UNCLE FRANK **

 Another family saga from the school of William Inge; don't Alaskans have family sagas? This one is courtesy of Alan Ball, he of "Six Feet Under" and "American Beauty" fame and this time he's directed as well and doing a reasonably good job of it, too. This is a coming-out as opposed to a coming-of-age story and it's Paul Bettany's "Uncle Frank", (that's the title), who is forced to come out when his niece pays him an unexpected visit and meets his lover. Later all three of them have to share a car journey from New York to Frank's hometown of Creekville when his father dies suddenly.

In typical Alan Ball fashion, this is a serio-comic family saga and the humour works better than the inevitable sentimentality. Both Bettany and Sophie Lillis, (the understanding niece), are excellent and there's good work, too, from Peter Macdissi, (the lover), Margo Martindale, (the mother), Stephen Root, (the horrible father), Steve Zahn and Judy Greer, (in-laws) and best of all, Lois Smith, (Aunt Butch). At times it feels like an extended episode of "Six Feet Under" and it certainly doesn't break new ground but even at its most saccharine it's a hard film to dislike and is one of the better LGBT films of the last year or so.

LOVER'S ROCK (SMALL AXE #2) ****

 You have to remember that before Steve McQueen became a 'film' director of features like "Hunger", "Shame" and "12 Years A Slave" he was a Turner Prize-winning video artist and "Lover's Rock", the second of his five "Small Axe" films, seems less of a traditional film as it is a fully immersive video installation in which his camera is continually moving around a series of dancing bodies while the extraordinary soundtrack turns this into an almost continuous and utterly sublime music video. Of course, if that's all "Lover's Rock" was it might perhaps merit a special mention somewhere down the line but McQueen is much more than just a great visual artist. As his earlier features have shown, he is one of the great social chroniclers of life in the UK, (see "Hunger") and of the Black experience, (see "12 Years A Slave" and these "Small Axe" films).

"Lover's Rock" takes place at a house party in West London over the course of one night and in just seventy minutes of screen time McQueen opens up the lives of these party-goers in just a few short, sharp scenes while never deviating from the music. This is one of the great musicals that isn't strictly a 'musical' and anyone who's ever been to a house-party will know the euphoria on the screen first-hand. Magnificently acted by a cast who are not really acting at all, brilliantly photographed by Shabier Kirchner and superbly directed this is among the best seventy minutes of film I have seen this year.

HILLBILLY ELEGY no stars

 The one thing you're guaranteed with a Ron Howard film is professionalism even if there may be a dearth of imagination. The lack of imagination in "Hillbilly Elegy" extends to the title which is one of the poorest of a mainstream film this year. It's another growing up and coming-of-age saga in, dare I say it, Hillbilly country and it's well enough made; beautifully photographed and designed, like so many Ron Howard films and equally lacking in imagination which isn't to say you might not enjoy it. For starters, Howard has cast two of the best actresses in America as leads; Amy Adams is the Po' White Trash Mamma, (she's old enough to take mother roles now), and Glenn Close is the Po' White Trash Grandma and they are both excellent in very conventional roles.

It's the biography of one, J.D. Vance, (Gabriel Basso as an adult and Owen Asztalos as the younger version), a Yale law graduate who manages to break free from his family but who is forced back when his mom od's on heroin and it's based on the book he wrote about his family. Even if you didn't know it, you could still guess this was a Ron Howard picture and that's not a recommendation. Howard's 'autership' means all his films look and sound alike in the way that Reader's Digest novels were all alike, aimed at people who didn't want to try the real thing. This movie is condescending in the extreme; Oscar-bait fare for Adams and Close and very typical of its director.

FATMAN no stars

 The "Fatman" of the title is Santa Claus; yes, the 'real' one but as played by Mel Gibson he's no 'Ho Ho Ho' jolly old man in a red suit but a gruff old businessman with money troubles and a concerned wife, (Marianne Jean-Baptiste), and when he needs to be he's pretty handy with a gun. This alleged black comedy is clearly aimed at people like me whose favourite Christmas movie is "Bad Santa" but whereas that gem was genuinely funny and done in the worst possible taste while still managing to be sweetly sentimental thanks to a terrific performance from young Brett Kelly. This, however, is seriously short on laughs. Worse, it's poorly scripted, directed, acted and very violent; this is a Christmas movie clearly not aimed at children.

The plot, for want of a better word, has obnoxious rich kid Chance Hurstfield hiring hitman Walton Goggins to kill Santa after he leaves him just a lump of coal at Christmas. Meanwhile Santa and his elfs find themselves making parts for the U.S. military to make ends meet. Done well, this could have been inspired instead of the under-cooked turkey it turns out to be. In fact, rather than watch this rubbish revisit "Bad Santa" or even watch "It's a Wonderful Life" for the 40th time or just go to bed early and hope that Santa brings you something more than a lump of coal.

THE DANCE OF REALITY *

 'Reality' is the one thing that is conspicuously absent from Alejandro Jodorowsky's "The Dance of Reality". He may be a revolutionary filmmaker but he is also an acquired taste. This one does have a plot of sorts involving Jodorowsky as a boy, (Jeremias Herskovits), growing up in a surreal seaside town in Chile populated by dwarfs, the armless, the legless, the naked and the dispossessed, (all typical Jodorowsky tropes), where nothing 'real' happens at all and everything plays out as if in a dream with the real Jodorowsky himself turning up every so often to guide as through this cinematic circus of his life. There is a parallel plot involving Jodorowsky's father, played by his son Brontis, (I hope you're getting this), that is less interesting than the one that opens the picture. It looks great, makes no real sense yet is quite easy to follow, will make no converts to the cult of Jodorowsky but which should please his fans no end.

TEN NORTH FREDERICK no stars

 A miscast Gary Cooper is the well-to-do lawyer and failed politician caught in an unhappy marriage who embarks on an affair with a younger woman, (Suzy Parker), in this rather average screen version of John O'Hara's novel, "Ten North Frederick". It's told in flashback on the day of Cooper's character's funeral, (Cooper himself was to be dead from cancer only two years later), as he's remembered by his daughter, (Diane Varsai). Geraldine Fitzgerald is the ambitious shrew of a wife who basically drives Cooper to drink and into Parker's arms.

The book was one of those typically scandalous O'Hara bestsellers and this was a fairly prestige production but Philip Dunne, who also wrote the screenplay, was a dull director and Cooper was already looking pretty frail while Varsai hadn't moved on from her Allison McKenzie character in "Peyton Place". Only Fitzgerald shows any real mettle though in a small, but showy, role as the trumpet player who gets Varsai pregnant, Stuart Whitman shows real promise. Watchable, then, but equally uninspired.

BECKY SHARP no stars

 Not Rouben Mamoulian's finest hour even if this first fully-fledged Technicolour movie is rather sumptuous to look at. In deference to its heroine, Thackeray's 'Vanity Fair' has been rechristened "Becky Sharp" and Mamoulian gallops through Thackeray's epic novel in under ninety minutes. So much has been left out, you might think you're watching something else entirely. It's also very badly cast. Alan Mowbray, of all people, is the 'dashing' Rawdon Crawley, Alison Skipworth is his dowager aunt and if Miriam Hopkins is a coquettish Becky she's closer to being a Manhattan hostess than a Napoleonic one. Had it been shot in black and white it would have been long forgotten by now but it's saved to a degree by Mamoulian's use of colour. Unfortunately, the dialogue sounds like it came from a dime-store novel rather than from one of the great works of English literature. If there's an audience for this movie today, I'd be very surprised.

MANK ***

 I'm sure "Mank" will find an audience among cineastes, especially those who love movies about the movies but despite all the craft on display I doubt very much if this will set the box-office on fire, (though David Fincher aficionados might give it a go out of curiosity). Mank, (not a good title, by the way), is Herman J. Mankiewicz, co-writer with Orson Welles, of "Citizen Kane", and this movie, written by Fincher's father, Jack, some years ago, posits the idea that the screenplay of "...Kane" was written by Mankiewicz and Mankiewicz alone.

This is a movie strong on name-dropping, (we are told who everyone is as soon as they appear), and it's definitely smart and, thanks to Erik Messerschmidt's stunning black and white cinematography, it looks incredible but it also has a strip-cartoon like quality giving it the feel of a potted history of Hollywood at a time when MGM had more stars than there were in the heavens. It is, in other words, a niche movie for a niche market.

Mank is Gary Oldman, (excellent in an Oscar-bait performance). Welles is British actor Tom Burke, a splendid Charles Dance is William Randolph Hearst and Amanda Seyfried is an outstanding Marion Davies and there are scenes in the movie as good as anything you will see this year. It's also very good on the 'Hearst is Kane' idea and if we have to have gossipy show-biz biopics then we can't complain if they all look and sound as good as "Mank". This is the kind of film, come Oscar time, I'm sure the Academy will honour in a self-congratulatory frame of mind as if finally honouring "Citizen Kane" itself. It may not be Fincher's masterpiece but it just might be the one that will finally win him that little gold-plated man we call Oscar.

BEN IS BACK no stars

 Despite excellent performances from Julia Roberts, (frantically worried mom), and Lucas Hedges, (drug-addicted son), "Ben is Back" is unlikely to be thought of as one of the better movies about addiction, opting for the thriller route rather than going down the social conscience road, (setting it over Christmas doesn't help either; sentimentality is never far away). It it, then, a reasonably thin piece written and directed by Hedges' father, Peter, presumably as a vehicle for his extremely talented son who doesn't disappoint. Indeed were it not for Hedges Jr. and Roberts this would be no better than a half-decent made-for-tv thriller. If they don't actually redeem the picture at least they give it a much needed lift. Still, only tolerable at best.

CREEPY ***

 You might ask yourself why the Japanese are so good at movies about killers, killing and horror in general. Without wanting to cast aspersions at my Japanese friends could it be something in their psyche? But then you might say, isn't the American cinema just as expert in the killing fields as anywhere and don't we judge a certain kind of cinema on a particular Hitchcock movie from 1960? Perhaps we should simply say the Japanese have honed this particular genre to perfection and that "Creepy" has all the makings of a classic of its kind.

It's a Kiyoshi Kurosawa film and Kurosawa's already built up something of a reputation as one of the best directors working in this genre but neither would it disgrace David Fincher's canon of work. Like Fincher, Kurosawa seems to be able to blend horror with a streak of very dark humour and to make somewhat convoluted plots believable.

Hidetoshi Nishijima is the police detective who, after failing to secure a serial killer who has escaped when in his custody, leaves the force, takes a job lecturing on crime and serial killers in particular and moves with his wife to a new neighbourhood. However, they soon discover their new neighbours are not only unfriendly but, to give the film its title, creepy. Things get even creepier, as well as a whole lot nastier, when he and a former colleague reopen an old missing persons case. Add a great Bernard Hermannesque score and you know you're in for a delightfully unsettling experience. One of the best chillers of its year.

SORRY, ANGEL *

 Fundamentally ordinary yet incredibly self-centred, the characters in Christophe Honore's "Sorry, Angel" are not easy people to like. They are mostly a group of gay and bisexual men with complicated lives who find that relationships aren't necessarily what they're good at; even having a job, earning a living or just being 'themselves' also seem to pose a problem. The two main characters are Jacques, a writer in his thirties, (Pierre Deladonchamps), and Arthur, (Vincent Lacoste), a younger student, who meet, have sex and then go about the business of falling in love but find 'happy ever after' something of a pipedream.

It's territory Honore has explored before and more explicitly but this well-crafted, if overtly cool, movie represents something of a step forward if only in terms of style. This is a more formal, less kinetic, Honore but one still unable to shake off that sense of ennui. The performances are excellent but the characters aren't engaging. Also setting it at a time when AIDS was more prevalent than it is now seems like an unnecessary plot device rather than an attempt to get us to understand or care more about the people we see. Throw in a girlfriend and Jacques' young son and you get the impression that Honore is going out of his way to be 'cool' as if making a gay epic but one without a centre. Add a load of references to cinema and literature and you know exactly who this is aimed at. One for the fans, I'm afraid.

THE FAN *

 Another psychopathic fan movie and another considerable waste of the talents of the great Maureen Stapleton. Here she's secretary to a 'big star' and she's terrific for the short time she appears in the movie. The star being psychopathically stalked is Lauren Bacall, who's actually quite good playing in full, imperious diva mode. The stalker is Michael Biehn, (excellent), and while the movie is trashy and often tasteless, (it's peculiarly homophobic), it's also surprisingly enjoyable in a bad movie kind of way. Unfortunately it's an ugly looking picture and the editing is somewhat perfunctory so points knocked off there. Otherwise, more than passable midnight movie fare.

THE VOICE OF THE MOON no stars

 Federico Fellini's virtually unknown final film is neither the almost total disaster many people claim it to be nor the late masterpiece it could have been. It is, however, typical Fellini, certainly typical of his work from the mid-sixties on, full of whimsical middle-aged men and large-breasted women. We could be back in the Rimini of "Amarcord" but instead we are in a mythical town where nothing seems real and with everything unfolding as if in a dream. It's certainly hugely self-indulgent while lead Roberto Benigni has always been an acquired taste. In its favour you might say that two minutes in and you know you are watching a Fellini film even if it's a bad one; his signature is in every frame. If, like me, you regard him as one of cinema's great visionaries you will be massively disappointed and if you've always thought of him as overrated you can safely say 'I told you so'. I wish I could simply chalk it down as an interesting failure but it's less than that; a sad end to a greatly distinguished career.

THE GOOD LIAR **

 Once upon a time it would have been unheard of for a movie to get off the ground on the strength of leads whose combined ages totalled one hundred and fifty nine. On the other hand, mention that those leads are Sir Ian McKellen and Dame Helen Mirren and you just might manage to sell it. In "The Good Liar" Sir Ian is an ageing con-man and Dame Helen potentially his next victim, whom he meets on an online dating site and one of the film's pleasures is watching these two great thespians act their little cotton socks off. 

The target audience may indeed be readers of 'The Oldie' but if you dismiss this simply as one for the wrinklies you'd be missing a very enjoyable old-school thriller. Russell Tovey is here to cater for the younger market though you might feel his character is a bit superfluous while director Bill Condon makes great use of locations both in London and Berlin. Unfortunately the plot goes a little off the rails at the end so marks knocked off for that but still nice to see something as old-fashioned as this in 2019.

CALL NORTHSIDE 777 *

 This movie about a piece of real-life investigative journalism was much lauded at the time of its release, mainly for being one of the first features to be filmed in the actual locations where the events took place. It's certainly a good-looking picture, well directed by Henry Hathaway in an unhurried, unsensational fashion and yet it's dull. This is the story of a man in prison for life for a murder he didn't commit and of one reporter's efforts to get him reprieved but there's no excitement, no sense of urgency; it's certainly not a whodunit.

"Call Northside 777" falls into that category of films you admire for the skill with which they're made but which don't engage you on an emotional level and given the subject, this one should. James Stewart is the reporter and he goes about his duties earnestly but without conviction, (it's one of his least interesting performances), and it's left to Richard Conte, the prisoner, to give the film whatever feeling it has. He's very good but it's a small role. The rest of a good cast are largely wasted and the real star of the picture is Joe MacDonald who did the superb location photography. It's not seen much these days and is hardly likely to hold an audience raised on the likes of "All the President's Men"

THIS PROPERTY IS CONDEMNED **

 If movies were the sum of their credits, both in front of and behind the camera, then "This Property is Condemned" might have been a masterpiece. It isn't but it's a damn fine, if underrated and largely forgotten, film nevertheless. Based very loosely on a one-act play by Tennessee Williams and with a screenplay in part written by Francis Coppola, (without the Ford), it's a sweetly tough romantic drama about the relationship between a small-town dreamer of a girl, (a superb Natalie Wood), and the railroad 'fixer', (an excellent Robert Redford), who comes to stay in her mother's boarding house during the Great Depression. It's fairly conventional, predictable even, but it oozes charm, is beautifully cast, (as well as the leads there's good work from Kate Reid as Wood's less-than-wholesome mother and Mary Badham as her kid sister), superbly photographed by James Wong Howe and has a fine Kenyon Hopkins score. Of course, by 1966 movies like this were no longer in fashion. Essentially it's a throwback to the kind of films Elia Kazan was making in the previous ten years and it would sit very nicely on a double-bill with "Splendour in the Grass". So, no masterpiece then or anything close to one but a very solid, grown-up entertainment of the kind we don't see too often these days.

OM BAR-D-BAR no stars

 "Om Bar-D-Bar" is a free-wheeling piece of what might best be described as 'experimental' cinema. It has a narrative but that narrative, along with the film's 'style', is all over the place. In America, of course, such films are fairly common in avant-garde cinema but this one hails from India and came out at a time when Indian feature films were meant to be nothing more exciting than the usual Bollywood production. This one may have Bollywood elements but, like everything else in the picture, they are subverted.

It was directed by Kamal Swaroop and it was clearly not aimed at a mass audience. if technically it's on the ropey side, (some of the night-time shooting is poor), it does show imagination and is often shot like a documentary. Of course, the big question is, is it any good or just self-indulgent? Swaroop clearly has skill, (though this is the only one of his films I've seen), but despite the skill and the imagination I found it very hard-going.

JUST MERCY ***

 "Just Mercy" might have been just another inspirational true story of the kind the American cinema seems very fond of and which they usually treat with much larger dollops of sentimentality than necessary but thanks to director Destin Daniel Cretton's expert handling of the material, a fine script and first-rate performances from Michael B. Jordan and Jamie Foxx this is much more gripping, moving and intelligent than it could have been. It's the story of young African-American lawyer Bryan Stevenson and his fight to free wrongly convicted death-row prisoner Walter McMillan; Jordan is Stevenson and Foxx is McMillan. Of course, that's just the up close and personal element; what it's really about is America's Systemic Racism and although it's set thirty odd years ago the tragedy is it could have been made yesterday.

It's also a thriller, a kind of companion piece to "In the Heat of the Night" but without the grandstanding, Oscar-bait, crowd-pleasing elements and instead of a scenery-chewing Rod Steiger we have a much more nuanced Ralf Spall as a small town Southern lawyer. In fact, all the performances are first-rate with everyone underplaying superbly, (there's an Oscar-worthy turn from Tim Blake Nelson as a key witness), but the casting is just one of the film's many strengths. Cretton and Andrew Lanham's screenplay is humorous as well as honest while Cretton directs in that straightforward, classical style that Clint Eastwood has honed to perfection. Indeed Eastwood could easily have made this and if he had we would be hailing it as one of his finest films. Cretton has every reason to be proud.

THE CHILDREN ACT ****

 The British Cinema has a long literary tradition. Yes, we've had the Kitchen Sink Movement and Hammer and a whole lot of 'stiff upper lip' war movies but perhaps what the British Cinema does best is tell good stories, unadorned, often taken from good novels or, if written directly for the screen, following the format of a good novel and Richard Eyre's "The Children Act" is no exception, so it comes as no surprise that it was written by Ian McEwan and is based on his own novel and that the director has a very solid reputation directing for the theatre.

This is a 'problem picture' but since, Ken Loach apart, the British don't really do problem pictures there's also a strong back story about a marriage that's in trouble. The marriage in question is that of Emma Thompson and Stanley Tucci, a very well heeled middle-aged couple. The central story, and the one that makes this a problem picture, deals with Thompson's role in a court case involving the son of Jehovah Witnesses who requires a life-saving blood transfusion contrary to his and his parents' faith. Thompson is the judge presiding in the case and it's her judgement that will decide the outcome.

The film of "The Children Act" is, indeed, the kind of literary cinema the British do brilliantly but it's more than that and not just because it deals with a serious and contentious issue but because of the immense skill of all involved. McEwan has adapted his novel superbly and Eyre directs it beautifully and at its heart lies a truly terrific performance from Thompson, too often cast these days in eccentric supporting roles but here given the opportunity to finally carry a picture again. Tucci, too, is excellent as the errant husband and in a first-rate supporting cast Jason Watkins and Fionn Whitehead, (the boy in question), are stand-outs. This is highly intelligent cinema, as gripping in its own way as any thriller and is a very pleasant and welcome change from so much of the  highfalutin art-house stuff we've been getting recently. Very highly recommended.

THE FIXER *

 A miscast Alan Bates is "The Fixer" of the title in John Frankenheimer's film version of Bernard Malamud's novel. Set in Czarist Russia, Bates is the Jewish handyman accused and imprisoned for a crime he didn't commit and Dirk Bogarde is the lawyer who does what he can to help him and there's a large, starry cast of mostly British thespians playing various Russians and Jews to the best of their ability or not as the case may be.

It was a prestige production in the MGM tradition of grandiose literary works and you half expect to see Richard Brooks' name on the credits but from Frankenheimer you expect more. In the early sixties he was the wunderkind of the American cinema, turning out exciting and edgy pictures like "Birdman of Alcatraz" and "The Manchurian Candidate" but this is stodgy and old-fashioned and it hammers its arguments home with very little subtlety, (it was written by the blacklisted Dalton Trumbo). Bogarde goes some way to redeeming it but not far enough.

AMATEUR no stars

 Hal Hartley isn't for everyone. He's certainly not going to appeal to the kind of audiences hooked on what Marvel are turning out and even the art-house crowd haven't always related to his brand of very dry, off-the-wall humour and the kind of one-note performances he draws from his casts and yet his reputation has remained rock solid for over thirty years. He made "Amateur" in 1994 with regular co-star Martin Donovan together with Elina Lowensohn and French legend Isabelle Huppert. The plot hardly matters; it's like a riff on the gangster movie but so daft you can discount it as any kind of thriller and too lacking in what we might call 'gags' to be classed as a comedy. 

Donovan is the amnesiac who wakes up, injured in an alley, before wandering into a cafe where he meets ex-nun, now porn writer Isabelle Huppert who then brings him home. So far, so regular but from here on it kicks off every which way; they could be making it up as it goes along and maybe they were though Hartley is credited with the screenplay. Of course, there are people who find all of this hilarious and perhaps even intellectually stimulating but it only took about twenty minutes for me to realise that Hartley has never been my kind of poison. For fans only.

CURE ***

 This Japanese serial-killer chiller is just grisly enough to satisfy the fan-boys and smart enough to please those who like to take their brains with them when they go to the cinema. People are being murdered in Tokyo and their killers are found close to the bodies but claiming either no memory or understanding of their crimes and it's left to laid-back detective Koji Yaskusho to figure out what's going on.

The film is Kiyoshi Kurosawa's "Cure" and since it first appeared in 1997 has built up something of a cult following. It's like a Japanese version of "Seven" and Kurosawa builds up the suspense beautifully, using tiny shock tactics rather than big jump-out-at-you scares and eliciting a genuinely eerie performance from Masato Hagiwara as the man who's probably behind the killings. A superb use of sound effects also adds to the general feeling of unease making this one of the most unsettling horror films of the last 25 years.

THE TROUT no stars

 Even the most avid cineastes are unlikely to be familiar with this very late Joseph Losey opus. It was his penultimate film, made in France in 1982, and starring a young Isabelle Huppert and Jeanne Moreau and frankly, it's pretty terrible. Huppert is the small-town girl with a gay husband, (Jacques Spiesser), and ideas above her station who, after hustling a rich, middle-aged couple, (Moreau and Jean-Pierre Cassel), at, of all things, bowls ends up going to Japan with Cassel's business partner.

The kindest thing I can say about it is that it's a strange movie that is also strangely dated, (there's lots of bad disco music), and it features some of the worst acting that either Huppert or Moreau ever did. There's the flimsiest of plots involving high finance but this, like much else in the picture, is hard to fathom. The best performance comes from the Polish actor Daniel Olbrychski as that business partner of Cassel's who has the hots for Huppert but even he can't redeem this hollow, empty affair that, together with "Streaming", brought Losey's illustrious career to a sorry end.

DEPARTURE *

 "Departure" is another of those precious coming-of-age films that the British or the French, in particular, tend to do rather well, this one being British but set in France where Juliet Stevenson and her teenage son Alex Lawther have come to sell the family's holiday home. Young Lawther, (twenty when the film was made but looking much younger), is also discovering his sexuality and it isn't girls he appears to be interested in, so when he spies a slightly older French boy on a bridge, his hormones start working overtime. Rather awkwardly, when Juliet meets him she, too, is drawn to him.

Beautifully photographed, intelligently written and directed by Andrew Steggall, whose first feature this is, and very nicely acted, "Departure" is one of those films you feel churlish criticizing, rather like throwing stones at a nun and I suppose you could say that in its own way it is absolutely perfect, perfect and lifeless and more than a little contrived. Since young Alex wants to be a writer you wonder how much of it may be autobiographical but if it is, what a dull coming-of-age Steggall must have had; you keep waiting and waiting for something to happen and when it does, it's a case of so-what. This is the kind of art-house film Joanna Hogg makes, which may be a recommendation to some and an anathema to others. As I said, it's 'precious'.

5 AGAINST THE HOUSE no stars

 A heist movie but not a good one. Phil Karlson was the director so you had the right to expect more but saddled with a dreadful script and poor performances all round he couldn't do anything to save "5 Against the House". For starters, the title is misleading as there's really only one against the house, psychotic Korean veteran Brian Keith. The other four are Guy Madison, (looking more like William Holden than ever), Kerwin Mathews, Alvy Moore and Kim Novak, (looking gorgeous but not doing much in the way of acting; even her singing is dubbed), and although it was Mathews who came up with the daft plan to rob a Reno casino they didn't really mean to keep the money. In fact, Madison and Novak were in the dark about the whole thing until the very last minute, (yes, it's as silly as it sounds). There is a trickle of excitement at the end but not enough to keep you awake. By the time the robbery comes around you will probably have drifted into a deep sleep and if you're lucky you might even be dreaming you're watching "Rififi" or "The Killing" instead.

REBECCA **

 Whatever you do, don't approach Ben Wheatley's new film "Rebecca" as a remake of Alfred Hitchcock's much beloved classic, not that it ever would have been; Wheatley is his own man and we always knew he would do things differently, in this case sticking more closely to the book and casting it in such a way as to banish all memories of Fontaine, Olivier and Dame Judith and in this he has been largely successful. Armie Hammer is a lot less melancholy, if a tad modern, than Lord Larry ever was. Lily James is much more down-to-earth and obviously a good deal more sensual than Joan while Kristin Scott Thomas gives Mrs. Danvers a human side that was totally lacking in Judith Anderson's performance. Indeed, regardless of what else you think of the film I doubt if anyone could find fault with Scott Thomas who effortlessly walks away with the picture.

It also benefits from a Manderley that really looks like it might be one of the finest houses in all of England and the whole thing is beautifully shot by Laurie Rose in widescreen and colour. Fans of Mr. Hitchcock's version are unlikely to be won over; however, newcomers and fans of Du Maurier's novel should find plenty here to please them though the device of not giving the new Mrs. De Winter a Christian name seems even more contrived this time round.

CHILD'S PLAY *

 There's evil afoot in one of those boy's schools were the boys are all played by actors in their early twenties. It makes you wonder at what age pupils graduated from American high-schools. "Child's Play" was adapted from a successful Tony-award winning Broadway play and was directed by Sidney Lumet. It's certainly not one of his better films but it's a nice grisly entertainment nevertheless about the feud between two senior masters, (James Mason and Robert Preston, both terrific), and a seemingly inexplicable eruption of violence amongst the boys.

Basically, it's a high-class horror film with possible demonology lurking in the chapel and would be more effective if the 'boys' weren't so clearly young men. Beau Bridges is the new young gym teacher and former pupil torn between loyalty to Preston and sympathy for Mason and David Rounds is good as a fairly liberal young priest. It's nonsense, of course, but the cast give it a real kick and Mason, in particular, might convince you that you're watching something serious. Understandably it isn't much revived.

THE DEVIL ALL THE TIME **

 Religion figures prominently in this slice of American Gothic from Antonio Campos but it's the old time religion of the Old Testament rather than the New and it's the Devil who's in the driving seat in "The Devil All the Time". Covering a period of about twenty years and with a multitude of characters, most of whom come to a sticky end, it's a darkly funny piece of Americana set in the backwoods of West Virginia where murder is more common than a prayer before bedtime.

We've been down these backroads before, of course, all the way back to the seventies. Scorsese cut his teeth on material like this as did Malick and Campos shows us you certainly can't keep a good genre down. It meanders a little and jumps back and forth in time maybe more than it should and it's certainly overlong but it's well-acted, (particularly by Robert Pattinson and Tom Holland), and very nicely narrated by Donald Ray Pollock, author of the original novel.

SALON KITTY no stars

 Of course, it's all done in the worst possible taste. Tinto Brass' "Salon Kitty" is soft, verging on hard, core Eurotrash set in Nazi Germany with something to offend everyone, cineastes probably most of all, particularly if you're not a fan of bad dubbing, (it's said to be in English and is like a porno version of "Cabaret"). Ingrid Thulin is Kitty who runs the salon of the title, Helmut Berger is a typically degenerate German officer and there's a large multi-national cast that includes none other than John Ireland, (did they really think he could sell it to the American market?).

Of course, if this is your bag you won't be disappointed and whatever it lacks in taste it makes up for in design. This is a very good-looking 'dirty' picture, the ultimate dirty-mac movie with copious amounts of male and female nudity with both sexes obviously chosen for their physiques and not their acting chops. For explicitness it puts Visconti's "The Damned" in the shade and if it leaves you feeling very queasy then I guess you can say it's done it's (really rather appalling) job.

THE TRIAL OF THE CHICAGO 7 ****

 Of course it's brilliant, funny and hugely entertaining; just what you would expect when you see the name Aaron Sorkin, who this time has also directed, as well as written, "The Trial of the Chicago 7" which may not have been 'the trial of the century' but was certainly one of the most important 'political' trials ever held in America. It was, for want of a better word, a show-trial ordered by Attorney General John Mitchell to discredit the organizers of the protests held during the 1968 Democratic Convention. The trial was presided over by one, Judge Julius Hoffman who, from the moment he put his ass on the bench, was clearly on the side of the prosecution, though in view of what he had to put up with from the likes of Abbie Hoffman and others, you might even say he was provoked.

This is a classy production with an all-star cast that includes a couple of Oscar-winners. They are all outstanding with Frank Langella, (the judge), Mark Rylance, (the defence attorney), and, perhaps most surprising of all, Sacha Baron Cohen, (Abbie Hoffman) walking away with the picture and if Oscars are handed out this year surely Langella has to be a front-runner. If Sorkin portrays events in a crazy and seemingly haphazard way then I think it's safe to assume that's exactly what they were. As for the trial itself, you couldn't make this stuff up. This is a brilliantly written, directed and acted tragi-comedy about a terrible time in recent American history, though watching it you might think you are seeing newsreel shot on the streets of America only a few days ago.

BY THE GRACE OF GOD ****

 If you're used to the clever Hitchcockian thrillers Francois Ozon usually gives us, then "By the Grace of God" will almost certainly come as something of a shock and not just because he's dealing with a profoundly serious subject, (paedophilia within the Catholic Church), but also because of the style he's adopted. We are introduced to the subject from the outset but through a series of letters, e-mails and face-to-face meetings divided into three chapters, each linked by a victim of one abusing priest. This is drama done almost like a fly-on-the-wall documentary and is all the more moving for it with performances by all concerned so naturalistic as to go beyond mere 'acting', (Swann Arlaud won a Cesar for his performance).

We are told at the beginning that this is a work of fiction but based on facts and it happens in the recent past, during the papacy of Pope Francis, which is telling; has the Church's attitudes changed that much or is this institution still protecting its own. Ozon, who knows how to make a good thriller, makes a brilliant thriller here without betraying his subject in any way; some scenes I found almost unbearably moving. Perhaps, indeed, this is the kind of film Hitchcock could have or should have made in another time and place but, of course, these things were never talked about then, allowing this culture of abuse to flourish. This very important film may well be the best thing Ozon has done to date.

TWILIGHT OF HONOR no stars

 It's superbly photographed in black and white Panavision by Philip Lathrop which is about the only thing you can say in favour of this turgid courtroom melodrama. "Twilight of Honor", which came out in 1963, was poorly written, poorly directed and poorly acted with Richard Chamberlain as the inexperienced young lawyer roped into defending Nick Adams on a murder charge, knowing the case is strongly rigged against him. He gets a former old pro lawyer, (Claude Rains, in his penultimate movie), to help him, leading to every cliche in the book.

This is one of the least believable of all courtroom movies. Adams was inexplicably nominated for an Oscar for his performance and it's hard to believe the appallingly wooden Chamberlain actually had a career after this. Still, a lot of people think quite highly of the picture which perhaps only goes to show that courtroom movies are exceedingly popular even when they aren't any good. This is one of the worst.

MATTHIAS & MAXIME no stars

 Xavier Dolan, one-time enfant terrible of French-Canadian cinema, hasn't so much mellowed as become conventional. If the plot of his latest film, "Matthias & Maxime" is a little off-the-wall, the treatment is alarmingly predictable. Two male friends agree to take part in a girlfriend's student film in a scene where they have to kiss or indeed 'make out'. Dolan, for some reason, cuts away from the kiss itself and builds his film around the impact their actions has on their lives and their friendship.

It's beautifully filmed and well acted by both Dolan and Gabriel D'Almeida Freitas in the title roles as well as by a handful of people you would hardly want to spend time with normally and therein lies the rub; there's no-one to empathize with and nothing happens to make us care very much about Matthias & Maxime and their hang-ups. I'm not disputing Dolan's very obvious talent and it's still hard to believe he's only thirty-one, (he made his first feature aged only twenty), but these male-orientated and family-orientated psychodramas are starting to get a little dull. This might first look like he's branching out but there's nothing here we haven't seen before.

BAXTER, VERA BAXTER no stars

 Although a major player in the French New Wave, the films of Marguerite Duras are, in general, not that widely known and "Baxter, Vera Baxter" is one that disappeared from view quicker than most. She wrote and directed it in 1977 with her usual collaborator Delphine Seyrig and a little-seen Gerard Depardieu heading a largely unknown cast and it plods along in typical metronomic fashion as we are introduced to our titular heroine, (Claudine Gabay), by Depardieu who, it appears, is her current lover before meeting Vera herself as she languishes in some expensive villa regaling anyone who listens with tales of her sorry love life; Seyrig is one of the listeners.

This is the kind of art-house movie that gives art-house movies a bad name. Ponderous, pretentious and, although only ninety minutes long, feeling like an eternity in hell. It's the kind of rubbish you can see the Monty Python team sending up with dialogue so precious you may feel like switching the subtitles off altogether but even then you would still have to listen to the God-awful music. To be avoided like the worst case of Covid.

THE BLUE FLOWER OF NOVALIS *

 "The Blue Flower of Novalis" opens and closes with a shot of its protagonist's anus so you may well think you know what you're in for...or maybe not, since this documentary look into the life of gay poet Marcelo Diorio isn't quite like other films or documentaries. It's fundamentally a conversation piece between Diorio and an unseen interviewer and your tolerance for it will depend very much on how well you relate to Diorio or films of this kind which moves from a straightforward interview into staged memory and fantasy scenes that are surely purely scripted. Is Diorio always acting or is he just being himself and is there any reason for us to care one way or the other about someone so clearly egotistical and then, of course, there's the question as to why co-directors Rodrigo Carneiro and Gustavo Vinagre would have wanted to make this in the first place, (we are also privy to Diorio having fairly graphic sex). Boring and fascinating in equal measure and aimed at a very niche, and probably exclusively gay, market.

3 IDIOTS ****

 The title may conjure up images of the 3 Stooges and the crude humour of the opening might suggest a Hindi "Porky's" but with a running time of almost three hours "3 Idiots" clearly has its mind on higher things. It's a Bollywood buddy-movie devised as an epic and determined to outdo all the competition and being a Bollywood movie is full of large-scale musical numbers as well as a lot of very broad and very funny comedy.

The 3 idiots of the title meet as engineering students, become life-long friends but are separated by that old fickle finger of fate. It's also bold enough to deal with such issues as suicide and poverty and, of course, the caste system and is lifted onto an altogether higher plain by a terrific performance from Aamir Khan as 'the idiot' the other two worship and who, naturally, isn't an idiot at all but the sharpest tool in the box and he's brilliantly supported by Sharman Joshi as his potentially suicidal friend and Omi Vaidya as his number one rival. Brilliantly directed by Rajkumar Hirani this is the kind of film Hollywood could learn a lot from and which, had it been a Hollywood film, might well have swept the boards come Oscar time.

THE FAREWELL *

 A comedy about dying but coming from the Chinese-American director Lulu Wang, less maudlin than it might have been. Nai Nai, (an excellent Shuzhen Zhao), is the Chinese grandmother with only three months to live, so her American family come up with an excuse to fly to China to visit her; they plan a wedding which gives them a reason to celebrate rather than to mourn, (and the wedding itself is superbly done).

This is a sweet-natured, sentimental film that still feels like it's strung out way beyond its expiry date and is ultimately redeemed by Zhao's performance. As the granddaughter who wants the family to tell Nai Nai the truth, the much vaunted Awkwafina is so laid back as to be almost horizontal, (she still won a Golden Globe), and yet a lot of people love this film, (maybe they're Chinese and 'get it'). It's at its best when it points up the differences between East and West but that's not enough to make a movie and ultimately this is less "The Farewell" as something of a long goodbye.

THE BIG OPERATOR *

 The title's something of a misnomer since "The Big Operator" in question is none other than the diminutive Mickey Rooney. This Albert Zugsmith movie, which he produced in 1959, is a gangster flic about a mob-ruled union with Rooney as 'Little Joe', a corrupt union leader and it has a better than average supporting cast headed by Steve Cochran, (in a rare good-guy role), Mamie Van Doren, (miscast but coping as Cochran's sweet, blonde wife), Mel Torme, (good in a rare dramatic role), as well as Ray Danton and Jim Backus.

The plot's nothing new and, to be honest, the script is fairly ridiculous but it's reasonably well directed by Charles Haas, nicely shot in Cinemascope by Walter Castle and makes for an entertaining 90 minutes. Rooney drifts through it and you would hardly call what he does 'acting' but he was a star, all five foot two inches of him, a punk Little Caesar and he dominates the picture. It's certainly no classic and it's certainly no "Touch of Evil" but it's a good, tawdry genre picture and perfect drive-in fodder.

MY FOOLISH HEART **

There isn't a great deal of J. D. Salinger's short story "Uncle Wiggly in Connecticut" left in Mark Robson's supposed film version "My Foolish Heart" but it's a superior example of the 'woman's picture' nevertheless, thanks almost entirely to a superb Susan Hayward as the unhappily married woman recalling her first love, (Dana Andrews, always a good bet). The director was Mark Robson and it's one of his better pictures while the Epstein's (Julius J. and Philip G.) did the screenplay, again a good sign. Hayward was Oscar-nominated, as was the famous title song which, in its many incarnations, has outlived the film. No classic, then, but an intelligent and likeable picture that deserves to be better known.

THE SILENT PARTNER **

Daryl Duke's excellent and underrated thriller "The Silent Partner" is an ingenious heist movie with an over-active vicious streak and a couple of very good performances from Elliot Gould as the bank clerk who figures out his bank is going to be robbed and steals the money himself and from Christopher Plummer as the bad-to-the-bone crook out for his money and revenge. It's a simple enough plot but it's a tale well told, full of neat twists and Plummer is indeed splendidly nasty just as Gould is wonderfully duplicitous and there's good work, too, from Susannah York as the colleague Gould's in love with and who's not quite as innocent as she appears. Director Duke, who also made "Payday" and very little else for the big screen, does nothing to detract from the action and keeps it all bubbling along nicely. A sleeper that slipped under the radar and is now ripe for rediscovery.

I'M ALL RIGHT, JACK. ***

One of the great British satires. This time the Boulting Brothers' targets are the Trade Unions and, of course, the class system and the film is the brilliantly funny "I'm All Right, Jack", a very loose sequel to their earlier "Private's Progress" and it has a cast of some of the best comic actors ever gathered together in a British comedy. Ian Carmichael is that upper-class twit Stanley Windrush, Terry-Thomas is the galloping major and, best of all, Peter Sellers is Kite, that little Hitler of a shop steward. Then there's Dennis Price, Richard Attenborough, Margaret Rutherford and more British character actors than you can shake a union card at. A huge hit at the time, (Sellers won the BAFTA for Best British Actor), and it's still as funny today. Yes, it does sound crudely racist but then so was Britain back in 1959 and for once the jokes are on the racists, another sign of just how good the Boulting Brothers actually were.

SWIMMING POOL ***

If people must do riffs on Hitchcock why can't they all do it as well as Francois Ozon who not only ticks all the right boxes but has fun doing it in sunny climes. Not for him the slapdash suspense of just having a body buried in the woodshed but a deliciously unsettling piece of pop psychology in which two women from different generations, sharing the same fairly enclosed space, find they simply don't get along and since they are played by Charlotte Rampling and Ludivine Sagnier, what's not to like.

Few actresses in movies have matured as well as Rampling. To think that thirty years earlier she would have been the sexy little minx of a daughter giving some starchy matron a hard time; now she's the matron with a rod of steel determined not to be put off her stroke by any interfering little sexpot while Sagnier has a ball as the thorn in her side.

Since the movie is entitled "Swimming Pool" and since Rampling has expressed her dislike of such places you just know that the pool will become the third character in the picture but which of the two women is going to use it to their advantage and why isn't Sagnier's father, (Charles Dance), Rampling's publisher who suggested she vacation in the house in the first place, (it's in France), not answering Rampling's calls? Oh, and Rampling writes crime fiction.

This is Ozon at his most playfully erotic, taking nothing too seriously but teasing us at every turn. That fact that he does it in such gorgeous surroundings is an added bonus but then Ozon is such a confidently assured film-maker the surroundings hardly matter. A treat.

ODETTE no stars

Only the team of Herbert Wilcox, (producer and director), and Anna Neagle, (his actress wife), could take a story like "Odette" and make something as dull as this. Odette Sansom was a British agent working in Nazi occupied France so the potential for excitement and drama was evident but everyone connected to the film pussyfoots around the issues it raises and treats Odette as if she was the Virgin Mary. Of course, Neagle was never a serious actress to start with and throughout behaves as if she had done nothing more than spill something on her dress at a Royal Garden Party, her stiff upper lip hardly quivering at all while actors as fine as Trevor Howard and Peter Ustinov can do nothing with the leaden material they have to work with, (only Marius Goring goes some way to lifting the film out of the doldrums), and the whole thing drags on for two hours. Odette's story should have been both moving and inspiring and with a better writer, a better director and a better actress it might have been but this half-hearted attempt by the British Establishment to honour a genuine heroine simply falls flat.

NON-FICTION ****

I love a comedy and I love smart movies and intelligent conversation and I love books and here they all are, rolled up together in Olivier Assayas' marvellous new film "Non-Fiction". At his best no-one can touch Assayas for smart talk and this time he's got a great subject, the dumbing down of culture, particularly the written word as books disappear to be subsumed into the World Wide Web, the Cloud, whatever, as people write and read blogs but don't pick up a printed book.

I don't doubt for a minute that anyone reading this review will know what I'm talking about. Film criticism on an electronic device is a symptom of what Assayas is talking about here. Indeed, Juliette Binoche's character is an actress in a television cop show. She's married to Alain, (a superb Guillaume Canet), a publisher who wants to move over to e-books. Vincent Macaigne is an author whose new manuscript Alain has decided not to publish and who uses his own life and the people he knows as material for his work. He's also having an affair with Alain's wife, (Binoche), leading to a great running joke at the expense of Haneke's "The White Ribbon".

It's all good fun, aimed at people who read books, in whatever form, discuss politics and watch Bergman and Haneke and even "Star Wars" movies. Assayas knows his audience and isn't afraid to poke fun at them. You might call this a very French film; it's full of intellectuals having sex and cheating on their partners, not that I'm suggesting these are specifically French concerns. Of course, you don't need to be French or even an intellectual to enjoy this. It's very funny and brilliantly acted by a large cast. Binoche is as good as she's ever been and both Canet and Macaigne are simply wonderful. You do need a tolerance for smart talk, however, as in this film conversation is what passes for action. A movie for our times and not to be missed.

THE ASSISTANT ***

Following on from the Harvey Weinstein scandal and other instances of sexual abuse and harassment by the rich and powerful I'm sure movies like "The Assistant" are going to become more common place but I doubt if many of them will be this strange, this unsettling or indeed this good. Although fiction, "The Assistant" looks and feels like it could be a documentary and Kitty Green, whose first feature this is, does indeed come from a documentary background.

The assistant of the title, (a beautifully subdued Julia Garner), is a young woman employed in the New York office of a media mogul, not just as a kind of secretary, but as someone to clean up, (literally), the mess (literally), that her boss leaves behind and to take whatever verbal abuse he dishes out. She is safe, it would seem, from sexual harassment because, as she's told, 'she's not his type'.

This is a genuinely frightening film that goes beyond what has come to be known as the #MeToo Movement. It paints a horrifying picture of what powerful people can do to subordinates given the chance, (I know because I too worked with such people but I, at least, had the balls to stand up to them...and not get fired). What distinguishes Green's film is that she never over-dramatizes, (if anything, she holds back almost to the point of boredom), uses actors who are not well-known to us, (a magnificently obsequious Matthew Macfadyen is the best known person on screen), and films it, not as a clammy thriller, but as a fly-on-the-wall slice of life. There is none of the triumphalism of "Bombshell" on display here, just the chilly feeling that an unseen monster is lurking out of camera shot and destroying the lives of everyone around him.

EDGE OF DOOM *

"Edge of Doom's" credentials were certainly first-class. It was a Samuel Goldwyn production directed by Mark Robson with a screenplay by Philip Yordan and a cast that included Dana Andrews, Farley Granger, Joan Evans, Robert Keith and Paul Stewart but the story was gloomy, (Granger's the youth who kills a priest and Andrews is a priest who tries to find out why), even if the treatment showed a certain amount of imagination. Unfortunately, Andrews was totally miscast as a priest, (he tells the story in flashback and is appallingly sanctimonious), while Granger, never much of an actor, can't bring his character to life. Where it does score is in Harry Stradling's black and white cinematography and in Richard Day's art direction, both of which capture the seedy, poverty-stricken milieu perfectly. It wasn't a hit; the grim story obviously put audiences off but it's just unusual enough to be interesting and it does deserve to be better known. Just a pity it's so glum.

DRAGON INN ***

Long considered one of the masterpieces of the wuxia genre King Hu's "Dragon Inn" is a visually superb epic that's closer in tone to Leone than Kurosawa and it features some of the most balletic fight sequences in all of cinema. The plot is virtually irrelevant; there are good guys and there are bad guys and that's really all you need to know while even the comedy works beautifully. The action takes place almost entirely around the inn of the title and the film was further immortalised by Ming-liang Tsai when he chose it to be the film screening in the near empty cinema in "Goodbye, Dragon Inn", (they would make a great double-bill). It's been surpassed in people's affections by King Hu's later "A Touch of Zen" but this is arguably more fun and it established Hu as a force to be reckoned with in international cinema, a genre master as well as a great visual stylist. Wonderful.

WUTHERING HEIGHTS **

A huge hit in its day, (the New York Film Critics named it the Best Film of 1939), and one of the most beloved of all screen romances, William Wyler's version of "Wuthering Heights" is everything a Grade A Hollywood picture should be but it's just not Bronte. This is the Yorkshire Moors California-style with a hand-picked cast of first-rate actors acting to the best of their abilities but they are not quite the characters Emily Bronte conjured up.

Laurence Olivier is a brooding, sexy Heathcliff, Merle Oberon a surprisingly good Cathy, David Niven is a reasonably dashing Edgar and Geraldine Fitzgerald a fine Isabella and, of course, it looks great, (Gregg Toland won his only Oscar for it). In fact, of its kind, it's almost perfect, (Ben Hecht and Charles McArthur did the adaptation), and perfectly entertaining and of all the versions of the book it's still the one to fall back on and yet it doesn't feel authentic. This is a "Wuthering Heights" for people who haven't read the book and don't want to; Samuel Goldwyn's "Wuthering Heights" rather than Emily Bronte's. Once you get your head around that, there is still a lot to enjoy.