he is wonderfully over-the-top as indeed is the whole film, just one of a number of versions of that grand guignol classic "The Hands of Orlac". Orlac is the concert pianist who loses his hands in an accident and then has the hands of a murderer grafted on by Lorre's mad surgical genius. Unfortunately Orlac is played by that most wooden and unlikely of thirties' stars, Colin Clive, whose alcoholism resulted in his early death at the age of 37 only two years after making this. Clive was a terrible actor and director Karl Freund surrounds him with a host of terrible actors which means this short film, (68 minutes), really does have a B-Movie feel to it but it is superbly photographed, (Gregg Toland was one of the two credited cinematographers), and Lorre gives an A-plus performance which more than redeems it.