FACES IN THE DARK *

"Faces in the Dark" was based on a novel by Boileau and Narcejac, the same guys who gave us "Vertigo" and "Les Diaboliques". This certainly isn't in the same class but it's still a watchable thriller. John Gregson is the thoroughly unpleasant industrialist blinded in a factory accident on the same day his wife is planning to divorce him. She's Mai Zetterling and she's somewhat better than the material. Others involved include Michael Denison, John Ireland and Tony Wright. It's a good looking picture, (Ken Hodges photographed in widescreen and future director Desmond Davis was a camera operator), and Mikis Theodorakis did the score but the director, David Eady, doesn't muster any real suspense and it is fairly predictable

THE SON OF JOSEPH *

The poster shows a woman sitting on a donkey being lead by a man and, in this instance, a boy and with a title like "The Son of Joseph" and characters called Marie and Joseph you might be forgiven for thinking Eugene Green's film is a modern take on the Christ story, (the chapter headings also allude to the Bible). However, the link is a tenuous one at best as young Vincent goes in search of his biological father. With all the characters speaking as if to the beat of a metronome and behaving a little like robots it often feels like a comedy minus the jokes, a parody of French art-house cinema which it may well be since its director is actually American though long domicile in France. Of course, you could take it seriously as some sort of religious allegory, (the clues aren't just all there but very much in your face), ot just enjoy it as some kind of piss-take or just abandon it altogether since, to be honest, it's not all that lively. The choice, as they say, is yours.

GINGER & ROSA no stars

A terrific cast and all of director Sally Potter's evident skills with a camera can't save this vacuous account of two girls, best friends from early childhood, growing up in 1960s Britain and getting involved with CND and the sexual revolution. Of course, with Potter you know precisely what you're going to get, (something intelligent as well as something prone to dullness rather than excitement), and this is no different. That 'terrific' cast all act as if heavily dosed on Prozac and there are no characters you might actually want to spend time with. If Potter archives anything with this film it's turning one of the most exciting decades of the last century into one of the dullest on film.

BEND OF THE RIVER **

"Bend of the River" may not be the greatest western ever made but as horse-operas go it's a sheer pleasure from start to finish. It's another Mann/Stewart collaboration and it's got everything; Settlers, Indians, Gun Slingers and other sundry villains not to mention mountains and, of course, rivers and some really spectacular scenery as well as a cracking, fast-paced script from Borden Chase. It may be fairly lightweight in comparison with other Mann/Stewart westerns such as "The Man from Laramie" and "The Naked Spur" but it certainly doesn't skimp on action and as well as Stewart it has a sterling cast that includes the always excellent Arthur Kennedy, a young Rock Hudson and that lovely and undervalued actress Julia Adams. Very entertaining.

SHADOWS ***

John Cassavetes shot his first film in the streets of New York and it was almost totally improvised, (for instance, all the characters are named for the actors playing them), taking race as his subject. There was no way this would play in Middle America but it broke new ground and established Cassavetes as a major talent, particularly in Europe, (it was nominated for Best Film from Any Source at the BAFTA's), where cinema meant a hell of a lot more than selling popcorn.

The plot is virtually irrelevant, in fact you might say it is non-existent, and the acting of Lelia Goldoni, Ben Carruthers and Hugh Hurd as the three siblings whose lives it follows, is ropy at best but the film has a raw intensity that still astonishes to this day. It's also probably the best record yet of what became known as 'the beat generation'. Over 50 years later young film-makers are still copying Cassavetes' style.

THE KID WITH A BIKE ****

Cyril is hard work and no mistake but then why wouldn't he be. Emotionally he's been through the wringer. He's 12 and lives in a care home. Suddenly he finds that the father he sees occasionally has abandoned him. Around the same time he meets a woman, Samantha, who lives on the same estate where his father used to live and she agrees to foster him on weekends. Between them they track down his dad who turns out to be a feckless wastrel.

The Dardennes don't make 'easy' films. People behave badly in their pictures and are driven to the point of despair. "The Kid with a Bike"is no different but there is hope in this picture that alleviates the pain. For such an emotionally damaged child Cyril is remarkably resilient and in Samantha he finds someone whose goodness is transfigurative but before he can turn his life around he must first go through a baptism of fire with a local criminal.

As Cyril, Thomas Doret is stunningly good. He's never really off the screen and he dominates the film. As Samantha, Cecile De France is also very fine and their relationship is sketched with great finesse and understanding and it is this that lifts the film onto a plain that is bearable. The film's a heart breaker to be sure but for the Dardennes it is almost upbeat. It's also remarkably simple and uncluttered and it delivers a knockout blow.

IN THIS OUR LIFE **

John Huston's second film, "In This Our Life" may have been just a job of work for him and nothing more than a trashy melodrama but it's undeniably entertaining with a very classy cast even if it does have one of Bette Davis' worst performances, (she's still the bitch but her acting is pinched as if her heart wasn't in it, as if she knows what a crock she's landed herself in). She's the bad sister who steals her good sister's husband and drives him to suicide. Olivia De Havilland is the good sister who finds her backbone after she's been dumped. It was quite daring for its day, even touching on the subject of incest, (Bette has a randy old uncle who has the hots for her and is played with lip-smacking relish by Charles Coburn). The men in their lives are George Brent, (who else?), and Dennis Morgan and there's a nice supporting turn from the young African-American actor Ernest Anderson, (whatever happened to him?) as the boy Bette tries to incriminate in a hit-and-run. Unfortunately poor Hattie McDaniel, only a couple of years after winning an Oscar, is back to playing Mammy and Billie Burke is wasted as the mother who never seems to get out of bed. Huston's heart may not have been in it any more than Bette's but he keeps it moving along at quite a gallop nevertheless.

THE MAIDENS OF FETISH STREET *

There's no denying that this nudie classic looks terrific and I'm not talking about the pouting and extremely well-developed 'maidens' strutting their stuff on screen but of the brilliant black and white cinematography of Saul Resnick that turns them into living, breathing works of art. Of course, it wasn't an art-house audience that "The Girls on F Street" aka "The Maidens of Fetish Street" was aimed at, (the clue's in the title), but those back-street cinemas frequented by what was once euphemistically called 'the dirty mac brigade' and who would have been aware only of the women on screen and not the way Resnick filmed them. In other words, this is just another cheap exploitation picture, full of continuity errors, whose artistic merits would have escaped 99.9% of its audience. Now, of course, in a beautifully restored new print by director Nicolas Winding Refn it should attract an entirely different audience; grindhouse meets art-house, and we can simply wonder what one-man band Resnick, (he basically did everything on the film except sweep the floor), might have become had he ever made another picture - the Orson Welles of filth?

DIAMONDS OF THE NIGHT ****

Jan Nemec's 1964 masterpiece "Diamonds of the Night" is rightly considered one of the cornerstones of the Czech New Wave. It's a relatively short film, (only 66 minutes), but from its astonishing opening in which two boys race across fields while gunfire rings out around them, it never lets up. Virtually without dialogue, flashbacks or just thoughts in the boys' minds tell us they are fleeing from a train taking them to a concentration camp and that we are probably in Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia.

So extraordinary is Nemec's handling of this fictional situation, we could be watching a documentary, (it's shot in black and white and often with a hand-held camera). The boys themselves were not professional actors, (one of them, Antonin Kumbera, never made another film), and their plight as they make their way through forests to their inevitable capture, is distressingly real and the luminous images have, what best could be described as a 'terrible beauty'. Once an art-house favourite, the film is seldom seen now but its recent release on Blu-ray should hopefully change that.

ADAM'S RIB **

With the kind of credits this movie boasts, (let's just say anybody who was anybody at the time seems to have been involved), "Adam's Rib"really ought to have been better than it is. That's not to say there's anything wrong with it; it's certainly no dud but it's amiable at best rather than hilarious or even particularly captivating. This is the kind of comedy that wears its intelligence and its 'sophistication' like a badge of merit.

It's the one about the husband and wife team of attorneys, (Tracy and Hepburn), who find themselves on opposing sides, both in and out of court, when he has to prosecute a woman charged with attempted murder, (she shot her cheating husband), while she decides to defend her. The defendant is Judy Holliday and she's terrific, (a year later she would win the Oscar for Best Actress). The husband she shoots is Tom Ewell and the rest of the cast includes Jean Hagen, David Wayne and Hope Emerson, (all of them superb). It was written by Ruth Gordon and Garson Kanin and it is full of good, smart lines. Cukor was the director and even Cole Porter got in on the act with the song 'Amanda', so it's certainly not lacking in talent. Why then isn't it a classic? If it had been messier it might have been more fun. Good then but not great.

THE FLOWER OF EVIL ***

The family at the centre of Claude Chabrol's "La Fleur du Mal" have several skeletons in the closet and a few that aren't in the closet at all. They're an incestuous little bunch and have been up to no good for at least six generations. Mum, (Nathalie Baye), is running for mayoral office. Dad, (Bernard Le Coq), doesn't want her to win and sleeps around. Meanwhile his son, (Benoit Magimel), is sleeping with her daughter, (Melanie Doutey). Yes, mum and dad had been married before and to further complicate matters, the youngsters aren't just stepbrother and stepsister but they may or may not be cousins as well while Aunt Line, (a superb Suzanne Flon), is haunted by memories of when her father was a German collaborator during the war. And then there's a murder, a splendidly Chabrolian murder with an even more splendidly Chabrolian aftermath.

Yes, this is another wonderfully entertaining Chabrol picture of rottenness though the only really rotten character is the father; the others are just unfortunate enough to be part of this particular family. The narrative isn't as tightly knit as in earlier pictures, (this one dates from 2003), and maybe there is one too many red-herrings. Still, no-one does this sort of thing better than Chabrol; he relishes giving us characters we are not supposed to empathize with and he has great fun toying with our sensibilities.

THE ZERO THEOREM no stars

I have to confess I have never really responded to Terry Gilliam's work. I always felt he never quite got a handle on things; not content to simply allow his imagination to soar he seemed to want to make movies that were also 'significant' and in doing so he fell between two stools. Both "Brazil" and "The Fisher King" are much admired but I have always found them cold, impersonal pictures, rather smug in their cleverness. His latest,"The Zero Theorem"
, is no different. It looks great and sounds terrible. This is old-hat '1984' sci-fi of the most banal kind. The most original thought in it's empty head is, let's make a dystopian Big Brother feature gaudy, playful and very, very colourful rather than grim, bleak and abstract. It wastes a very good cast, (Christoph Waltz, Matt Damon, Melanie Thierry, Tilda Swinton, David Thewlis), none of whom can do anything with the mediocre material. I won't even begin to describe what tries to pass for a plot which seems to have been cobbled together from 100 better films. I was going to say that maybe Terry Gilliam should get out more or maybe he really should stay in more and perhaps watch a few decent films.

IT'S COMPLICATED no stars

A rom-com for the old folks. I mean, why should the kids have all the fun, right? But if you think "It's Complicated!" is fun, think again. This is a Nancy Myers film, (she wrote and directed it), and she obviously thinks she's doing her bit for the blue-rinse brigade. Tuesday afternoons movies are cheap so we pensioners want something to go to. Give me "Inglorious Basterds" any day; Hell, I'd even settle for a "Nightmare on Elm Street".

Of course, it's unlikely this would have been made at all had Nancy not been able to talk Meryl into playing the central character of an older woman who has an affair with her ex-husband, (Alec Baldwin, better than the material), but falls for sweet, divorced architect Steve Martin, (a chipmunk could have played his part). Now Meryl is entitled to lighten up now and again, ("Mamma Mia" was a lot of fun), but for God's sake at least give her some dialogue worth saying. Hopefully everyone got very well paid for this as I can't imagine them wanting it on their C.V's.

THE SECRET LIFE OF WALTER MITTY **

Taking an extremely popular, if mediocre, Danny Kaye comedy and revamping it for the 21st century might seem like either a misconceived vanity project or just a dip in judgement on the part of its star/director but Ben Stiller's "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty" is a very real and very pleasant surprise. It's more a travelogue than it is a fantasy film and it looks extraordinary, (DoP Stuart Dryburgh), and Stiller is excellent as Mitty. There's also good work from Kristen Wiig as the object of his affections and Adam Scott as his smarmy boss; even Shirley MacLaine turns in a nicely underplayed cameo as his mother. It could be funnier or more exciting or even just a little bit touching; instead it tends to just coast along inoffensively spouting New Age profundities that are never that profound. What it really needs is a stronger script. Otherwise, I have no real complaints. It may not be anyone's masterpiece but no way is it a turkey either.

P.S. JERUSALEM ***

"P.S. Jerusalem" is more of a video diary than a straightforward documentary, It records the return to Jerusalem of film-maker Danae Elon and is a deeply political film which is only to be expected since Elon is the only child of the Jewish journalist and author Amos Elon and his influence is felt in his daughter's words and images. However, it is less of a portrait of a city, and a city we seldom see in this light, as it is a portrait of a family and that family's place in the world. While the Israel/Palestine conflict has been going on for centuries and with no apparent end in sight, Elon tries to be optimistic, (not always successfully). She is a Jew with strong Arab sympathies and she is not afraid to let her feelings show. This doesn't always prove to be to her advantage. Filming in the city at night she is attacked, not just by a crowd of young Jewish thugs, but also by an elderly man. Nevertheless, she persists and her choice to come back to Jerusalem and make this film seems to me a testament, not just to Elon, but to right-thinking people everywhere.

Yes, it is depressing. Making this film, living in Jerusalem with her political ideology, takes its toll on her marriage and her family. At times you ask yourself, was it worth it? Is any film or any cause worth this kind of pain? The conflict continues without resolution and Elon certainly provides no answers. The only hope the film offers is that there are people like Elon out there clinging to their beliefs no matter what. I wasn't in anyway comforted by it and I am still torn by Elon's choice in moving to Jerusalem in the first place. Still, I thank God for her and for people like her and I am happy to honor her mistakes. This is a remarkable piece of reportage.

MARRIED TO THE MOB ***

"Married to the Mob". This highly enjoyable movie, (it deserves to be better known), is like a comic version of "Goodfellas" from the perspective of the wives. Alec Baldwin, (young and handsome, back then), is the gangster cut from the same cloth as Ray Liotta in Scorsese's
picture and Michelle Pfeiffer, (terrific), is his wife tired of being in 'the family' and wanting out. When he's bumped off she thinks her chance may have come only to find that she's 'married to the mob'. Mr Big is a brilliant Dean Stockwell, (he was Oscar-nominated), and the great cast also includes Matthew Modine, Mercedes Ruehl and Joan Cusack. The director was Jonathan Demme before he got serious and the whole movie is infused with a lovely pop-art glow.

SAHARA **

A nice surprise."Sahara" is a Zoltan Korda directed war film that centres on a single tank cut off from the rest of the regiment and making its way across the desert of the title with two prisoners, A German and an Italian, on board. In this respect it's a little like the later "Ice Cold in Alex". Humphrey Bogart is the tough American sergeant in charge and others in the all-male cast include Dan Duryea, Bruce Bennett, Lloyd Bridges and Rex Ingram. The prisoners are Kurt Kreuger and an Oscar-nominated J Carrol Naish. Superbly photographed, too, by Rudolph Mate, also an Oscar nominee for his work here. Not often revived but worth seeking out.

TEETH **

Mitchell Lichenstein's film "Teeth" is about as sharp as a newly sharpened cut-throat razor and just as lethal and it's certainly not for the squeamish. The teeth in question could take your hand off but since they aren't in Dawn's mouth but somewhere else entirely perhaps it isn't your hand you should be worried about. Yep, Dawn has 'teeth' in her vagina and God help any guy who wants to rob Dawn of her precious virginity. Lichenstein's film is suitably nasty but it's also a clever, funny take on both blossoming sexuality and religious fundamentalism just as Jess Weixler's first-rate performance as Dawn lifts the film way out of the conventional horror mould. It's also the type of date movie that will have guys crossing their legs at opportune moments.

HOW THE WEST WAS WON **

Cinerama was a neck-craning exercise that began in the mid-fifties and lasted for a decade or so until the fad ran out of steam. Of all the films made in the process, which involved projecting images from three 35mm projectors onto a huge, curved screen "How the West Was Won"
was probably the most famous and the most successful. With three directors, including John Ford, and four Directors of Photography this was the most epic of epic westerns though I think its real appeal lay in watching its all-star cast, including a host of Oscar winners, go through the motions as much as in its vistas which seemed to stretch from here to eternity and were very pretty indeed.

Covering a period of about sixty years it traced, somewhat sketchily, the whole history of the American West while Debbie Reynolds provided some sort of link between the various stories ageing, not very convincingly, from young girl settler to old lady pioneer. It was written by James R Webb who rather surprisingly won an Oscar for his endeavours.

DAY OF THE EVIL GUN **

Jerry Thorpe may have been something of a lightweight director but even lightweights can hit pay-dirt once in awhile and "Day of the Evil Gun", which he made in 1968, is a fine and somewhat unusual western. The story is not dissimilar to such earlier westerns as "The Searchers" and "Two Rode Together", (two men searching for a woman abducted by the Apaches), but it takes a few diversions along the way. The men in question are played by veterans Glenn Ford and Arthur Kennedy and the slightly grizzled cast also includes Dean Jagger, Paul Fix and John Anderson as well as a young Dean Stanton sans the Harry. It's no classic, I'll grant you but it's sufficiently different to be of interest and fans of the western won't be disappointed.
.

THE WOMAN IN BLACK **

The spirit of Hammer films is alive and very definitely kicking in this superlative ghost story based on Susan Hill's novel and the long running play. Daniel Radcliffe is excellent, and holding the movie very much on his own for a good deal of the time, as the young lawyer foolish enough to spend the night in a lonely house haunted by"The Woman in Black" as well as some very dead children. Director James Watkins knows how to build up the frighteners and there are several excellent jump-out-of-your-seat moments and a nice sense of dread permeates the whole thing. Ultimately it may be nothing more than a guilty pleasure but there are worse ways of spending ninety minutes in a cinema.

THE BIG MOUTH ***

Why this Jerry Lewis comedy isn't better known or more widely available is a mystery since it's a classic and as consistently funny as anything he did. Here the slapstick verges on the surreal while its 'thriller' plot is virtually irrelevant. As well as starring, Jerry wrote, produced and directed and if it never amounts to anything more than a series of sketches they are, at least, very funny. It's certainly a movie ripe for rediscovery that, for now at least, will have to settle for ultimate cult status.

THE ONES BELOW *

"The Ones Below" is a decent enough little chamber piece on the perils of parenting, particularly if you suspect the neighbours downstairs covet your new-born baby. It marks the directorial debut of writer David Farr, (he wrote "The Night Manager" for television), and it's nicely done but in the end it's just too unpleasant to be entertaining. Basically a four-hander and well played by Clemence Poesy as the new mother convinced her neighbours are up to no good and by David Morrissey and Laura Birn as the neighbours, (personally I would have moved out five minutes after they moved in). It's let down only by Stephen Campbell Moore as Poesy's partner. Considering his outing in a similar role in the nasty little horror picture "The Children" some years back I would suggest Mr Campbell Moore get the snip sooner rather than later.

ULYSSES' GAZE *

You might think that in making a film about Greek cinema or at least about a fellow film-maker Angelopolous would have made his greatest masterpiece but "Ulysses' Gaze" may be his most lugubrious film. Perhaps working mostly in English didn't help or the one-note performance of Harvey Keitel as the exiled film-maker returning to his homeland in search of 3 reels of lost film by the Manakia Brothers was to blame.

The structure is just as complex as anything by Angelopolous as Keitel moves back and forth in time but he also makes for an uneasy observer of Balkan history and the conflict in Sarajevo and ultimately the material feels less profound than I'm sure the director intended; there's only so much old ground he can cover. It isn't a bad film; I don't think Angelopolous could make a bad film if he tried and visually it is very impressive. Rather it is simply a great disappointment from a man who can justifiably lay claim to being one of the ten greatest directors in all of cinema.

EASY A **

As female-orientated High School comedies go "Easy A" is a lot better than most. It may not be particularly original but it's smart and funny and in Emma Stone it had a star in the making. She's terrific and she's just the lynch-pin of a terrific cast that includes Stanley Tucci and Patricia Clarkson, superb, as her parents, Thomas Haden Church as an embarrassingly hip teacher, Lisa Kudrow as his equally embarrassing Guidance Counsellor of a wife and a whole host of marvellous young ladies as various friends and rivals who spread the rumour that Miss Stone isn't just a virgin any longer but an all-out slut. It was written by Bert V. Royal and directed by the obviously very talented Will Gluck, (it was only his second film), and is well worth seeking out.

THE SALVATION *

"The Salvation" is a grim, violent and really rather unpleasant art-house western that comes to us, not from America at all but by way of Denmark, the United Kingdom and even South Africa. Mads Mikkelsen is the Danish settler who comes into conflict with land-grabber Jeffrey Dean Morgan after he kills Morgan's brother after said brother has murdered Mikkelsen's son and raped and killed Mikkelsen's wife. It's a very stylish picture but also a deeply derivative one, It's painfully obvious that director Kristian Levring has seen one too many Spaghetti westerns and Clint Eastwood pictures not to mention paying tribute to John Ford whenever he can. As a genre picture it's perfectly acceptable; it's just not as original as it thinks it is.

YOSSI *

I normally don't watch sequels when I haven't seen the original but in the case of "Yossi" I thought I would make an exception. It's a sequel to "Yossi and Jagger" and it takes up the story of Yossi, an Israeli doctor, after the death of his lover, Jagger, who was killed when they were soldiers in the Lebanon. Other than providing some kind of happy ending for Yossi this time round this seems to me a somewhat pointless film despite being very well written, directed and acted. As gay 'romances' go it's certainly up-front and honest and hardly sentimental but the 10 year gap between the two films gives this the feeling of an afterthought. Nevertheless, it's still a welcome addition to LGBT cinema if only for treating both its characters and its audience with some degree of intelligence

THE TRIP TO BOUNTIFUL *

Geraldine Page finally picked up a long overdue Oscar as the cantankerous widow longing to see her hometown of Bountiful one more time before she dies in Peter Masterson's fine and understated adaptation of Horton Foote's play "The Trip to Bountiful". Foote himself did the screenplay and there's really very little to it but Foote was a master of making the small, inconsequential things of life seem important. Unfortunately there is nothing small about Page's performance; this is acting with a capital A. Never the most subtle of performers, Page deploys every mannerism in the Method Actor's Handbook pulling out all the stops in a shameless bid to finally get that Oscar. The best performance comes from John Heard as the son torn between a nagging wife, (an excellent Carlin Glynn), and an overpowering mother. It's just a pity we don't see more of him.

THEOREM ****

At the beginning of "Teorema", in a wordless, sepia-tinged montage, we are introduced to almost all the main characters in Pasolini's film. It's a clever device, almost Hitchcockian, and it could be the beginning of a thriller, though being a Pasolini film we know this won't be a thriller. The character who doesn't appear in this montage is played by Terence Stamp but suddenly there he is right in the middle of things and his affect on everyone is profound. Who is he and why is he here? It's never made clear, of course. Although a very physical presence his role is allegorical. Is he an angel, (there is a strong religious element in the picture), or a devil or simply a seducer since he does seem to have sex with everyone in the family, male and female, including the maid who ends up levitating and performing miracles. He certainly affords everyone a form of release, turning their lives upside down and with it their bourgeoisie pretentions. If we are going to tear down the bourgeoisie we may as well do it with sex; it's a lot more fun than beating them to death.

Stamp, of course, remains the most beautiful thing on screen though Silvana Mangano as the mother gives him a run for his money. No-one really has to act; all they simply have to do is respond to Pasolini's camera and, with no real narrative structure, that's fairly easy. Sex may be Pasolin's weapon of choice but the film is quite clearly a Marxist 'fantasy' and is also very obviously the work of a gay director. I'm not so sure anymore if it's the masterpiece I thought it was all those years ago bu it stands up remarkably well and remains one of the great Italian films of its decade.

THE WONDERS ***

Chanelling both Olmi and Fellini, Alice Rohrwacher's "The Wonders" represents Italian cinema at its best. Like Olmi's "Tree of Wooden Clogs" or more recently, Frammartino's "Le Quattro Volte" it's another classic picture of rural life with a touch of late Fellini thrown in, (in the form of the slightly surreal television competition that gives the film its name).

It's about a family of bee-keepers, struggling to make a living in Etruscany. The German father is something of a wastrel, the mother has mostly given up and it's left to the oldest daughter to hold things together. The writer and director Alice Rohrwacher, it was only her second feature film, neither romanticises or sentimentalises their situation and the film works both as a rural idyll and another wonderful addition to the cinema of childhood, (the adults seem to be figures in the background). Intelligent and very moving.

ALL THE YOUNG MEN *

"All the Young Men" is a Korean war movie that finds an ageing Alan Ladd and an up-and-coming Sidney Poitier leading a platoon of soldiers into a snow-bound Korean pass where they have to hold a farm-house against all the odds. It's not a bad film, just a rather formulaic one full of stock characters yet it's even quite exciting at times. The writer/producer/director was Hal Bartlett, a B-Movie stalwart of the period who liked to tackle 'difficult' issues, a kind of poor man's Sam Fuller, (Poitier's presence here ensures racism rears its ugly head). The first-rate black and white photography was by Daniel L Fapp.

RICK **

"Rick" transposes the plot of "Rigoletto" to the world of New York big business sans the music. It's a nice, if obvious, dark little picture that almost no-one has seen. Bill Pullman is the corporate whizkid whose dirty dealings and total disregard for people's feelings come back to haunt him when he is 'cursed' by Sandra Oh's waitress that he's been particularly nasty to, (he gets her fired from her job for starters). Pullman is fine, (he's an underrated actor at the best of times), as is Aaron Stanford as his slimy younger boss and the movie is just nasty enough to make an impact. No classic then but far from being a dog either.

STRAIGHT TIME ***

Ulu Grosbard was one of the great American directors of the seventies and was certainly among the most underrated. He made "Straight Time" in 1978 and it's a terrific movie about crime and criminals though it's not a thriller nor even a heist movie. It's central character, Max Dembo, (a superb Dustin Hoffman), is a career criminal; crime is built into his DNA. When he's released from prison, where he's served 6 years for armed robbery, he at first seems repentant but it isn't long before he has a run-in with his unsympathetic and vindictive parole officer, (M. Emmett Walsh, excellent). From this point on, it's all downhill.

Were this film in French you wouldn't think twice in saying it was a Jean-Pierre Melville picture. Like Melville's work this film deals in criminal mindsets; it's about the minutiae of crime. Dembo and his associates are professional criminals but they are messy and arrogant, more likely to die an early death or spend more time in prison than out of it.

This is a beautifully acted, highly intelligent picture. Others in the cast include Theresa Russell, Harry Dean Stanton and Gary Busey, brilliant as a young would-be gangster not making much of a job of trying to stay on the straight and narrow. Adapted from the novel "No Beast so Fierce" by Edward Bunker, who also appears as another criminal, and beautifully photographed by Owen Roizman it really deserves to be better known.

MOMMIE DEAREST **

The movie may be a camp classic, ("Christina, bring me the axe"; "No wire hangers...EVER!"), and it is terrible but who can deny Faye Dunaway's tour-de-force. She may not always look that much like Crawford, (Dunaway never looked like anyone other than Dunaway), but her performance goes way beyond mimicry. I have no idea how true any of it is; we have to take Christina's word for it but we don't have to rely on this to know just how tough a cookie, (and how big a bitch?), Joan actually was and Joan certainly gets into her skin. Unfortunately the movie never aims high enough and we are very much in "Valley of the Dolls" territory here. Four writers may have been two or three too many and the director Frank Perry was probably not the right man for this kind of material. Still, he managed to get a couple of remarkable performances from his two Christinas, (Diana Scarwid and 10 year old Mara Hobel), though the men, especially Steve Forrest, are mostly terrible. It certainly enjoyable both as a piece of over-the-top trash and as an example of a very fine actress going a long way to making a silk purse out of a sow's ear. It's also a classic cult movie.

NEVER LET GO **

Nasty and brutish it may be but this British crime movie is also extremely gripping and very well done for what it is. Richard Todd is the salesman who goes after the thieves who stole his car. Adam Faith is the young thug who actually took it and, cast against type, Peter Sellers is superb as the psychotic Mr Big figure. A 17 year old Carol White, (she of "Cathy Come Home" fame), is Sellers' young mistress. The director was John Guillermin and he gives the film a nice sleazy atmosphere and makes very good use of his London locations.

ALIVE AND KICKING **

This piece of Irish whimsy makes "The Quiet Man" look like neo-realism. "Alive and Kicking" is a totally daft delight that finds old ladies Sybil Thorndike, Kathleen Harrison and Estelle Winwood 'escape' from their Old People's Home in England only to end up on an island off the Irish coast where, with the help of the locals, including a young Richard Harris, making his film debut, they set up a business knitting sweaters for the fashion market.

It's all very silly and, if you're Irish, probably deeply patronising but it's also hugely likeable. Harrison and Winwood are excellent but it is Thorndike who steals the show. This grand-dame of British theatre has a grand old time scurrying up and down cliffs in search of birds eggs or hunting rabbits with a shotgun, (well, at least her stand-in does). Stanley Holloway is in it, too as the rich Irish-American who proves to be their saviour. Ripe for rediscovery.

BEAT GIRL no stars

Hard to believe that this tale of beat girls, beat boys and sundry strippers was once considered scandalous and had an 'X' certificate slapped on it when it first appeared. It's another warning on what can happen when you let your teenage daughter listen to jazz or worse still, jive music! Of course, it's mostly terrible but it has built up something of a reputation as a cult movie in recent years. (The club scenes and a chicken run stolen from "Rebel Without a Cause" are surprisingly good).

David Farrar is the rich architect who remarries; his new wife is Noelle Adam and she has a shady past and newcomer Gillian Hills is his pouty teenage daughter who resents her. The cast also includes Christopher Lee, Adam Faith, (not at all bad), Peter McEnery and a young Oliver Reed, (billed here as Plaid Shirt). The director was Edmond T Greville who brought a middle-aged man's disapproving eye to bear on the proceedings.

UNFRIENDED no stars

It was bound to happen. We have now moved from CGI to literally looking at a computer screen and it you think flicking between Facebook and Skype and God-knows-what-else on your actual computer is annoying wait until you see"Unfriended". Actually this movie, which takes place in real time on a computer monitor, moving back and forth between a group of nasty, randy teenagers who are being menaced by an unseen presence, is something of a technical marvel and it does provide the occasional frisson but it's also headache-inducing and hard to sit through. It's actually one of the few films that will look better on your tv or computer screen than in the cinema where the size of the screen just seems out of place or perhaps it's just one of those films that's best not seen at all since the originality of the concept is quickly swallowed up by the silliness of the plot. Amazingly, a sequel is on the way.

TOO LATE FOR TEARS no stars

The title might suggest a weepie of sorts but "Too Late for Tears" is a film noir and a fairly mediocre one at that. It's actually got a very good story (by Roy Huggins from his 'Saturday Evening Post' serial), but the treatment is poor. Lizabeth Scott is the greedy femme fatale who will stop at nothing, including murder, to hold onto the bag of money that lands in her lap, or at least in her car. Scott was never much of an actress and she's terrible here. As the blackmailer whose money she steals Dan Duryea is his usual excellent self and there's a nice supporting turn from Arthur Kennedy as Scott's sap of her husband. As I said it's got a decent enough story but director Byron Haskin wasn't the man to do anything with it and it just limps along to its rather torturous conclusion.

SAMMY GOING SOUTH ***

SAMMY GOING SOUTH. A road movie with a difference since the road young Sammy must travel runs all the way from Port Said in Egypt, where his parents have been killed in an air-raid, all the way to Durban in South Africa where his Aunt Jane lives. This is something of a late classic from Alexander MacKendrick, a movie in which the central character is a child but which isn't really a children's film, (though children will relate to it), and it's utterly devoid of sentimentality. On route he meets a number of people who both help him and hinter him on his journey and he learns to 'grow up' very quickly. One of the people he meets is Edward G Robinson's old diamond smuggler and in the end it is he who is really Sammy's salvation, (and as ever, Robinson is superb). As Sammy, Fergus McClelland is also superb; MacKendrick is a very fine director of children. Filmed on location in Africa, it is also visually very impressive.

FATHER BROWN **

Robert Hamer directed this thoroughly delightful comedy based on one of G K Chesterton's "Father Brown" stories, (it's also known as "The Detective"), and cast Alec Guinness as the priest and amateur sleuth determined not only to catch master thief Flambeau, (Peter Finch), but to save his soul as well. The humor is gentle and very British and both Guinness and Finch are marvellous as the detective and the criminal who  strike up a fond rapport with each other. Others in the fine cast include Joan Greenwood, Cecil Parker and Bernard Lee. Underrated and worth seeking out.

SONS AND LOVERS *

Freddie Francis won a much deserved Oscar for his superb black and white, widescreen cinematography on this 1960 screen version of "Sons and Lovers" which was directed by another great cameraman, Jack Cardiff. It was a huge success in its day, tying with "The Apartment" for the New York Film Critics' Best Picture prize but apart from Francis' cinematography it has very little to recommend it. This is a sanitized, unbearably literate treatment of Lawrence's novel with a hugely miscast Dean Stockwell in the crucial role of Paul Morel, Lawrence's alter-ego. The American Stockwell just about manages the accent but makes Morel a soulless, spoiled brat. As his coal-miner father Trevor Howard also struggles but, as always, Wendy Hiller is superb as the clinging, overly possessive mother and an Oscar-nominated Mary Ure isn't bad as Clara Dawes. It may have felt reasonably daring in 1960 but Lawrence deserves better than this kid-gloves approach.

THE PAPERBOY **

"The Paperboy" looks and feels like a trashy pulp novel. I haven't read Peter Dexter's original book but it may have been just that. It's told in flashback by maid Anita, (singer Macy Gray), and it deals with a murder and a possible miscarriage of justice. The murder, as it turns out, is really only a red-herring, (there are other murders to make up for it), and even the miscarriage of justice is virtually thrown away as a major plot point.

It's set 'in the past' in a place close to the Florida Everglades where racism is rampant. The paperboy of the title is the extraordinarily handsome Zac Efron, (who at least makes up in looks what he lacks in acting chops), whose job it is to deliver the newspapers his daddy prints. On the other hand, the paperboy could just as easily be Matthew McConaughey as his older brother, a reporter who has returned to the family fold to write a story about a man on death row whom he believes is innocent. He has another writer with him, a sophisticated black man from 'London, England', (he stands out like Virgil Tibbs in this backwater). The guy on death row turns out to be something of a neanderthal and is played brilliantly by John Cusack and he has a tramp of a girl-friend on the outside who he had never even met 'in the flesh', so to speak, (Nicole Kidman, terrific and giving the film all the sleazy kick it needs). It's she that Efron falls for in a puppy-love kind of way and it's this tiresome infatuation that makes up most of the film's plot.

In the end it shudders into some kind of life with a lot of unsavoury revelations and a double murder. It's all very watchable and there are some good soul numbers on the soundtrack and you may be inclined to think Kidman, (and perhaps even Cusack), were robbed of Oscar nominations but it's hardly likely to do much for director Lee Daniels' faltering career.