THE WAYWARD CLOUD *

"The Wayward Cloud" opens with a scene of sex with a watermelon though neither the melon nor the sex look particularly appetising. We are in Taiwan and there's a heatwave which might explain the copious amounts of nudity as well as the watermelons if not the behaviour of the characters. Ming-Liang Tsai's film, (it appears it follows on from earlier work but this is the first of his films I've seen), doesn't really have much of a plot and very little in the way of dialogue and what 'plot' there is doesn't really make a lot of sense, (the bloke who metamorphoses into a sea-creature in a large tank and breaks into song is only the first of several very camp musical numbers). Unfortunately this picture, which lasts close to two hours, is aimed very much at an art-house audience who like their sex movies to be vague and abstract rather than simply down and dirty, (even the money-shot is basically abstract). Of course, you could be forgiven for thinking that the very explicit sex scenes have, within them, a sense of comedy or at least are meant to be 'tongue-in-cheek', (no pun intended), and that the musical interludes are aimed at a largely gay audience. Either way, "The Wayward Cloud" isn't going to wow them in Middle America or down at the multiplexes but it's sufficiently pretentious and sufficiently weird to be at least interesting. I may have been perplexed but I was certainly never bored.

NORTH SEA, TEXAS **

You know you are in for a sensitive, perhaps even hyper-sensitive, treatment of homosexuality from the start. A young boy of maybe 10 or so, Pim, dresses up as a beauty queen, naked all but for a sash, his mother's jewellery and perfume. His single mother, who likes men, maybe a bit too much, and to hang out in the local bar, Texas, doesn't scold him nor do the friendly neighbours he spends so much time with. It is clear they, like us, can see the man the boy will become.

When we next see Pim he's just turned 15 and is infatuated with the neighbour's 18 year old son, Gino, and we know his future is already mapped out. The only thing is will director Bavo Defurne give us a picture of suicidal teenage angst or something more along the lines of "Beautiful Thing"? Well, let's just say there are plenty of bumps along the way in his film "North Sea, Texas".

In this country, of course, such stories of gay teenage sexuality would be virtually taboo where almost any depiction of sex in which either of the parties involved is under the age of consent is considered child abuse but those pesky foreigners have always lead the way in matters of the flesh, (remember Louis Malle's "Les Amants"?). Here, we might describe this film as brave, even daring, but it's probably quite commonplace in its native Belgium.

All the performances are good with Jelle Florizoone and Mathias Vergels as the teenage lovers, Pim and Gino respectively, slipping into their roles with remarkable ease while Nina Marie Kortekaas as Gino's younger sister, who has more than a crush on Pim, is also excellent. Only the most prurient of minds could take offence at this most bitter-sweet of teenage romances.

LA RUPTURE ***

"La Rupture" , (it's based on a novel by Charlotte Armstrong), and Stephane Audran as the wife and Jean-Pierre Cassel as the investigator are both terrific. Of course, you may think Chabrol's decision to treat such a serious subject as domestic violence purely as a thriller a little tasteless but fundamentally this isn't really a film about domestic violence at all but an almost Dickensian study of evil; the bourgeoisie parents are distinctly rotten, the investigator even more so. If the film were more 'realistic' it might be unbearable; there's a scene of potential child sex abuse, and the child is mentally handicapped, that is almost too bizarre to be really disturbing and the film gets very bizarre towards the end. However, even with its convoluted plot it works superbly both as an outright thriller and as a scathing indictment of a highly amoral society.
is one of Claude Chabrol's most devastating critiques of the bourgeoisie and it's one of his finest films. It's about a working wife and mother fighting for custody of her small son after the boy's drug-addicted father has attacked them, only to find her husband's rich parents have hired a sleazy, corrupt investigator to destroy her reputation. The film isn't flawless; there are too many extraneous and eccentric characters but the main plot is beautifully handled

A KING IN NEW YORK **

Someone once described "A King in New York" as the worst film ever made by a major artist. I can think of many worse examples and while this late Chaplin picture may lack the genius of his earlier work, (it was his penultimate film; he made it several years after "Limelight" and before "A Countess from Hong Kong"), it is an often very funny satire on what Chaplin perceived as 'the modern age'. Driven out of America by McCarthyism, Chaplin constructed his New York in a British studio and typical of its writer, director, star and composer it makes no apology for its attack on right-wing politics, in particular the HUAC, as well as television, Cinemascope and plastic surgery. It's also less sentimental than it might have been, (always Chaplin's biggest fault), but the plot involving a child played by Chaplin's own son Michael, does the film no favours. On the other hand, Chaplin himself is superb and Dawn Adams is surprisingly good as a television star. No masterpiece, then but not quite the disaster some people have said of it either.

NIGHT WIND ***

By the time Philippe Garrel made "Night Wind" he was no longer the young turk who made "The Virgin's Bed", (or unmade it as some wags might say). Here he shot in colour and in widescreen and had a mature but still gorgeous Catherine Deneuve as his leading lady. Otherwise, it was mostly business as usual. What begins as a typically Garellian study of adultery, concentrating on the mundane rather than the erotic, (sex is conspicuously absent in this movie), soon shifts gear, literally as well as figuratively, and becomes a road-movie and Garrel's brilliant use of colour gives his film a much richer texture than we have come to expect.

Of course, the film must also be viewed as having large elements of autobiography in the mix. The central character Paul, (Xavier Beauvois), is, for most of the time, a passenger in the Porsche driven by Serge, (Daniel Duval), through Italy, France and Germany. Serge is an old revolutionary from the Paris of '68, and from the conversations they have about the good old bad old days you can easily discern the young Garrel. The older Serge may be the Garrel of the present as the younger Paul is the Garrel of the past and Garrel the filmmaker does not make Paul an easy character to like. As the older woman both men come to share Denueve is, of course, extraordinary and both Beauvois and Duval are also very fine.

If the film appears on the surface more conventional than we have come to expect from Garrel, don't be fooled; those touristy views of Italy are only part of the picture. As before, what interests Garrel is the existential angst bubbling beneath the surface. Garrel certainly likes to suffer and have his characters suffer so despite the luscious tone this is not always an easy watch. At times it veers close to self-parody but that's a risk I think Garrel was aware of and was prepared to take in a film that overflows with talk, all of it intelligent and some of it profound. This is the work of a truly major artist.

THOU WAST MILD AND LOVELY *

Hand-held cameras, dialogue that sounds, on the one hand as if being improvised and on the other as if it's just bad writing and acting that doesn't look like 'acting'; these are the trademarks of the cinema of Josephine Decker, apparently one of the primary exponents of what has come to be known as 'mumblecore'. Decker is obviously a filmmaker who knows what a film should 'look' like and "Thou Wast Mild and Lovely" certainly looks terrific but typical of Decker it's got characters you might want to cross the street to avoid let alone spend time with in a cinema. In other words, she makes movies that are so personal, watching them feels like an intrusion.

This one is set on a farm inhabited only by a gruff farmer and his daughter in what looks very like an incestuous relationship, that is interrupted by a mostly silent young farmhand who comes to work for the summer. In a conventional movie, you might get some palpable tension out of these relationships but Decker doesn't do conventional. There is certainly a good deal of unconventional eroticism on display but no real drama, even if it does end badly. The mediocre performances don't help, giving the feeling of a very well made home-movie, a kind of porn movie made by an intellectual with no interest in porn and the end result is like a cross between "God's Little Acre" and "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre". Worth seeing, then, but I'm not sure if I would ever want to see it again.

OCEAN'S EIGHT **

Just so long as you don't expect too much. "Ocean's Eight" takes the old "Ocean's Eleven, Twelve and Thirteen" formula, reduces the number and changes the gender; otherwise it's mostly business as usual. This time Danny Ocean's sister Debbie, (Sandra Bullock), recently released from prison, plans on stealing a 14.5 million dollar necklace with the help of her all-female crew. Since the girls include Cate Blanchett, Helena Bonham Carter and Rihanna you know you're in pretty good hands. Throw in Anne Hathaway as a celebrity bitch and what's not to love? Well, the script for one thing. It's far from bad but it is lack-luster. There are good lines and the heist itself is very neatly plotted, (they make it look so easy), and, of course, the movie looks terrific but it's not quite ingenious enough nor is it particularly new. The pleasures it offers come mostly from that cast who, if not at their best, at least seem to be enjoying themselves. Totally daft, maybe, but good mindless fun as well.

THE LION SLEEPS TONIGHT ****

As the star of Truffaut's "Les Quatre Cents Coups," Jean-Pierre Leaud was guaranteed his place in film history from the very beginning. However, unlike other child actors, he has gone on to have a long and lustrous career in cinema working with some of the best directors of the last fifty years. Now aged 75, he made "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" two years ago playing, and playing magnificently, an aging actor, (a variation of himself, I'm sure), making a comeback for a young auteur but finding instead that he's caught up in a very different kind of film being made by a group of young children around a decaying mansion.

"The Lion Sleeps Tonight" was directed by the Japanese director Nobuhiro Suwa and can be viewed as a tribute to Leaud, to cinema and to childhood. It's both ambitious in its scope and deceptively simple, a beautifully shot valentine to those things Suwa clearly loves. Death is always present but there is also a great deal of life here, too. This is a magical picture in so many ways and it really shouldn't be missed.

TO EACH HIS OWN **

Given the novelettish material she had to work with Olivia de Havilland is remarkably good as 'Miss Norris', the middle-aged spinster who also happens to be mother to an illegitimate son, conceived during World War 1. He's played by the then newcomer John Lund, in his film debut, and he also plays his own father. This weepie was directed by Mitchell Leisen in 1946 and it was a huge hit. It's far from his best work but Leisen had a knack for taking sub-standard stories and giving them a depth they didn't deserve. He didn't quite achieve that here but there are times when this movie does have a ring of truth thanks mostly to de Havilland who won the Oscar for her performance.

Lund isn't at all bad either, showing a promise that was never really fulfilled while that fine British actor, Roland Culver, is also very good as an English Lord de Havilland meets during World War 11. The main problem is that it feels like a Victorian melodrama of the 'Dead, Dead and never called me Mother' variety. It is, in other words, very hard to take seriously as a wartime romance. Hard too, to believe it came from an original story by Charles Brackett and not from some door-stopper of a novel, (it crams a lot of plot into two hours). Still, as a weepie, it does the business and many people are very fond of it.

DEMENTIA 13 *

Even the director of "The Godfather" and "Apocalypse Now" had to start somewhere and here you have it. This early Coppola, (he wrote it as well as directing), was produced by Roger Corman and was filmed in Ireland. Despite being a cheapie it's quite a smart little horror picture. The acting is mostly terrible despite the presence in the cast of those fine Irish actors Patrick Magee and Eithne Dunne. The leads, shipped from America, were William Campbell and Luana Anders though their names would hardly boost the films box-office appeal so it's left to a fledgling Coppola to jizz things up which he does quite effectively. The creepy black and white photography of Charles Hannawalt also helps.

JEZEBEL **

They said that nobody was better than Bette than when she was bad and in "Jezebel" she is pretty rank, hardly batting an eye as she encourages her suitors to fight duels over her. This is the one in which she wears a red dress to the ball when it was the custom for unmarried young ladies to wear white. Naturally she not only scandalises the town but loses her uptight fiancee (Henry Fonda, excellent) as well. Of course she redeems herself in the end but it takes a dose of Yellow Fever for her to do it.

It was said she got the part as compensation for losing out on the role of Scarlett O'Hara and to make up for the slight she also got a (richly deserved) second Oscar. She's quite wonderful in the part as is Fay Bainter as her Aunt Belle, (Bainter also won an Oscar), and, as God is my witness, even George Brent is good this time round but then that great actor's director William Wyler was at the helm. It was, of course, a prestige production and John Huston was one of the three credited script writers and if the material was something of a sow's ear Wyler did manage to make a silk purse out of it.

OVER THE YEARS ***

Ordinary people. When I think of it, the ordinary people of Robert Redford's film weren't ordinary at all; they were well-off, lived a rather privileged life and had to cope with the kind of problems most 'ordinary' families don't, (the death of a child, the attempted suicide of another). We seldom saw them at work or at play. Redford chose to stick to the 'extraordinary' events in their lives. The people we meet in Nikolaus Geyrhalter's epic documentary "Over the Years" are real and their lives, the lives Geyhalter permits us to see, are very ordinary indeed. Great documentary filmmakers like Frederick Wiseman simply let their characters get on with it though Geyhalter helps things along by sitting them down in front of the camera and asking them questions about their lives and sometimes the very ordinary answers they give might surprise us.

The subject of this extraordinary film is the closure of a textiles factory in Austria's Waldviertel region and he filmed it over a period of 10 years. Consequently it is the employees who have lost their jobs and are 'coping' with the realities of unemployment, illness, ageing etc. who become the films true subjects. The danger, of course, for the kind of audience this film is aimed at is, if you think you lead a more productive or exciting life, you will look on it rather smugly and think 'there but for the grace of God', but are any of us really that much different from the characters in Geyhalter's film? The Jarretts in Redford's film didn't strike me as particularly ordinary but were the day-to-day occurrences in their lives, were the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune they encountered, that much different from the people here. Life, you see, the world over is different for all of us and it is the same. You may live the privileged life of a movie star but you still put the hours in and you are still left alone. Turn the camera on anyone, be they Tom Cruise or the ex-bookkeeper of the factory in Waldviertel and we will still see very much the same thing; only the personalities will be different. So if you think a 3 hour documentary about 'ordinary people' is going to be boring, think again; there is much here that it riveting.

ORGY OF THE DEAD no stars

'You sure picked the wrong night to find a cemetery', says, what I presumed to be our heroine to our hero, in the opening of "Orgy of the Dead" which was written by Ed Wood but 'directed', if that's the right word, by someone called A. C. Stephen, aka Stephen C. Apostolof. Yes, we are in all-time-worst-movie territory again but this time in color and with a hell of a lot of dancing, not to mention Criswell doing some narration.

Who in their right mind actually paid money to see crap like this? The dead, perhaps? Oh wait, what's this? Tits? Now I get it; this was never meant to be a 'horror' film, (though it is a horror), but a 'nudie', of which there were many in the sixties. On that level, it's no worse than any other, (alright, maybe it is), but while there is a lot of lascivious dancing, (mostly just swaying about with nothing on), there's no actual sex. Any sexual activity usually took place in the darkness of the auditorium and while there's a Wolfman and a Mummy, actual zombies seem to be in short supply. Gob-smackingly awful.

MURDER MYSTERY *

Okay, so the critics hated it and no way is it going to be the funniest film you'll see this year but this Netflix production is silly enough to produce enough belly-laughs to pass an evening. The "Murder Mystery" of the title occurs on board a yacht in the middle of the Mediterranean where Terence Stamp's billionaire is stabbed to death in a room full of people when the lights go out. Two of the people in the room are Adam Sandler and Jennifer Aniston, an American couple on a very late honeymoon who were invited there by the billionaire's nephew, Luke Evans, whom they met on the plane.

These two are like a not very bright version of Nick and Nora Charles and this is much closer to something like "Murder By Death" than "Murder on the Orient Express"; in other words, only about one in four of the gags actually work but since the gags are coming thick and fast that hardly matters. It's ultimately saved by Sandler and Aniston who turn in performances worthy of 'Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In' if not 'Saturday Night Live' and among the supporting cast, there's a nice turn from that fine British actor Adeel Akhtar.

MAMMA ROMA ***

As the Roman prostitute trying to keep herself and her son on the straight and narrow in Pasolini's second film "Mamma Roma", Anna Magnani reins in her natural instinct to erupt like a volcano and gives a performance that is almost subdued and at the age of 54 she never looked more beautiful. There isn't much in the way of plot. 'Mamma Roma' wants to give up prostitution and become respectable for the sake of her son but her pimp, (Franco Citti), forces her back on the streets just as her son, Ettore, goes from bad to worse, falling in with a local neighbourhood gang.

The real star of the picture is Tonino Delli Colli's roving camera. Stunningly shot in black and white in the nondescript suburbs of Rome this, like Pasolini's debut "Accatone", already marked him out as a great visual artist. It's a much more formally constructed film than "Accatone"and consequently it's less exciting. Still, it's a great film with none of the sentimentality of a Fellini or a De Sica, austere and beautiful, which makes the director's subsequent decline into self-indulgence and his tragic early death all the sadder.

AFTER THE BATTLE ***

"After the Battle" is a very fine state-of-the-nation movie, the nation here being Egypt and the time, the present. This film, which has many scenes of documentary-like realism, could have been ripped from the headlines and, in a way, it was. It is a superb piece of political cinema, particularly to us in the West whose grasp on Egyptian politics may be tenuous at best but director Yousry Nasrallah coats his picture in the guise of a love story of sorts between a brusque horseman, coaxed into supporting the Mubarak regime with the promise of work, and a radical young divorcee who comes to support him and his family and it's a strategy that works.

These are people from very different backgrounds and with very different ideas on how Egypt should be governed, particularly in relation to the role of women. Their meeting will have a major impact on both their lives and in unexpected ways. Of course, this romantic, human side to the story makes the film much more accessible to a wider audience. As the horseman and the woman who seeks to educate him both Bassem Samra and Menna Shalabi are excellent and there's a lovely performance from Nahed El Sebai as Samra's too trusting wife. Unfortunately after its screening at Cannes the film very much disappeared. Do yourself a favour and seek it out.

PAYROLL **

Shot largely on location in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, Sidney Hayers' "Payroll" is a remarkably good British heist movie dealing, not just with a robbery, but with dishonour amongst thieves. It's not quite "The Asphalt Jungle" or "Rififi" but it's an outstanding example of its kind with a first-rate script by George Baxt, excellent cinematography from Ernest Steward and sterling direction from Hayers. It's also got a great cast that includes Michael Craig, Tom Bell, Billie Whitelaw (superb), Kenneth Griffith and the French actress Francoise Prevost while the robbery itself is brilliantly handled, if only by the film-makers and not the robbers. Something of a small genre classic.

PORTRAIT OF JENNIE *

You either take to this whimsy or you don't and I'm afraid I didn't, though I do remember seeing it as a child and finding it quite fanciful. "Portrait of Jennie" is a ghost story and a love story. The portrait's painter, (Joseph Cotten, not well cast), falls in love with a ghost whom he first meets as a little girl in Central Park. She's Jennifer Jones, excellent and very convincing, whether as a child or as a grown woman. Jones was Mrs. David O. Selznick at the time and this is an O. Selznick picture so he does indulge her somewhat.

Of course, you don't have to be Holmes or Watson to know from the outset that Jennie is a ghost and that she comes to a bad end up around Cape Cod. It might have been tolerable were it not for David Wayne as Cotten's best friend with an appalling Irish accent, (he acts as if he's auditioning for the role of the leprechaun in "Finian's Rainbow"), and this kind of Stage Oirishism is even worse than seeing ghosts in Central Park. There's an impressive storm sequence in colour, (or at least, in green) and the film did win an Oscar for its special effects. It was also quite successful in its day though now it just feels like a curiosity.

BUTTER ON THE LATCH no stars

I don't doubt for a minute that Josephine Decker has talent but having recently watched two of the films she's directed I'm not quite sure if her talent is for making movies. "Madeline's Madeline" was certainly impressive but it still wasn't an easy film to sit through. It was more like the recording of a 'performance' than a proper film while her feature debut, "Butter on the Latch" is nothing more than a series of rambling conversations filmed in a documentary style that might once have been called 'cinema-veritie'.

There is a kind of a plot; it's like a thriller but one so cerebral all the thrills have been removed and since she never holds her camera steady for very long the film induces a kind of vertigo. What she is good at is getting totally naturalistic performances from her actresses, (she works mostly with women), but, after a while, with no real story-
line, just watching them 'act' becomes simply boring. I have a feeling she might have a career in avant-garde theatre but for now, I am not quite convinced she's cut out for the cinema.

BATTLE OF THE SEXES **

"Battle of the Sexes" isn't just about the famous exhibition match in 1973 between Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs but how King took on the US Lawn Tennis Association so it's another David and Goliath story and we all know just how popular they can be. The directors are Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris who made "Little Miss Sunshine" and if this isn't in the same class it's still a very entertaining picture. If it has a fault it's that it signposts King's lesbianism in neon and with drum rolls; on this subject, subtle it ain't. However, it's certainly well acted by Emma Stone as King, Steve Carell, (superb as Riggs), Bill Pullman, (suitably slimy as Jack Kramer), Austin Stowell, (as King's husband) and Sarah Silverman, (King's manager).

The match itself, of course, is a humdinger and even if you know the outcome, it's still exciting since there's more at stake than just 'who wins'; we have to factor in Bobby's gambling addiction, too. It's also good on the politics, (was Margaret Court really the super-bitch she's portrayed here?). Ultimately, it's a minor film and you forget it as soon as it's over but it's also a hard film to dislike.

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I WAS A TEENAGE FRANKENSTEIN no stars

This Z-movie brings the Frankenstein legend up to date and to small town America. Whit Bissell is the new doctor walking in the footsteps of his more infamous ancestor and determined to create a new human being who won't be a monster like the one the Baron created but 'a youth' that he can teach. It's terrible, of course, though the appalling acting and unintentionally hilarious dialogue make it perfect midnight movie fare while poor Gary Conway had the misfortune of launching a not very illustrious career playing 'the creature'.

THE HITCH-HIKER ***

At the risk of sound sexist you would never guess that "The Hitch-Hiker" was directed by anyone other than the toughest of hombres. In fact, this male-dominated thriller about a hitch-hiking psychopath, (William Talman), who takes two fishermen hostage, (Edmond O'Brien and Frank Lovejoy), was directed by none other than Ida Lupino but then Lupino was no ordinary 'woman director'. At a time when the industry, particularly in Hollywood, was dominated by men Lupino fought the powers that be in order to make the kind of films she wanted. "The Hitch-Hiker" was very much a personal project made on the slimmest of budgets. She and producer Collier Young wrote the film and she shot it entirely on location in California, (standing in for Mexico), and it tells its suspenseful story in just 71 minutes. The premiss is simplicity itself and Lupino uses the desert locations superbly to build tension. If at times Talman's madman seems a little over the top the underplaying of both O'Brien and Lovejoy nicely balances things out. A small classic.

THE LAST SUNSET **

A very underrated film. Robert Aldrich's "The Last Sunset"
offers all the pleasures of a thoroughly old-fashioned western yet it has a nicely complex script from Dalton Trumbo that draws heavily on character rather than action, (although there is plenty of that, as well). Kirk Douglas is the man on the run, Rock Hudson his pursuer who find themselves working together on a cattle drive. Joseph Cotten is the man who hires them and Dorothy Malone is Cotten's wife who used to be an old flame of Douglas. They are all excellent and there's a good supporting cast that includes Carol Lynley and Neville Brand. Ernest Laszlo was responsible for the first-rate cinematography and while the film isn't in the front rank of Aldrich movies it is still very fine.

WE ARE THE BEST ***

Lukas Moodysson's comedy "We Are The Best" is one of the greatest of films dealing with childhood as well as one of the most uplifting, and uplift is something you're not always guaranteed with Moodysson. The kids in question are three girls barely into their teens who form a (not very good) punk band but this is only a jumping off point for a genuinely funny picture about friendship based on the graphic novel by Coco Moodysson. It has the flimsiest of plots but a surfeit of feeling and Moodysson handles his young, and not so young, cast superbly.

As the young would-be punks who start the band Mira Barkhammar and Mira Grosin are absolutely terrific and if Liv LeMoyne, as the older girl they rope in to help them, doesn't make the same impact it's simply because she has the more sober role. Otherwise I can't find fault with this film and, as well as laughing out loud several times, I had the biggest of grins on my face from start to finish.

THE HAPPIEST DAY IN THE LIFE OF OLLI MAKI ***

Winner of Un Certain Regard at last year's Cannes festival "The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Maki" is a film that lives up to its title; it's a charmer and no mistake. Set in 1962 it's the true story of young boxer Olli Maki who is given the chance to go for the World Featherweight Championship but who lets his romantic inclinations get in the way of his training. In keeping with the period feel, director Juho Kuosmanen shoots the film in glorious monochrome and draws excellent performances from Jarkko Lahti as Olli and Eero Milonoff as his manager Elis and a thoroughly delightful one from Oona Airola as Olli's girlfriend Raija. Like Rocky Bilboa, Olli is a mixture of reticence and romanticism with not a smidgen of Rocky's brouhaha and there is none of the triumphalism of the Rocky pictures on display here. Low-key and often very funny this is a film that surprises in all the right ways.

GET CARTER ***

"Get Carter" is one of the seminal British gangster films, as fresh today as when Mike Hodges made it back in 1971 despite looking every inch the period piece that it is. Michael Caine, (it is one of his most iconic roles), is Carter who travels up from London to Newcastle to find out who killed his brother and, naturally, to take his revenge. The film's greatness lies in Hodges' stylish direction, the brilliant screenplay which Hodges adapted from Ted Lewis' novel, the superb supporting cast which included playwright John Osborne and most of all to Wolfgang Suschitzky's cinematography, (he photographs faces and places with the same attention to detail). In 2000 someone had the not-too-bright idea of remaking the film in America as a vehicle for Sylvester Stallone. That one is best avoided.

TRUE ROMANCE ***

"True Romance" is Tony Scott's best film but I suspect that has more to do with Quentin Tarantino's input, (he wrote it), than Scott's for this is a movie that fits very nicely into the Tarantino oeuvre. As the title attests it's a boy and girl romance albeit one whose lineage can be traced all the way back to "Bonnie and Clyde" in contemporary American cinema up through pictures like "Badlands", (check out the score), and  "Wild at Heart". The lovers on the lam are Christian Slater and Patricia Arquette, (both terrific), and the superb supporting cast also includes Dennis Hopper, Gary Oldman, Christopher Walken, Brad Pitt and James Gandolfini. Of course, it's chock full of references to other movies, (Tarantino is nothing if not referential), and boasts a great rock 'n roll score; it's brilliantly photographed in glorious day-glo colours by Jeffrey L Kimball and it's eminently quotable. It's also very funny and extremely violent but then that's only to be expected. It's cult status is guaranteed.

TWILIGHT'S LAST GLEAMING ***

Despite the thick-ear dialogue, lack-lustre performances from most of the cast, (Charles Durning being the notable exception), and the frankly ridiculous premiss of a renegade general taking over a nuclear missile silo and holding the US government to ransom, Aldrich's dip into the Cold War paranoia genre is surprisingly good, working both as a highly suspenseful thriller, (Aldrich makes great use of split screens), and as a reasonably serious picture on American foreign policy. It's also funny enough to work as political satire and I'm not sure that Aldrich took it all that seriously. It may not be in the same class as either "Seven Days in May" or "Fail Safe" and television dramas such as "The West Wing" and "House of Cards" are much closer to the mark on what goes on in the Oval Office than anything here but it's also far from negligible and if it's hardly Aldrich's best film it's still well worth seeing.

TOMBSTONE no stars

Yet another take, and a very different one, on the legend of Wyatt Earp, (and, of course, Doc Holliday), and that (in)famous gunfight at the OK Corral, but a very poor one, despite a huge and mostly talented cast, none of whom are at their best. It aims for the epic and it looks great, (William Fraker was the DoP), but the director, George P. Cosmatos wasn't able to tie it all together and it's poorly written by Kevin Jarre. You get the impression that someone, (the director, the writer, both?), thought they were making the greatest western of them all, the one that would put all other epic westerns in the shade, even down to casting Charlton Heston in a tiny role and getting Robert Mitchum to do the narration but this is a classic example of overwhelming ambition operating in a vacuum. Earp is Kurt Russell, who's barely adequate in the role and a pasty-faced Val Kilmer isn't even that as Doc Holliday. Luckily, this great galumphing disaster isn't much seen and pales in comparison with others in the genre.

GRETA **

Another 'mad-woman-psycho-thriller' and a hugely enjoyable one. Usually, I find these kinds of films pretty reprehensible; I mean, for starters, they denigrate women but then how can you resist any film that features Isabelle Huppert going gaga over Chloe Grace Moretz. Huppert is Greta, a certifiable nutjob, given to leaving her handbag on the subway for impressionable young ladies to find and return them to her and Moretz is her latest catch.

I know I shouldn't call Greta a 'nutjob' and that I should find her sympathetic blah blah blah; after all, she is a sad, lonely and very sick woman in need of help but that's for another movie. This is schlock-horror from the same stable as "Straightjacket" and "Die, Die My Darling" where aging actresses in fright wigs were used to scare the living daylights out of us. Huppert may not be an aging actress in need of a career boost but she obviously knows a good, meaty role when she sees one and she's terrific. Moretz is also pretty good as the victim of Greta's misguided affection but this is Huppert's show. Seldom has chewing the scenery been this much fun.

LAW ABIDING CITIZEN no stars

Another vigilante revenge movie purporting to be, amongst other things, a kind of anti-capital punishment picture and all the nastier and more unpleasant for that. F. Gary Gray's "Law Abiding Citizen" is just another piece of torture porn but with bigger names in the cast. Gerard Butler is the man out to avenge the murder of his wife and daughter and Jamie Foxx, the District Attorney who let one of the killers walk free. Watching Foxx mug his way through this mediocre script it's hard to believe he once won an Oscar for Best Actor but what's really sad is this picture actually has quite an ingenious plot, but one that is very badly handled. Shot on location around Philadelphia it's a handsome enough looking picture even if you may want to avert your eyes from the screen from time to time. The final 'twist', when it comes, is just plain silly.

KIND LADY **

The "Kind Lady" in question is Ethel Barrymore. She isn't so much kind as vain and very foolish, allowing thief, con-man and potential murderer Maurice Evans into her home. This began life as a short story by Hugh Walpole, before being adapted for the stage by Edward Chodorov and having been previously filmed in 1935 with Aline MacMahon and Basil Rathbone. This version was directed, (very well), by John Sturges in 1951 and as well as Barrymore and Evans the excellent cast also includes Angela Lansbury, Keenan Wynn, John Williams and Betsy Blair. However, the real stars of the picture are the house where all the action takes place, (Cedric Gibbons was one of the art directors), and the luminous black and white cinematography of Joseph Ruttenberg. Not quite a small gem, perhaps, but very good indeed.

THE CASSANDRA CROSSING **

You can say what you like about Carlo Ponti and Lew Grade as producers but they certainly knew how to assemble a cast. The main pleasure of watching "The Cassandra Crossing" is seeing the all-star cast get theirs, or not as the case may be, on the Trans-Europe Express on its way from Geneva to Stockholm. You see, as well as a host of famous faces this train is also carry the plague and it's up to Burt Lancaster and Ingrid Thulin back in Geneva to decide what to do with it. As disaster movies go this one lacked the big-budget thrills of an "Earthquake" or a "Towering Inferno", (most of the money must have gone on the cast), but director George Pan Cosmatos handles the suspense admirably enough and the movie certainly didn't deserve the critical hammering it got when it first appeared. (Again, the magazine "Films and Filming" was one of the few to leap to its defence and even awarded Martin Sheen a Best Supporting Actor prize though, surprisingly, it is Ava Gardner as an old broad with a toy-boy in store, Sheen, who gives the film's best performance). It's certainly no classic and the script and most of the performances stink but as action flics go this one has a lot to recommend it.

BRIGHT VICTORY **

"Bright Victory" was one of a group of movies made in the late forties and early fifties to deal with wounded or paraplegic war veterans. This one is a lot less sudsy than most and is given an extra dimension by having a hero who is not only blind but a racist. He is very well played by Arthur Kennedy, (in an Oscar-nominated performance and winning the New York Film Critics award), and the film has a decent supporting cast.

Mark Robson was the director and while he was always a good jobbing director he was not always the most inspired and was often at the mercy of his material. Here he has a sensitive subject and one that is not often dealt with and he handles it with a real degree of intelligence. A movie that should be revived more often than it is.

LADY FOR A DAY *

"Lady for a Day" was one of the films that cemented Frank Capra's reputation for what became known as 'Capra-Corn'. It's a shamelessly sentimental film from a Damon Runyon story and Capra liked it enough to remake it as "Pocketful of Miracles". (This is no masterpiece but it's better than the remake). May Robson just about avoids cutting the ham too thickly as the old apple-seller who is passed off as a high-society lady by a New York gangster in order to fool her daughter and her aristocratic boyfriend. Probably in the hands of a lesser director this would be unbearable but Capra keeps it bobbing along nicely and there are some great character players on hand, (Guy Kibbee, Ned Sparks, Walter Connolly). Unfortunately the gangster is played by Warren William, perhaps the least charismatic 'star' of the thirties. It's entertaining enough but it's also quite minor.

LUCKY ****

The 91-year-old Harry Dean Stanton died shortly after making "Lucky". He may not have won the posthumous Oscar I was predicting for him but at least he went to his grave in the knowledge that he had gone out with a career-best performance. John Carroll Lynch's directorial debut doesn't pretend to be anything other than a picture of an old man living out his days independently in the present-day American West. It's beautifully made in the style of American movies of the seventies with their emphasis on character and landscape and as well as a terrific performance from Stanton, (he's never really off the screen), it's also beautifully written and acted by its remarkable supporting cast that includes director David Lynch and a still handsome 81-year-old James Darren. Of course, seeing the film now that Stanton's dead, and so soon after completing the film, is heartbreaking because it suddenly looks like autobiography, the last days, not just of Lucky but of one of the screen's great character actors. It would make a great double-bill with David Lynch's underrated masterpiece "The Straight Story" which also featured Stanton.

PARANOID PARK *

If you had to pick one single movie to sum up the 'style' of Gus Van Sant or let people know what Gus Van Sant is all about then "Paranoid Park" is as good an example as any. He made it as late as 2007 but in its mumblecore manner, it could have come from 10 or so years earlier. Although at its heart there is a single traumatic event, (the killing of a security guard), the film is less concerned with that and is more another observation of the dull and largely uneventful life of another of Van Sant's teenage boys, in this case Alex, (the inexpressive Gabe Nevins), who happened to be involved in the man's death but who continues to drift through his life with the same blank expression and lack of concern. It is, in other words, archetypal Van Sant, beautifully photographed by Christopher Doyle and Rain Li and full of pretty boys being pretty vacant.

Isn't it time, I kept asking myself, for Van Sant to grow up. Since nothing very much happens in the picture, (Alex takes to sex the way he does to drinking a milkshake), I wondered what audience, if any, he had in mind. Still, the film was quite a critical success and won several awards so it's obvious that somebody up there likes him. It's by no means a bad film but did we need it? Does anyone, other than Van Sant and the jury at Cannes, really care? Or are we meant to look at this and despair for the state of the world and of American society in particular? If that's his intention then I think we need more than pretty pictures and cute looking kids.

THE SHOOTIST **

"The Shootist" was John Wayne's last film and in it he plays an ageing gunslinger dying of cancer, so you could say it was a rather prophetic picture, (Wayne himself was to die of cancer three years later). You might even say the film is as much a summation of Wayne's career as a Western actor as it is an account of the character he's playing; it opens with a montage of scenes from earlier John Wayne pictures. He's John B Books and this, being his last film, is a somewhat sad affair; it's almost impossible to separate the actor from the character.

It was directed by Don Siegel in that lean, hard style of his and is more of a character study than a conventional western. It could be called an old man's film for as well as Wayne there's also James Stewart as the doctor who diagnoses his cancer and a no longer young Lauren Bacall as the widow who runs the boarding house where Wayne comes to stay as well as a host of ageing character actors from Richard Boone to Hugh O'Brian and a terrific Harry Morgan as the maliciously cynical old Marshall. There's a boy in the picture, too, (Bacall's son), and he's played, very well indeed, by Ron Howard.

In some respects the film is not unlike Henry King's "The Gunfighter", (there's the same sense of fate closing in, the same sense of a man's time coming to pass). You know that in time, and before the cancer kills him, Wayne will have to strap on his guns again as other shootists come 'a callin' and there's no denying it's a well-made film but there's also something rather ghoulish about it and I often wondered why exactly Wayne agreed to do it. Surely he knew he was dying himself and it's unlikely to have been vanity. Still, it's a nice low-key performance which, despite the obligatory action scenes, is a lifetime away from Rooster Cogburn or any of the other characters Wayne played during his long career. The film itself is actually based on a novel by Glendon Swarthout and the fine, elegiac script, which isn't without a certain degree of mordant humour, is by his son Miles Hood Swarthout and Scott Hale.

LOST RIVER no stars

Whatever you might think of Ryan Gosling as an actor he still has a lot to learn as both a writer and director, though admittedly his first film "Lost River" displays an outstanding visual sensibility at times but it's just too weird and pretentious to merit serious consideration. It's got a great cast but what it lacks is a script, (it's really just a series of silly ideas strung together). Consequently none of its highly talented performers can do anything with the frankly appalling material. Indeed this is the kind of unmitigated disaster most first-time directors would never recover from but at least Gosling has his acting career to fall back on and in the right part he is a very fine actor. I suppose you could call it 'a personal project' and I have been assured that it has a 'message', something about the dire economic state of America today though Gosling seems, at least on the surface, to be more interested in fire and water. Needless to say, the critics mostly hated it and the public stayed away.