DRIFT no stars

"Drift" is a film of all-encompassing boredom; watching it makes watching paint dry seem like a ride on a rollercoaster. It has two characters, both women, who start off together then drift apart, (geddit?), as they drift across seas which drift ... well, wherever seas drift, I guess. They don't say much and director Helena Wittmann's camera watches them...drifting. As an exercise in 'pure' film-making, (nothing feels 'constructed', every image is simply 'as it is', held at times for what feels like an eternity), it is certainly honest and perhaps even fascinating if you can get past the fact that absolutely nothing whatsoever happens but there's no denying that many of the images have their own beauty. Of course, it's also massively self-indulgent, a well-made home-movie that Wittmann has inflicted on the rest of us. I think I would have preferred to watch paint dry.

THE LEGEND OF TARZAN no stars

A surfeit of CGI and too much monkeying around are the ruin of this resurrection of the Tarzan myth. Having exhausted all other possibilities this one, like the vastly superior  "Greystoke; the Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes" gives Tarzan his due as the Earl of Greystoke where he's ensconced when the picture opens. He only returns to Africa to find out what the pesky King of the Belgians is up to, running up against his old nemesis Chief Mbonga, (a suitably statuesque Djimon Hounsou), and the villainous Leon Rom, (a suitably nasty Christop Waltz). He's accompanied by the missus, (Margot Robbie), and a sharp-shooting American diplomat, (a wasted Samuel L Jackson). In the end, of course, it's Tarzan himself who holds this mess of a picture together and Alexander Skarsgard certainly looks the part, in or out of his clothes. Unfortunately the thinness of the plot doesn't help and there is a distinct lack of imagination in David Yates' direction which orchestrates every jungle cliche imaginable leaving you pining for the days of Johnny Weissmuller, Gordon Scott and even Jock Mahoney.

ISHTAR no stars

A disaster, both critically and commercially, "Ishtar" basically ended the career of Elaine May as a major player in Hollywood, (she both wrote it and directed it), while stars Dustin Hoffman and Warren Beatty were lucky to emerge with anything like their reputations intact. I suppose it was May's attempt to do a tribute to the 'Road' movies but with two actors rather than two comics in the lead. Is it as bad as people say? Well, frankly yes. It's not that the corny gags aren't funny; they're just not funny in this context, with these actors. It might have worked, and I do stress might have, if Beatty and Hoffman had been replaced with, say, May herself and her former partner Mike Nichols and done as a series of sketches...but then, on second thoughts. So bad, in fact, it makes the Mike Nichols directed Beatty/Jack Nicholson vehicle "The Fortune" look like "Citizen Kane"... or even "Duck Soup".

VAGABOND ***

 We know from the very beginning the fate of Sandrine Bonnaire's Mona, the "Vagabond" of the title in Agnes Varda's magnificent film. She's dead, a frozen corpse in a ditch and then, in flashbacks, we see how she got there. Varda never passes judgment and "Vagabond", like her very best films, is a work of observation. As well as a handful of professional actors she uses the people of the towns and villages Bonnaire passes through, giving the film an air of reality while Bonnaire herself is simply superb.

Varda doesn't require her to do anything but exist and it's a very 'un-actressy' performance, closer to real life than to what we are used to seeing in the movies. Now and again the film dips into the conventional as if Varda is trying to put some meat on its bones but for the most part, this is a remarkable work and one of the best of its director's career.

RICHARD III ***

It may not be the best film of a Shakespeare play but surely there is no better Shakespearean performance on film than Laurence Olivier's "Richard III". He had already done "Henry V" and "Hamlet" on screen, winning Oscars for both, (an Honorary one for his "Henry V"), but 'Richard ...' was always considered the lesser, more fanciful play with an Elizabethan Godfather in charge yet Olivier made it his own, creating a Richard by which all others would be judged.

It's less 'cinematic' than either "Henry V" or "Hamlet", (the sets look like sets), but here 'the play's the thing' and Olivier cast it perfectly. Knights Gielgud and Hardwicke are quickly dispatched as Clarence and Edward but Ralph Richardson is a magnificently malevolent Buckingham, Mary Kerridge, a magnificent Queen Elizabeth and Claire Bloom, a sublime Lady Anne. It is also one of the most accessible of all Shakespeare adaptations; Shakespeare for those who don't like Shakespeare and a 'thriller' that genuinely thrills.

ENTERTAINING MR SLOANE **

"Entertaining Mr Sloane" is regarded in some quarters as one of the great post-war British comedies though you would hardly think so after seeing this 1970 film version. It's not at all bad, is frequently very funny and its cast of four, (Beryl Reid, Harry Andrews, Peter McEnery and Alan Webb), give it all they've got. Reid and Andrews are siblings; she's a nymphomaniac and he's gay and McEnery is the eponymous Mr Sloane, the object of both their affections. Webb is their ancient father and it's he who rubs Mr Sloane up the wrong way. Douglas Hickox directed without much imagination, relying too heavily on the material. Entertaining it certainly is but great? Best you see it on stage before making up your mind.

KISS OF DEATH ***

As a jobbing director Henry Hathaway was one of the best in the business and his best films, like this one, are classics of their kind. He made "Kiss of Death" in 1947 and shot it on location and it's a humdinger of a picture. Victor Mature, (surprisingly excellent), is the star and he's ably backed by Brian Donleavy and Coleen Gray but it's Richard Widmark, making his screen debut as the young psychopath Tommy Udo, who walks off with the picture, picking up an Oscar nomination on the way.

This is the movie in which a giggling Widmark pushes Mildred Dunnock, in a wheelchair, down a flight of stairs making him one of the most loved and despised villains in the movies. The first-rate screenplay was written by Beh Hecht and Charles Lederer and the excellent black and white cinematography was by the undervalued Norbert Brodine. The theme of a crook who squeals might now be read as a comment on what was happening in Hollywood at the time though this has never proved to be as controversial as "On the Waterfront" would finally become.

ACT OF VIOLENCE ***

Fred Zinnemann made "Act of Violence" in 1948 before the solid, literary adaptations that made his reputation. It's a terrific piece of work, a truly taut thriller and yes, you could say very Un-Zinnemann like. The act of violence of the title is two-fold. It could refer to Robert Ryan's desire to kill Van Heflin or it could equally refer to the act of violence that Heflin was responsible for when a number of his men, during the war, were murdered by the Nazis after he betrayed them. Heflin now lives a life of almost desperate respectability in a small Californian town with wife Janet Leigh and it's to there that Ryan tracks him down.

This is a morally complex film that was never the success it deserved to be. Both Heflin and Ryan are superb and Leigh, too, is excellent as the wife trying to come to terms with her husband's past. There is also a terrific, and sadly neglected, supporting turn from Mary Astor as an ageing prostitute. It was shot magnificently and on actual locations, in black and white, by Robert Surtees and it remains one of Zinnemann's very finest films.

GIRL WITH GREEN EYES ****

Desmond Davis may be the finest director ever to have been 'overlooked' by the British film establishment. A former camera operator Davis directed his first feature in 1964 and it's a small masterpiece and one of the most beautifully shot black and white films in all of British cinema, (Manny Wynn was the DoP). "Girl with Green Eyes" was adapted by Edna O Brien from her novel "The Lonely Girl" and it's set in Dublin where friends Kate and Baba share lodgings and where Kate meets a much older English writer, (an excellent Peter Finch), with whom she has an affair.

It's a very simple picture, closer in tone to the French New Wave than the British Kitchen Sink and while now it's largely been forgotten it was surprisingly successful in its day, winning the Golden Globe for Best English Language Foreign Film while Davis took the National Board of Review's Best Director prize. Davis followed it with two more superb 'small' films, "The Uncle" and another O'Brien story "I Was Happy Here" before a brief breakthrough into more commercial fare and then an awful lot of television. Still alive at ninety, his name may not mean much to the present generation of cineastes but his first three films alone, and "Girl with Green Eyes" in particular, have earned him his place in the sun.

THE BIG GAMBLE *

Not one of Richard Fleischer's happiest projects, (he complained Producer Darryl F. Zanuck insisted on coming to Africa with the crew and kept interfering). It's a romp that doesn't really romp; an African adventure that's played too broadly and in desperate need of a script, (Irwin Shaw did the screenplay and it wasn't his finest hour). Stephen Boyd is the brash, arrogant Irishman who heads to the Ivory Coast with French wife Juliette Greco and Irish cousin David Wayne in the hope of starting up a trucking business. Needless to say, things don't go too well. There are a few good set-pieces as well as too much local colour and the opening scenes in Dublin are now of some historical interest in showing how a city can change in fifty years. Ideal for a wet Saturday afternoon is about the best you can say for it.

JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS **

Once upon a time special effects really were special and CGI was the stuff of science fiction. I still hanker after epics were the extras are real people and the sets, real sets and gods and monsters were things conjured up by men who were geniuses with a camera. The first "King Kong" may look clumsy now but who can deny its charm. However, it was in the fifties and early sixties that movies with 'special effects' really took off thanks largely to men like Ray Harryhausen. Today the names of the directors of many of these films are largely forgotten but the effects and images conjured up by men like Harryhausen are as fresh in the memory as if newly minted. Indeed, Harryhausen may be the only special effects creator who is as well known as some directors and actors.

Don Chaffey's "Jason and the Argonauts" has become something of a classic despite being a bit of a clinker as a movie and it's all down to Harryhausen. For the most part this is a conventional sword-and-sandal epic with an Ancient Greece that is part myth and part studio kitsch but the effects that Harryhausen came up with lifted the movie onto an altogether higher and dafter plain. This is a Boys Own Adventure of the old school and it has stood the test of time surprisingly well.

Jason is Todd Armstrong who was blessed with good looks and cursed with a singular lack of talent in every other department. Nancy Kovack is the gorgeous and equally vacant heroine while the supporting cast consists largely of British character actors and brawny men in loin-cloths. The Grecian isles, however, certainly look good thanks to Wilkie Cooper's excellent colour photography but it is Harryhausen's stop-motion creations that make this film memorable. Even to this day Jason's battle with the skeletons still gives me a buzz. The great score is by none other than the great Bernard Herrmann.

FORTUNE AND MEN'S EYES no stars

Although a lot of prison films allude to homosexuality very few actually take it as the main theme. Jean Genet's "Un Chant D'Amour" isn't just the best of them but arguably the most poetic gay movie ever made. You certainly couldn't say the same for Harvey Hart's film of John Herbert's play. I've never seen it on stage but if it was anything like this I'm glad I didn't . This is an appallingly caricatured account of men 'forced' together by circumstance with the emphasis very clearly on sex. If it were better acted it might have been tolerable but the largely unknown cast can do nothing with the mediocre material. In 1971 this might have seemed 'daring'; now it just seems crude and tasteless.

THE HOUSE ON SORORITY ROW no stars

Another slasher movie in which a bevy of beautiful sorority girls are diced and sliced and all because of something that happened 20 years previously. It's hardly "Halloween"; it's not even "Friday the 13th" but "The House on Sorority Row" is a suitably sleazy creep-fest nevertheless. Of course it's also totally predictable right from the pre-credit sequence. The acting is terrible and the script is no better and sometimes it's hard to tell if the laughs are intentional or not but that's all part of the fun where trash like this is concerned. This is strictly Midnight Movie material; seeing it in the cold light of day may not really be such a good idea.

SHE-MAN; A STORY OF FIXATION no stars

Jaw-droppingly awful; "She-Man: A Story of Fixation" is another Z-movie out to shock, in this case with a tale of transvestism and lesbians. It was directed by Bob Clark; yes, the same Bob Clark who made "Porky's" and at 66 minutes it certainly doesn't outstay its welcome. If you haven't heard of it, that's understandable as it's unlikely to have seen the light of day outside of those cinemas that were once popular in London's Soho and New York's 42nd Street. It may aim for seriousness but settles instead for sleaze and the kind of production values you might associate with a horror film of the trashiest kind as if 'she-men' were just one step away from vampires. A curio, then, but one that now seems positively prehistoric and definitely a must to avoid.

THE JAZZ SINGER *

If you've never seen it what you have to get into your head is that "The Jazz Singer"
wasn't the first all-talking picture. In fact, it was a silent picture to which a certain amount of talking and, of course, singing was later added and in such a perfunctory way it's little wonder people said it would never catch on. This looks like an experiment and not a very good one. It was based on a play by Samson Raphaelson though it was hardly likely to be remembered as great drama; indeed it is shamelessly sentimental and melodramatic. Fundamentally this is a vehicle for the great Al Jolson who, even in these primitive circumstances, brings the stamp of his considerable personality to every scene in which he sings. As the man himself says, "You ain't heard nothin' yet". You can just imagine how cinema audiences must have felt at the time.

MA MERE no stars

Isabelle Huppert is one of the greatest and boldest actresses there is, unafraid of any role she's given. Unfortunately that sometimes means she's given parts that are, quite frankly, beneath her. Her role in Christophe Honore's screen version of Georges Bataille's novel "Ma Mere" is one of them. She plays a hedonistic woman who, after the death of her husband, initiates her adoring young son in her lifestyle. She attacks the part gamely enough as does a frequently nude young Louis Garrel as the son but the film is mostly unpleasant and shallow. It's like a porn movie with the pretensions of seriousness, as if all sex is just a cover for something more profound rather than as an end in itself. Ultimately it reminded of seventies Europorn and it leaves a very sour taste in the mouth.

TANGERINE ***

Sean Baker's 2015 film "Tangerine" is an absolute gem. It's fiction but it could be fact as we get a glimpse of the seamier side of LA on Christmas Eve as Baker follows a couple of transgender hookers aound, one of whom is looking for her unfaithful boyfriend. Then there's the Armenian cabdriver just looking for what, in less enlightened times, might have been called, 'a chick with a dick'. It's funny but mostly it's sad and, as one of the hookers, has in Mya Taylor, a real find. It's not an easy watch but it established Baker as a director of considerable promise, a promise effortlessly fulfilled with "The Florida Project", making him one of the most exciting talents in the independent section right now.

PALINDROMES *

No-one could ever accuse Todd Solondz of making 'nice' films. From the very beginning, he has dealt with the harshest of subjects but with what seems like the 'sickest' sense of humor. The sexuality of children is often to the fore with his 'Wiener' films being perhaps the most misanthropic.

"Palindromes" begins with a dedication to the fictional Dawn Wiener but then takes up the story of Aviva, played by a variety of performers of varying ages, both male and female, (you couldn't say Solondz isn't an 'equal opportunities' director), with a series of loosely linked sketches passing for a plot like some kind of warped fairytale. It's certainly original but flimsy and Solondz's cynicism often leaves a very sour taste. Ultimately there isn't much here to get your teeth into and I can't say I really cared for it.

THE PASSAGE ***

"The Passage" is a road-movie quite unlike any other. A woman dying of cancer, a man just released from prison and a British artist take a road trip together through Texas, each finding some kind of spiritual 'awakening' on the journey. It may sound precious and 'arty' but it isn't. The actors aren't 'actors' but real people playing themselves and their experiences feel real than than contrived. The director, Roberto Minervini, isn't well known; in fact I have to confess I never heard of him before seeing this movie. An Italian, you could say he brings an outsider's chilly eye to bear on proceedings and he photographs landscape, not from the perspective of a tourist, but a realist. This is independent film-making of the rawest kind and it won't be to everyone's taste but if you are prepared to stick with it, it has much to offer and is often deeply moving.

JACK, THE GIANT SLAYER **

Don't expect any of the philosophical or psychological insights of Sondheim's "Into the Woods" in "Jack, the Giant Slayer". This is strictly a CGI generated adventure yarn with a nod back to the good old days of Ray Harryhausen and while the special effects are state of the art you might just hanker after those old stop-motion movies while watching this one but then, as we all know, nostalgia is a thing of the past so we may as well buckle down and enjoy director Bryan Singer's big, widescreen extravaganza, (and it certainly looks good).

Jack is up-and-coming young British actor Nicholas Hoult who actually manages to be both good-looking and a decent actor though, of course, decent acting is the last thing you expect in a film like this. Still, an above average script, ( in part written by Christopher McQuarrie), and a top-notch cast, (Ian McShane, Ewan McGregor, Stanley Tucci, Eddie Marsan), not to mention a Grade A director ensure that this is a kid's film that grown-ups can enjoy as well. Surprisingly good fun then, enough perhaps to make this a future classic of its kind.

THE MILKY WAY ****

Two contemporary pilgrims, (Paul Frankeur and Laurent Terzieff), on the road to Santiago de Compostela encounter heretics, agnostics and believers not to mention Jesus and his mother, the Devil and a few other Biblical and historical characters. "The Milky Way" is one of the most irreverent of Bunuel's religious satires but is closer in tone to the scatological surrealism of "The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie" than to "Viridiana".

It was also a chance for Bunuel to show off one of his all-star casts so we have Alain Cuny tempting our pilgrims on the road, Bernard Verley as Jesus and Edith Scob as the Virgin Mary, Michel Piccoli as the Marquis de Sade, Pierre Clementi as The Devil as well as Julien Bertheau, Georges Marchal and a sprightly Delphine Seyrig as a prostitute. It may not be one of Bunuel's masterpieces, (it's all a bit obvious), but it's clearly the work of a master and is essential viewing for all cinephiles.

THE AGONY AND THE ECSTASY *

Not quite the disaster the critics made it out to be but hardly likely to be remembered among the best of Carol Reed. It was a prestige production done on a grand scale but neither Philip Dunne's screenplay nor, indeed, Irving Stone's original novel were inspirational. The subject, of course, is Michaelangelo's painting of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel and Charlton Heston, who else, is a hugely miscast Michaelangelo, (he's heterosexual, for starters). He does what he can with the part but the material defeats him. On the other hand, Rex Harrison not only carries the movie but redeems it. He barnstorms his way through the part of Pope Julius II, the man who commissioned Michaelangelo in the first place. He even manages the fanciful dialogue, barking it out as though it were Shakespeare. There's also a decent supporting cast, both British and Italian, with the Italians largely dubbed, but they too are wasted. Does it give us any insight into the man or his work? Absolutely not, but as epics go it's a pleasant enough time-passer.

THE WAR LOVER *

Philip Leacock's "The War Lover" puts as much emphasis on the 'lover' as it does on the 'war'. Robert Wagner and Steve McQueen are American bombers stationed in England during World War Two. Wagner falls for local girl Shirley Anne Field while McQueen is more in love with killing. This was an early lead performance from McQueen and he certainly displays charisma. Wagner, on the other hand, is his usual eager-to-please self and, although he's the good guy, comes across as a bit too serious and far too smug. Again Shirley Anne Field is wasted in a bland, under-written role while the film's main strength lies in Bob Huke's first-rate black and white photography. Look out for a young Michael Crawford in a small part.

MIGHTY APHRODITE **

"Mighty Aphrodite" is a minor, low-key Woody Allen picture but it did win Mira Sorvino an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress and she really is very good. She's a hooker and 'adult movie actress' (going by the name of Judie Cum) who happens to be the birth mother of the child Woody and wife Helena Bonham-Carter have adopted and Woody is determined to meet her, (he's curious to find out where his son gets his brains; not from Judie, by all accounts). Apart from Woody's profession as a sports writer and Helena running an art-gallery this is one of the few Woody films not up to its eyes in culture, (ok, so it's got a Greek Chorus, a device that works only sporadically). It's also neither as deep nor as funny as it thinks it is but it's worth seeing if only for Sorvino and a nice turn from Michael Rappaport's sweet but very dumb boxer.

THE STRANGE LOVE OF MARTHA IVERS **

The tagline could just as easily have read 'There's no-one better than Barbara when she's bad' and here Miss Stanwyck is as bad as can be. When not beating her aunt to death she's doing all she can to make sure her weak, alcoholic husband is re-elected DA while cheating on him with her childhood sweetheart. Lewis Milestone's "The Strange Love of Martha Ivers" is an overheated melodrama of small town corruption full of rotten characters and Barbara is the most rotten of all with hubbie Kirk Douglas not far behind. Van Heflin is the good guy who used to be a bad boy and Lizabeth Scott is the shop-soiled girl he falls for, (she's the film's weakest link). Milestone directed from a Robert Rossen screenplay and it's reasonably entertaining if a little convoluted. We could also be doing with a bit more of Stanwyck though both Heflin and Douglas, in his first film, are excellent and there's a nice supporting turn from Judith Anderson as the aunt who gets it. No classic then but very watchable.

CHINA DOLL *

Thirty years before he made "China Doll", Frank Borzage won the Oscar for best direction, (the first ever awarded; he was to win a second a couple of years later). In the 1930's he was regarded as probably the best director of romantic melodramas but by the time "China Doll" came around he was all but forgotten and today this might be considered something of a 'lost' movie. It's a very conventional weepie and it suffers from having Victor Mature in the lead. He's an American air-force pilot stationed in China during the War who falls in love with, and marries, a pretty Chinese refugee. As you might expect from a director who was making movies in the twenties it's a very old-fashioned affair, (even in 1958 it must have seemed dated). The insertion of newsreel footage for the action sequences is something of a mistake and its treatment of inter-racial marriage is handled with the kind of sentimentality that would not be out of place in a D W Griffith picture. Otherwise it's tolerable enough so long as you don't go expecting a problem picture or a message movie unless, of course, the message is that love knows no boundaries. Best to just view it as a minor work from a once major director.

LISBON STORY **

 Another movie about making a movie by someone clearly in love with the cinema but not afraid to poke fun at the source of his 'adoration'. Yes, it's Wim Wenders, clearly in his element and in Lisbon where sound engineer Phillip Winter, (a hang-dog Rudiger Vogler), finds himself a character in search of a director; the filmmaker he was supposed to meet there has disappeared, so he embarks on a voyage of discovery around the city recording what he hears.

It is, then, both a valentine to cinema and a road movie of sorts, (no surprise there). It's also minor Wenders. Here he is a character in search of a proper script and the film's at its best when it contents itself to be nothing more than a love letter to the city itself. Still, even minor Wenders is a cut above the best of many of his contemporaries so this is well worth seeking out while the music of the group Madredeus is absolutely fabulous.

ANNE OF THE THOUSAND DAYS **

Surely the personages of the court of King Henry VIII didn't dress as opulently as they do in the film "Anne of the Thousand Days". Whatever faults Charles Jarrott's film has, you can't knock the costumes and Margaret Furse richly deserved her Oscar. The story is the oft told one of how Henry threw over Catherine of Aragon in favour of Anne Boleyn but when she too doesn't bear him a son, how he had her beheaded. As a film it's no better or worse than many others telling a similar tale and if it lacks the intelligence of "A Man for all Seasons" if certainly makes up for it in gossipy entertainment value and is blessed with three good performances, (Burton's bombastic king, Bujold's petulant Anne and Papas' regal Catherine), and one magnificent one, (Anthony Quayle in a career-best turn as Cardinal Wolsey). It's based on a play by Maxwell Anderson, (on stage Rex Harrison was Henry), and it has a fine literary screenplay by Bridget Boland and John Hale. Not great then but better than the critical roasting it received at the time of its release.

THE DEADLY AFFAIR ***

Sidney Lumet made this screen version of John Le Carre's novel "Call for the Dead" in a grey and wet London and succeeded admirably in capturing the banal and corrosive atmosphere that Le Carre was so good at conjuring up in his books. It's not as well known as the Smiley books and the films and tv adaptations that followed, (here the Smiley character is called Dobbs and is beautifully played by James Mason), but it's almost as good.

It begins with the death of a senior Whitehall official suspected of being a communist spy. Suicide or murder? It's Mason's job to find out and the superb cast of spies, wives and potential suspects includes Maxamilian Schell, a magnificent Simone Signoret, Harriet Andersson, Harry Andrews and Max Adrian as a spy chief known as 'Marlene Dietrich', all at the top of their game. Paul Dehn did the adaptation and the superb cinematography was by Freddie Young, making brilliant use of the London locations. The only incongruous note comes from Quincy Jones' jazzy score.

MR SKEFFINGTON **

On the surface "Mr. Skeffingnton" may look like nothing more than another novelettish women's picture from the 1940's, designed purely as a vehicle for its star, but look more closely and you can see that it is in fact one of the great films about growing old and about how some women will deceive themselves that they never will. It is a great tragic-comedy.

Fanny Trellis is a silly, frivolous young woman while the men who flutter around her are sillier still. At first you might think there isn't much to this but when Fanny marries older and richer Job Skeffington, (a superb Claude Rains), the film deepens and darkens. Job is her brother's employer and Fanny marries Job to get her brother off the hook when he's caught with his fingers in the till. Fanny loves Job the way you might love a pet and treats him accordingly.

The movie was directed by Vincent Sherman, not the most profound of film-makers but a consummate director of women's pictures and his star is Bette Davis, (who else?), at her very finest. The greatness of Davis' performance is that she grows into the role using all her trademark mannerisms to build Fanny's character. Near the end of the film there is a magnificent sequence, stunningly shot by Ernest Haller, where Fanny, alone in her mansion, suddenly realises she is now an old woman and no longer attractive. This sequence is a triumph for director, DoP and star. Perhaps the film isn't quite a lost masterpiece; on the other hand, it's a film that transcends its genre. Perhaps I should go back and revisit the Sherman canon again.

EIGHT LEGGED FREAKS **

As monster movies and as guilty pleasures go, "Eight-Legged Freaks" is as good as they get and if, like me, spiders give you the creeps then there's double the fun to be had, though if you really hate spiders you might just have to keep telling yourself, it's only a movie. This schlock-horror doesn't waste a minute; before the credits have finished the plot is set in motion as one of those substances that come in barrels, have something like a skull on the side and are usually known as 'toxic waste', and which, of course, make little things a lot bigger, (in this case, spiders), finds its way into a local river. The script is terrible, the acting worse, (look out for a younger Scarlett Johansson; the handsome hero is that plank David Arquette), but the monsters are great making this a very nice throwback to the 'creature-features' of the fifties.

LAUREL CANYON **

Frances McDormand is a lady of the canyon in Lisa Cholodenko's delightful "Laurel Canyon". She's a bisexual record producer in early middle-age who still behaves like a teenager despite having an adult son, (Christian Bale), who is studying psychiatry in a hospital ward and who has a mousy girlfriend, (Kate Beckinsale), who gets sucked into McDormand's world. Others in the mix include Allesandro Nivola as McDormand's younger rock star boyfriend and Natascha McElhone as one of Bale's colleagues with whom he gets romantically involved.

It's a surprisingly sweet-natured film considering that everyone is screwing everyone else, metaphorically and literally, and while not a great deal happens Cholodenko treats her characters with so much affection you actually find yourself wanting to spend time in their company. All the performances are excellent but it is McDormand and Bale as the mismatched but ultimately loving mother and son who finally hold the film together. A smart, likeable entertainment.

THE LOST WORLD **

CGI may have the last world in special effects but give me Ray Harryhausen and the likes of Irwin Allen's "The Lost World" any day. This hugely entertaining screen version of Arthur Conan Doyle's novel is a major guilty pleasure. The cast may represent the front rank of the second rank of Hollywood royalty if you get my meaning, (Michael Rennie, Jill St. John, Claude Rains, David Hedison, Fernando Lamas, Richard Haydn, Ray Stricklyn), but they look like they are having a ball and Allen's special effects are surprisingly good for their time. When the native Indians start bouncing up and down on their heels in an approximation of 'dancing' the film does start to look like a throwback to the kind of racist cinema popular in Hollywood in the 1930's but otherwise this is a fun film and a great way to pass a wet Saturday afternoon.

THE NIGHT OF THE IGUANA ***

If you want proof that Tennessee Williams, John Huston and indeed Richard Burton can do comedy just take a look at "The Night of the Iguana" which is not only one of the best films made from a Williams' play, (and it's one of his lesser plays), but also one of Huston's best films. Burton is the randy defrocked priest escorting a busload of women, and church women at that, on a tour of Mexico, holing up in an hotel run by Ava Gardner and being lusted after by nymphet Sue Lyon, reprising her 'Lolita' role. Deborah Kerr is the eccentric painter who arrives with her 97 year old grandfather poet and Grayson Hall is the leader of the church women with designs on Lyon. They are all excellent, with the possible exception of poor Sue who was never much of an actress while Gardener, in the part Bette Davis played on Broadway, was never better. Gabriel Figueroa was responsible for the superb black and white cinematography.

THE TRIAL *

Orson Welles' film version of Kafka's "The Trial" is a perfectly fine 'visualisation' of the book but it still doesn't work. Perhaps this was one book that should never have been filmed, not even by Welles, unless perhaps in animated form. Kafka's world, particularly the one in which Josef K finds himself, exists more in the reader's imagination rather than in any real tangible place and it's filled with characters who are never flesh-and-blood. The problem any film version has to overcome is how to translate than imaginary world and these characters into something that, at least, seems real and into something 'able'. Welles doesn't do that; rather he transfers Kafka's text onto a series of Wellsian images and does it rather badly.

It looks great, of course (DoP Edmond Richard) but the acting is very uneven, (it's another of Welles' 'international' projects with an international cast). Anthony Perkins makes Josef K a very fussy prima donna with whom we can have no sympathy; consequently his nightmare predicament never seems more than just a bad dream and the sooner he wakes from it the better for him and for us. Even Welles himself, playing the Advocate, can't lift the film while the dubbing of most of the cast and the post-synchronization is very poor.

COME BACK, LITTLE SHEBA **

Shirley Booth was 54 when she won the Academy Award as Best Actress for her performance as Lola in the screen version of William Inge's "Come Back, Little Sheba". It was also her screen debut in a role that had previously won her a Tony on the stage and, quite frankly, she was magnificent. It launched her on a short-lived movie career and a slightly longer career on television. It's a fine film, well directed by Daniel Mann and adapted by Ketti Frings and it has three other good performances from Burt Lancaster as the alcoholic Doc, Terry Moore as the young lodger who, unwittingly, is the cause of Doc's hitting the bottle again and Richard Jaeckel as the athletic stud Moore is dallying with. Admittedly Lancaster, who at 39 was 15 years younger than Booth, isn't really right for his role, (he was too young for starters), but he handles it very effectively. Nevertheless, this is Booth's show. If she had never done anything else on screen she would still have earned her place in the pantheon of great performances.

YELLOWSTONE KELLY *

You might be forgiven for thinking you were about to watch a 1959 version of "Brokeback Mountain" as Edd Byrnes eyes up Clint Walker's trapper on a riverboat before delivering his chat-up line. Of course, I'm reading a subtext here that obviously doesn't exist. In this thoroughly innocent Boy's Own western from director Gordon Douglas, Walker, built like a brick shithouse, is "Yellowstone Kelly" and Byrne is the boy who has taken a fancy to him, (a thoroughly innocent fancy, I might add). They team up, setting up house together in Indian territory, where they run up against John Russell's somewhat wooden, effete Indian chief and his hot-headed nephew, (a very unlikely Ray Danton).

This is a good old-fashioned film, if a little top-heavy in male bonding with too many actors who are fundamentally nothing but eye-candy and it's beautifully shot in some pretty spectacular scenery. There's not much in the way of plot and the script, by Burt Kennedy, no less, has every cliche in the book but it's never less than entertaining in a mindless sort of way.

MIDNIGHT EXPRESS no stars

There's no denying that "Midnight Express" is a well made movie. Its director, Alan Parker, is probably the flashiest of British film-makers; the kinetic thrust he applies to his movies makes the work of his predecessors like Lean and Carol Reed seem positively pedestrian but flash without substance amounts to very little. "Midnight Express" certainly has substance, (Oliver Stone won an Oscar for his screenplay), but it's still a very difficult film to like. When it came out accusations of xenophobia were rightly levelled at it; very few western made movies were ever so baldly critical of a European country as this was of Turkey, where everyone in authority is painted as a monster.

It's the true story of Billy Hayes, arrested at Istanbul airport for smuggling drugs and sentenced to 30 years in a Turkish prison. The movie is really nothing more than a chronicle of the horrors he suffered before finally escaping and they are laid on thick and fast. Hayes was not innocent but over and over again the film tells us the punishment did not fit the crime and to prove the point Parker rubs our noses in the degradation and the extreme violence. It's a film not only without heroes but without characters we can e with unless, of course, you choose to empathise with Billy who endures every deprivation known to man.

Brad Davis plays him as a wounded, weeping angel who is so much better than everyone around him. The camera lingers over his beautiful, battered body the way it might do in a porn film; there is less acting than ego on display. On the other hand there are two outstanding performances, from the late John Hurt, (Oscar nominated), as a drug addicted inmate and from the American actor Paul Smith as a sadistic Turkish prison guard; when he finally gets it the audience is invited to cheer and while the film is purported to be a 'true' story Stone apparently played fast and loose with the facts.

Technically it's something of a marvel. DoP Michael Seresin makes the prison almost a thing of beauty while editor Gerry Hambling makes sure it moves very briskly indeed for over 2 hours. It was a massive success, winning 2 Oscars and being nominated for 4 more, including Best Picture. It also spawned a lot of gay Turkish prison jokes and put a lot of people off visiting the country for many years.

LES UNWANTED DE EUROPA *

Sometimes even the act of escape, from a prison or country, can be boring, mundane or routine. Bresson knew that, just as he knew that the act of stealing something from someone's pocket largely went unnoticed. Today refugees are crossing borders everywhere and are risking their lives in doing so but for a lot of the time, all they are doing is just walking or sitting by the roadside or eating or sleeping. The final hours, the sea journey, the race across the wall to escape the guards, that is where the 'excitement' comes in; that is where film-makers milk the situation in order to give audiences a buzz.

Fabrizio Ferraro, however, takes a different route in his remarkable and austere film "Les Unwanted de Europa", shot in stark black and white, in which the French philosopher Walter Benjamin is just one of many attempting to escape the threat of Nazism by illegally crossing the Pyrenees in 1940. Capture could mean death or imprisonment but mostly he and his companions just walk, silently, perfecting the art of the mundane.

Ferraro is another art-house director who, like Bela Tarr, believes in long-takes in which nothing very much happens; life and time just pass. Of course, this won't be to everyone's taste. Some will find it like watching paint dry but here the paint is in monochrome rather than in colour. No-one on screen 'acts'; they simply 'are', set down in this time and place. It's a beautiful looking film but like the act of escape shown here is mostly tedious and mundane. Action and excitement are for the multiplexes and the moguls; this is as it is.

THE TROUBLE WITH ANGELS no stars

No-one's finest hour. This inexplicably popular 'comedy' actually spawned a sequel. ("Where Angels go, Trouble Follows!"), though once round the block should be enough for anyone. It's set in a school for girls run by nuns though these are no "Magdalene Sisters". This is all sweetness and light and sentimentality with a 'tyrannical' Mother Superior who is more Glinda than the Wicked Witch of the West. Rosalind Russell does what she can with the part and other nuns include Binnie Barnes and Mary Wickes, who played nuns so often she should have been canonised. Principal among the girls is Haley Mills who was 20 at the time but who could still pass as a teenager. Gypsy Rose Lee also turns up, very briefly, as a teacher of 'interpretive dance' while an uncredited Jim Hutton also gets his couple of minutes in the shade. This real surprise is that this sentimental mess was directed by none other than Ida Lupino for whom obviously this was nothing more than a job of work. Hopefully they paid her well, (it was her last film as a director though she continued to act and direct for television). With a better script this might have amounted to something; as it is it is eminently missable.