SARAH PLAYS A WEREWOLF ***

Like Josephine Decker's recent "Madeline's Madeline", Katharina Wyss's debut "Sarah Plays a Werewolf" is also about a teenage girl who really only discovers herself when being someone else and although set around a theatre class, Wyss' film isn't so much about the process of acting as it is about getting inside the skulls of its characters and in particular inside the troubled mind of Sarah, (a terrific Loane Balthasar). The title might suggest a piece of schlock-horror but you can tell quite early on that this is going to be a much darker, psychological piece, it's violence very subtly applied as it slips only occasionally into fantasy.

Where Decker's film smacked of 'The Method' this Swiss movie feels much more radically 'realist' while the brilliance and depth of Balthasar's performance is alarmingly not like 'acting' at all. This is a rigorous, very European film and it gives us a very different picture of teenage angst than we are used to seeing in American or even British cinema. In the end, it is a horror film and one that will certainly evoke "Carrie" but without the bloodletting and flying daggers. The horrors Sarah experiences are the horrors of being a lonely, if very talented, child with too much imagination and too much time to sit and brood in her insular, almost incestuous, family and unlike DePalma's "Carrie" this Sarah really will chill you to the bone.

ISLANDS **

"Islands" was the short, (23 minutes), that Yann Gonzalez made before "Knife+Heart" and is in many ways its perfect companion piece, (it could have been of one the film's 'Knife+Heart's' Anne might have produced and there are moments here that you feel Gonzalez incorporated into the later film). Fairly explicit sex and horror are again the order of the day but this is no ordinary porn movie. It's highly erotic but also hugely stylish and really rather disturbing. For Gonzalez, sex is always equated with death and violent death at that; the phallus is always a knife and sperm and blood are much the same. Had I seen this before "Knife+Heart" I would have known Gonzalez had a masterpiece waiting in the wings. Seeing it now I can safely say that both the cinema of eroticism and the cinema of horror have found a new master.

WALK THE WALK no stars

"Walk the Walk" may be a piece of cheap Z-Movie exploitation but it's clear from its opening scene with its decidedly off-the-wall performance from Bernie Hamilton and it's jazz-inflected score that at least it's a film with ambition. Unfortunately, that ambition is never fulfilled. Its writer/producer/director Jac Zacha may have been a man with  ambition but with no talent except perhaps for persuading an actor like Bernie Hamilton, not quite 'a name' but no slouch either, (he had worked with Bunuel), to star as a man of God who also happens to be a drug-addict.

Presumably the movie was meant to show us the horrors of drugs but if you can actually make it to the end you'll definitely need something stiff inside you, (and no sniggering at the back). Perhaps the most surprising thing about the film is that it actually looks quite interesting, (well, it did have three credited Directors of Photography), though the colour palette does vary wildly. Weird doesn't even begin to describe it; terrible, on the other hand, does.

KNIFE+HEART ****

Imagine "Stranger By the Lake" directed by Dario Argento or better still, Claire Denis and you're about a quarter of the way there. "Knife+Heart" is a deliciously giddy piece of gay giallo, partly "Cruising", partly "Dressed to Kill" and yet feeling totally original. Anne, (an excellent Vanessa Paradis), is a producer of gay male porn whose actors suddenly keep getting murdered in particularly nasty ways. Rather than initially shedding tears, Anne turns the killings into a movie she calls 'Homocidal'.

Naturally it's gruesome but it's also as stylish and as gorgeous as anything DePalma might have done and director Yann Gonzalez is bold enough to take the clichés of the genre, (thunderstorms, a black crow to herald the murders), and turn them on their head; you are never quite sure which way he's heading. Even the sexual make-up of his characters is never clearly defined. This is a really smart take on a genre we thought we knew inside out; once upon a time we would have called it 'post-modern' but don't let that put you off. It's set in 1979 and fans of giallo from that period will find much to enjoy here just as anyone interested in New Queer Cinema will also find much to relish...oh, and don't leave until the very last image leaves the screen.
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THE BEGUILED ***

Something rare; a remake that is actually better than an already outstanding original. Sofia Coppola's film of "The Beguiled" may offer a slightly more pro-feminist take on the subject than Don Siegel did but otherwise it's business as usual; the plot is very much the same and the creepy, Gothic feel remains unaltered though this time there is a much darker streak of black humour running through the picture. Against the aggressive sexuality of Clint Eastwood and the hysteria of Geraldine Page and Elizabeth Hartman we have a much more subtle and subdued Colin Farrell, now a potential Irish mercenary fighting for the Yankees, as much a victim as a seducer to Nicole Kidman's steely, and still gorgeous, headmistress and Kirsten Dunst's tremulous spinster not to mention the kind of little girls whose idea of fun is probably pulling the wings off butterflies.

The pace, at least for the first two-thirds of the picture, is deceptively slow until all hell breaks loose and the film gets nicely sanguine. Coppola handles these tonal shifts with considerable assurance, (she won the Best Director prize at Cannes), and draws superb performances from her small cast. Farrell, in particular, has seldom been better and both Kidman and Dunst are bodice-rippingly good. It's also gorgeously photographed by Philippe le Sourd with frame after frame resembling old prints brought to life. Of course, this won't be to everyone's taste. Anyone expecting an action picture or a conventional horror film will be bitterly disappointed. This is an art-house movie that has sneaked into the multiplex and I loved every minute of it.

SONG TO SONG ****

You know that a Terrence Malick film about the music industry won't be like any other film about the music industry but then a Terrence Malick film won't be like anything other than the Terrence Malick film that preceded it and the one before that and quite possibly the one before that. You could say that Terrence Malick's films are unique...except they aren't; nowadays they all look and sound the same which is why so many people have written him off. I think I may be one of the very few people who not only liked "Knight of Cups" but actually chose it as my best film of the year.

That was about the movie industry, or at least about an actor in Hollywood, and "Song to Song" is about the music industry or at least about a handful of people involved with the music industry and like the last couple of Malick pictures it basically dispenses with dialogue and 'conversations' in favour of a stream of consciousness narration, or several narrations, as various characters take up 'the story'.

What story, you may ask? Perhaps unusually for Malick there are more characters than usual on display with at least three stories running through the picture. The central characters are Faye, (Rooney Mara), a would-be performer, Cook, (Michael Fassbender), the Svengali-like producer Faye is sleeping with in the hope that it will advance her career and BV, (Ryan Gosling), another musician with whom she embarks on an affair. Then there's Rhonda, (Natalie Portman), the waitress that Cook marries and Amanda, (Cate Blanchett), the older woman BV falls for, not to mention an extraordinarily good Patti Smith playing herself. Each of these characters has 'a story' to tell and all are beautifully played. In many respects this is Malick's most accessible film since "The Tree of Life".


Of course, how you respond to it will depend on how you respond to Malick in general. Personally I think this is a vast improvement on "To the Wonder" and it's certainly the equal of the vastly underrated "Knight of Cups". This is an intelligent and surprisingly engaging film and once again the dazzlingly brilliant cinematography is courtesy of Emmanuel Lubezki. It really shouldn't be missed.

SERIOUS CHARGE **

Very daring for its day (1959) "Serious Charge" may now look very much like a period piece yet this British movie about a vicar falsely accused of molesting a teenage boy still packs a punch thanks in large part to a fine script by Guy Elmes and Mickey Delamar and good performances from Anthony Quayle as the vicar, Andrew Ray as the boy who makes the allegation, Sarah Churchill as the woman who has the hots for Quayle and, perhaps best of all, Irene Browne as Quayle's no-nonsense mother. It was also the film that introduced a young Cliff Richard to the big screen as Ray's younger brother, (he sings "Livin' Doll"). Now Cliff and the teenage teraways are the films weakest links which in all other respects treats its subject seriously and with a surprising degree of intelligence. It's almost unimaginable that a similar film would have been made in America at this time.

HE RAN ALL THE WAY ***

A B-Movie with A-Movie credentials. "He Ran All the Way" was John Garfield's last film and it has all the makings of a small classic. It was a suitably fatalistic film-noir that benefitted considerably from James Wong Howe's superb cinematography. Garfield plays the small-time hood who, after a botched robbery in which he kills a policeman, finds himself hiding out in Shelley Winter's apartment where he holds her and her family hostage.

It's a claustrophobic little picture, very well directed by the little-known John Berry and if Garfield's performance is something of a mess, (he was too old for the part at 38), it is, nevertheless, suitably intense and Winters is fine as are Wallace Ford and Selena Royle as her parents and there's a nice cameo from Gladys George as Garfield's uncaring mother. Dalton Trumbo was one of the scriptwriters but, being blacklisted, his name didn't appear on the credits. The fine score was by Franz Waxman. It's been unjustly neglected and is well worth seeking out.

RED GARTERS no stars

It has to be seen to be believed and even then the chances are you won't believe it. This 'spoof-western-musical' is positively surreal, an explosion of Technicolour that announces itself with the title-card that 'life should be more like the movies' and then proceeds to be neither like life nor the movies; you might even call it Brechtian. The director of "Red Garters" was George Marshall but this is as far removed from "Destry Rides Again" as it's possible to get. The songs are by Jay Livingstone and Ray Evans so you know what to expect, (jaunty, heel-kickers with a few ballads thrown in), and the cast includes Rosemary Clooney, Jack Carson and Guy Mitchell, who should have stuck to the recording studio. It's awful but it's self-consciously awful; shamelessly, proudly awful. Did the producers really think there was an audience for this? Of course, Clooney and Mitchell were big recording stars at the time so perhaps it was aimed squarely at their fans. It certainly goes beyond camp and I don't mean in a good way.

THE MAN ON THE EIFFEL TOWER no stars

A real curio but a terrible film. For years it was thought that "The Man on the Eiffel Tower" was lost until two worn out copies were discovered and restored, after a fashion, by UCLA. It's based on a Georges Simenon Maigret novel and was filmed on location in post-war Paris by Burgess Meredith on Ansco Reversal Film, no original elements of which exist today, (the location work is terrific, the color process considerably less so).

Meredith also appears as the prime suspect in a double murder that Charles Laughton's Maigret is investigating. The real killer, however, is psychopathic Franchot Tone. Both he and Meredith look very uncomfortable in their roles though Laughton is excellent and comes close to redeeming the picture, (close but not close enough). The real star, of course, is Paris and its number one tourist attraction which features prominently in the films climax. Of historical interest, then but hardly worth seeing.

FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT **

“Foreign Correspondent” isn't one of Hitchcock's best pictures and yet it has several of Hitch's most famous sequences, (the assassination in the rain, the murder attempt from the bell-tower of Westminster Cathedral, the windmill sails that are revolving the wrong way). It's also got an excellent cast. The hero is Joel McCrea, good enough to make you wish Hitchcock had used him more often; Herbert Marshall as a smooth villain, Edmund Gwenn as a not-so-smooth villain. Laraine Day is the heroine and she's a game girl but somewhat limited as an actress. The main problem is that the picture was made as part of the war effort and its anti-fascist stance does tend to dilute the suspense. Still, those handful of great scenes do stick in the memory long after the rest of the movie is forgotten. 

DOWN THREE DARK STREETS no stars

Despite a better than average B-Movie cast, "Down Three Dark Streets" is a fairly formulaic crime movie with FBI man Broderick Crawford investigating the murder of his partner, Kenneth Tobey. He doesn't have a prime suspect but there's a link to the three cases Tobey was working on, each with a well-known actress, (Ruth Roman, Martha Hyer, Marisa Pavan), at the centre. It's one of those documentary-like investigative pictures in which a sonorous narrator informs us of what's happening. As the bottom half of a double-bill it's perfectly watchable and both Roman and Hyer are actually quite good. There's also some good location shooting in and around Los Angeles but it's not memorable and Arnold Laven's direction is uninspired.

THE DAMNED DON'T CRY **

One of Joan Crawford's lesser-known vehicles but this cross between a 'woman's picture' and a film noir has been unjustly neglected. Vincent Sherman made "The Damned Don't Cry" in 1950, five years after Joan's Oscar-winning turn as "Mildred Pierce" and there are very slight similarities between the two films. Sherman may not have been a Michael Curtiz but he was one of the more reliable directors of melodramas in Hollywood even when dealing with an over-aged Crawford.

She starts the picture as a slightly frumpy housewife but after walking out on hubbie Richard Egan she finds those over-aged Crawford looks are enough to launch her into a not very salubrious society where men like David Brain and Steve Cochran are competing for her over-aged charms. Her character is as hard as nails which suited Joan down to the ground and in her brassy way she's actually very good here and the film, while minor, is still thoroughly enjoyable. Worth rediscovering.

RED STATE **

" "Red State" may not have been the film we might have expected from Kevin Smith, certainly in terms of plot, (the crude language and sexuality are typical, however), but this thriller about an extreme right-wing religious cult is still pretty chilling even if you do think the three randy teenagers at the centre might deserve all they get. At its core is a magnificent performance from Michael Parks as the very demented head of his own church whose idea of punishing sinners is anything but Christian. Among his followers is Melissa Leo and between them they should put the fear of God into you, while on the side of law and order we have a terrific John Goodman. If we aren't quite into "Hostel"  territory here this is still pretty disturbing, perhaps because it feels like it could actually happen (and to a degree it already has; we are in Waco, Texas territory here). It does go a bit off the rails at the end but even so this is still one of the better horror thrillers of the past few years. 

PREDATOR **

"Apocalypse Now" meets "Alien". "Predator" is now considered a sci-fi classic and is even mentioned in the same breath as the original "Thing from Another World" and it had, in director John McTiernan, a man who knew how to handle action on the screen. The plot could be written on a pinhead as Arnie leads his crack team of commandos into enemy territory on a rescue mission only to encounter another Stan Winston designed alien instead. It's gruesome and exciting in equal measure and it spawned several sequels but this is the one to go for it you like your thrills down and dirty as only McTiernan and Schwarzenegger can give them to you. Good, nasty fun is guaranteed.

MIDSOMMAR *

What is it with horror films these days or should I say, what is with Ari Aster horror films that they must clock in at around two and a half hours. I still remember the time when you could get a perfectly decent fright-fest at about eighty minutes or less but then perhaps Aster has loftier things in mind than just scaring the pants off us. His first feature, "Hereditary", had a host of real frighteners coupled with a much deeper tale of grief and how we cope with it and it worked very nicely in both camps thanks largely to a terrific performance from Toni Collette as a grief-stricken mother whose demons are very personal indeed.

His new film. "Midsommar" runs for two hours and twenty-seven minutes and in its tale of cults and potential sacrifices it looks like it might go down the same road as its predecessor in both frightening us and making us think, particularly after a beautifully built-up opening involving murder and suicide. However, once Aster whisks us, and his four protagonists, off to Sweden at the invitation of a Swedish friend, we find ourselves in the middle of "The Wicker Man" and some very dodgy 'midsommar' festivities. Actually the slow build-up here also works very nicely. Aster takes his time, (well, he does have almost two and a half hours to play around with), and it's clear to anyone who has seen "The Wicker Man" or any other horror film, come to think of it, that when something seems too good to be true, it usually is and that all this chanting and mumbo-jumbo can only end badly, which, of course, it does a long time after the movies started.

If I sound flippant it's because I really had high hopes for "Midsommar" after the vastly superior "Hereditary". Nothing happens in this picture you can't predict a mile off, (even the killer closing shot is fairly obvious when you think of it). Of course, things might have been different had Aster a leading man who could have convinced us he was disorientated, frightened or even interested in what was going on. Instead, we get Jack Reynor, whose performance is surely a shoo-in for next year's Razzie. Reynor started his career with a reasonably interesting performance in "What Richard Did" as an Irish schoolboy who accidentally kills a classmate but it's been all down hill from there, culminating in this misplaced, wooden performance.

As his girlfriend, Florence Pugh, (she of "Lady Macbeth" fame), does what she can with a one-dimensional role. Indeed, this is not an actor's picture with no-one, including the usually reliable Will Poulter, making much of an impression. It has its moments to be sure, with Aster even managing to inject some grisly humour into the proceedings and perhaps there is a good eighty minute horror movie struggling to get out but by adding an extra hour he kills it. Perhaps the moral of the film is just avoid Sweden in the summer because if the cults don't get you, the tics will.

BEAU TRAVAIL ****

Basically it's "Billy Budd" transferred to the French Foreign Legion and with a much greater emphasis on the homoerotic relationship between its protagonists. Billy is now a young legionnaire, (Gregoire Colin), his Claggart is his sergeant, jealous of his closeness to the commander, (Dennis Lavant) while their Captain Vere is that commander , (Michel Subor). Claire Denis' masterpiece "Beau Travail" is one of the most beautiful looking films ever to deal almost exclusively with the tensions between men living in close proximity. She fills the screen with beautiful bodies and then stops short of ever allowing anything physical to develop and you could say it's this lack of physical contact that allows things to fester and finally explode. In this respect it is a much more honest version of "Billy Budd" than the Peter Ustinov film. She also uses very little dialogue; seeing is believing. You don't need to be an expert in human psychology to figure out exactly what is happening. This may be the best thing Denis has ever done and is still one of the greatest films ever directed by a woman.

IN THE LINE OF FIRE **

More workmanlike than truly inspired, "In the Line of Fire" is, nevertheless, a good if fairly obvious thriller about a presidential assassin. He's played by John Malkovich and he's targeting, not just the President, but one of his bodyguards who also happened to be one of the bodyguards on duty the day Kennedy was assassinated. He's Clint Eastwood and this might have been a better movie had Eastwood directed it instead of just acting in it. The actual director was Wolfgang Petersen and he doesn't do anything here that's distinctive; everything he does is in service of the script. What gives the film its edge is Malkovich whose sly, scene-stealing performance earned him an Oscar nomination. Others in the cast, (Rene Russo, Dylan McDermott, John Mahoney, Gary Cole), are largely wasted.

SOPHIA ANTIPOLIS ***

A state-of-the-nation movie comprising of a series of seemingly unrelated stories set in a region of the South of France and often treated in documentary-style fashion. Everyone in "Sophia Antipolis" has their problems whether it's the young girls who want breast implants in the film's opening sequence or the vigilante-like gangs who think they are 'cleaning up' the area and it's a genuinely disturbing picture. It's a little like what Paul Haggis' "Crash" might have been had it been less interested in star power but unlike "Crash" the stories here are totally disparate, verging at times on the surreal.

The title refers, not to a person, but to a place; a large technology park on the French Riviera and it's what links the films many characters. Sophia is also the name of a young girl whose burnt body has been found in the park and the film is deeply critical of French society today. This Riviera is not a paradise in the sun but a place where immigrants find themselves being drawn into violence in the name of the law or into sects convinced the world is coming to an end. It is, in other words, a very nihilistic picture. It's only the second feature of its director, Virgil Vernier and it should ensure him a very bright future indeed.