CORPO CELESTE ****

As anyone who has seen "The Wonders" or "Happy as Lazzaro" will know Alice Rohrwacher is one of the marvels of contemporary cinema. "Corpo Celeste" is her lesser-known, but no less astonishing, debut made with an almost documentary realism as we get to know the world through the eyes of 13 year old Marta as she comes to terms with growing up. Unlike other girls her age, however, Marta is subjected to perhaps a little more religious education than is usual as she prepares for her confirmation. This is Catholic Italy, after all.

Like Lazzaro, Marta is possessed of an innocence that is almost other-worldly. She might like to wear her big sister's bra but she's also remarkably childlike; Rohrwacher does innocence like no-one else. She also imbues her film with a nice sense of humour, even bordering on the cynical, (the priest whose ring tone on his mobile is 'The Minute Waltz' is both ambitious and something of a prig and is magnificently played by the late Salvatore Cantalupo ). Indeed, Rohrwacher draws wonderfully naturalistic performances from her entire cast and in particular from Yie Vianello as Marta. In fact, "Corpo Celeste" isn't just a superb debut but one of the best films about both childhood and religion I've ever seen. With only three features to her name, Rohrwacher may just be my favourite director right now.

THE PERSONAL HISTORY OF DAVID COPPERFIELD ****

If you thought Greta Gerwig's version of "Little Women" was radical wait until you see Armando Iannuci's "The Personal History of David Copperfield" which isn't so much an adaptation of Dickens' novel as a complete reworking and overhaul of it. This is Dickens as you've never seen him before with Dev Patel cast as David and a whole host of black and Asian actors cast in subsidiary roles with no obvious logic in the casting and it works magnificently. This is racial diversity at its most sublime; I wonder why no-one thought of it before.

Of course, that's only half of it. Iannuci's triumph is in his tinkering with the work in ways that are both highly cinematic and theatrical. It opens with an adult David addressing an audience in a theatre before moving through the backdrop into the story proper much in the same way Olivier did in his "Henry V". He attends his own birth; he's a boy David, (played by Jairaj Varsani), before becoming an adult before his time. Iannuci introduces the characters in David's life in a pell-mell fashion and leaves out others. If the film has a fault it's that Iannuci simply flies through it. No-one pauses for breath but I just didn't want it to stop.

The casting is sublime. Patel is Oscar-worthy as David. Iannuci even has the audacity to make him vaguely unsympathetic and even dislikeable at times. Was he like this in the book, I kept asking myself. Then there's the best supporting cast you are likely to see this year; Peter Capaldi and Derry's own Bronagh Gallagher as the wonderful Micawbers, Tilda Swinton as the most lovable Betsey Trotwood imaginable with Hugh Laurie, the wisest of all Mr Dick's, Rosalind Eleazar as a gorgeous Agnes and best of all, Ben Wishaw as the most unctuous of Uriah Heep's. Just give them all one big Oscar and be done with it. Of course, purists will hate it; a few people actually walked out of the screening I was at. As for me, it's probably not the best Dickens' adaptation I've ever seen but I'm sure it's the most enjoyable.

BEAU GESTE **

As Boy's Own Adventures go "Beau Geste" is up there with the best of them. There have been a number of film and television versions including a silent one in 1926 with Ronald Colman as Beau, a mediocre version in 1966 and even a spoof version with Marty Feldman but the most famous version was this 1939 movie directed by William Wellman and starring Gary Cooper as Beau with Ray Milland and Robert Preston as his brothers and Brian Donleavy, Oscar-nominated as the sadistic Sergeant Markov. Milland's love interest was a very young and very beautiful Susan Hayward.

It's a tale of the Foreign Legion and at the heart of it is a mystery involving a stolen sapphire known as the Blue Water which all three Geste brothers claim to have stolen. The theft, of course, is central to the plot but the solving of the mystery as to who stole it doesn't hold up the action. It's a more serious picture than George Stevens' "Gunga Din", which also came out in '39, and is even more exciting. Cooper is the perfect hero and the superb supporting cast includes Albert Dekker, Broderick Crawford and J. Carrol Naish. A delightful, if far-fetched, treat.

THE RED VIOLIN **

The life of a violin over a couple of centuries may seem an unlikely subject for a feature film but then remember that Julien Duvivier was able to assemble an all-star cast for the story of a tail-coat. "The Red Violin". which Francois Girard directed in 1998, was sufficiently a hit to win the Oscar for its score and it has a suitably starry international cast, not all of whom last as long as the violin of the title, presumably because this particular instrument carries with it a curse.

It's a handsome and intelligent portmanteau picture which, in its period settings, looks genuinely authentic and it's to director Girard and co-writer Don McKellar's credit that the violin itself takes on a personality of its own with the film playing out very nicely as a thriller. If you missed it first time round, then you should seek it out now.

DARK WATERS *

"Dark Waters" may not seem the most likely subject matter for Todd Haynes. We're in "Erin Brokovitch" territory here rather than "Far From Heaven" for this is another fact-based, crusading problem picture and it's a good one...up to a point. It's based on an actual case where a young lawyer, (Mark Ruffalo, looking glum as well he might), working for a prestigious Cincinnati law firm who sued DuPont on behalf of a farmer, (Bill Camp, excellent), who claimed DuPont were poisoning his cattle and that was just the tip of the iceberg. It was a classic David versus Goliath scenario and Hayes, working with his usual cameraman Ed Lachman and a very good cast, (Tim Robbins, Anne Hathaway, Mare Winnigham, Bill Pullman, Victor Garber), has made a serious picture rather than a thriller. Unfortunately, as a piece of cinematic journalism, it's not in the same class as "All the President's Men" or "Spotlight" perhaps because we've seen it all before in one form or another. It's intelligent and well acted but it's more of a civics lesson than a real movie. Sometimes having your heart in the right place just isn't enough..

BOMBSHELL ***

Should any movie dealing with sexual harassment be as enjoyable as Jay Roach's marvellous "Bombshell"? Probably not, but this account of how a handful of women brought down the boss of Fox News. just by telling the truth, is a real treat. Of course, that may be because we all love a juicy story and this one is as juicy as they come or maybe it's because we all love seeing brilliant actors just acting brilliantly. Charlize Theron, Nicole Kidman and Margot Robbie are three of the women involved while a prosthetically enhanced John Lithgow is equally good as Roger Ailes, a man who keeps insisting his anchor women show a lot of leg as television is a visual medium. Of course, it didn't stop there and, as we all know, Ailes isn't the only power-abusing bigwig to have his crimes exposed and, make no mistake, sexual harassment is a crime.

Of course, you could argue that "Bombshell" is just a little too pleased with itself and just a tad on the superficial side to really make an impact; after all, Roach did begin in comedy. Until the whole culture of patriarchy, of sexualization and of power games is tackled in depth and in the real world, movies like "Bombshell" will remain nothing more than first-class entertainment but at least it is entertaining and it is first-class and that is a nice step to be getting on with.

A LESSON IN LOVE *

Do all comedies have to be funny? I suppose not but it helps, particularly if you want to distinguish them from tragedies. Ingmar Bergman's "A Lesson in Love" is described as a comedy perhaps to distinguish it from the likes of "Through a Glass Darkly" and "Winter Light". It's certainly one of old sour-puss's lighter films but it's hardly funny. It's another 'Battle of the Sexes' in which a middle-aged couple, (Eva Dahlbeck and Gunnar Bjornstrand, both excellent), try to rekindle their relationship after both of them have had affairs. It's like a Noel Coward comedy but without the comedy. In fact, it's like any other Ingmar Bergman film in which men and women analyse what brings them together and keeps them apart but done in that far-fetched style we call 'theatrical'. It's certainly a very minor Bergman which is probably why it isn't often revived but it's not dislikeable, just a little familiar.

STORM WARNING **

This punchy, noirish thriller, superbly shot by Carl Gutherie, has all but disappeared despite its Grade-A cast that includes Ginger Rogers and Doris Day, both cast very much against type, as sisters in a small town where the Klu Klux Klan have the upper hand. Rogers is the sister who witnesses a Klan killing only to discover sister Doris is married to the killer, Steve Cochran. Ronald Regan is the investigating District Attorney. It's a simplistic little story, closer in tone to the social-conscience movies Warners turned out in the thirties than to the studio pictures of the period with a fine Richard Brooks/Daniel Fuchs screenplay and both Day and Rogers are surprisingly good with nary a song between them. It might have a B-Movie sensibility and it may bang its drum a little too loudly but at least it's honest and well-intentioned, if unusually violent for the time, and is well worth seeing.

THE RETURN ****

From Russia, another of cinema's great debuts. Andrey Zvyagintsev's "The Return" is another harsh, unsentimental and, I suppose, decidedly Russian look at childhood, (from Donskoi to Tarkovsky Russian cinema has always handled the theme of childhood beautifully). Here, an absent father shows up unexpectedly after twelve years as if out of nowhere to take his two young sons on a fishing trip. What's the reasoning behind it? Where is the connection?

As he went on to show in his later films, Zvyagintsev is a consummate film-maker with an exquisite eye for landscape; the places in his films are as much characters as the people and "The Return" is an incredible looking film. He's also a great director of children, drawing superb performances from Vladimir Garin, (who tragically drowned the year "The Return" was made, at the age of sixteen), and Ivan Dobronravov as the two brothers; you really get a feeling they are related and not merely acting. As their father, Konstantin Lavronenko is a taciturn, mysterious presence. Part thriller, part family drama "The Return" makes for challenging, demanding viewing and in its unsentimental way is often very moving. A key work of 21st century cinema thus far.

1917 **

Apart from the 'Will it, Won't it win Best Picture', the main talking point regarding "1917" is the fact that it was filmed in a single take, though of course it wasn't. Mendes shot the film in a number of seamless takes that give the impression the whole thing is happening in real time with only one obvious break midway through when the screen goes black to signify the passage of time from day to night; otherwise, all the events we see would seem to take place over the film's two hour running time and that's where my problem with the picture lies.

"1917" is an exciting, technically brilliant picture but it's also unbelievable. What happens to the characters in this film might happen to them over the course of a day or two, a week perhaps or possibly a year but what happens to George MacKay, (never really off the screen in this film), in two hours is very hard to take. Okay, perhaps I'm being picky; it's only a film after all and what we're seeing is several stories stitched together to form the events of a single day but it's still a cheat, a brilliant but unnecessary display of technical virtuosity. Watching "1917" I kept thinking, 'Do we really need to do something just because we can?' For me, "1917" would have been a much better film had it been done in the old-fashioned conventional way with the action spread over several days.

So what's it about, this 'one-take masterpiece' that's neither one-take nor a masterpiece? Well, to prevent a massacre of around 1600 troops two young soldiers must make their way behind enemy lines and warn a particular colonel to call off a planned assault; it's as simple as that and to make this an 'exciting' picture all sorts of superbly filmed misfortunes befall them.

You might call it a director's picture since Mendes engineers everything brilliantly but it's like a massive stage production with everything designed down to the tiniest detail rather than seeming in any way 'real', (let's just call it 'the theatre of war'). It's certainly a cinematographer's film and Roger Deakins will justly deserve the Oscar he's going to win for shooting it and in the case of George MacKay you might even say it's an actor's picture. He's superb and on the strength of this alone I predict a real future for him, (otherwise too many well-known faces flit across the screen in the manner of "Oh, What a Lovely War" or "The Longest Day"). Of course, a lot of people have been blown away by it or maybe they've just been blown away by the hype. Personally, I just didn't buy it.

THE INFORMERS **

Surprisingly tough, given that this was made in 1963, and surprisingly good British crime movie directed by the usually reliable Ken Annakin. It's based on the novel, "Death of a Snout" and it's about Police Inspector Nigel Patrick's attempt to find out who killed his number one informant. It has an excellent cast that includes Margaret Whiting, Darren Nesbitt, Frank Finlay, Roy Kinnear, Harry Andrews and Colin Blakely and Annakin makes great use of his London locations. It may not surface very often these days but it's certainly worth seeing.

SKYSCRAPER **

A big, dumb action flic that doesn't waste a second in getting down to business and is actually very well done for what it is. Dwayne Johnson is the big, dumb action hero, (dumber than most, if truth be told), who has to save his family from an attack on the "Skyscraper" of the title which also happens to be the world's tallest building. The setting is Hong Kong and every terrorist attack and burning skyscraper cliche from "Die Hard" and "The Towering Inferno" onwards is gainfully employed here. Of course, it's all deeply silly but hugely enjoyable, the perfect popcorn movie where every daft moment is signalled in advance making this the most pleasurable of guilty pleasures.

JOJO RABBIT *

In 1940 The Little Tramp was a Jewish barber living under the shadow of Nazism and his alter ego, Charlie Chaplin was Adolf Hitler, or rather Adenoid Hynkel, "The Great Dictator" since, even in a Chaplin comedy in 1940, poking actual fun at 'Hitler' himself might have seemed out of the question. A couple of years later, while the War was still ongoing. Ernst Lubitsch made "To Be or Not to Be". another very funny film about the Nazis that even included the line, 'So they call me Concentration Camp Ehrhardt', and in 1968 Mel Brooks had the temerity to stage a bad-taste musical called 'Springtime for Hitler' in his film "The Producers" with a spaced-out hippy called L.S.D as Hitler. The film was pronounced the funniest film ever made by Peter Sellers and roundly condemned by the British critic Dilys Powell who found the whole idea repulsive.

The point is that Hollywood has always seen fit to take something as monstrous as Nazism and make fun of it. Actual Holocaust jokes they have stayed clear of though the Italian Roberto Benigni had no such qualms when he made "Life is Beautiful". Hollywood applauded him with a number of Oscars. Now it's the turn of the New Zealand born writer, director and actor Taika Waititi who has combined the Mel Brooks approach with the Benigni approach in his movie "JoJo Rabbit" with very mixed results.

In these supposedly more politically enlightened times the argument has run, is it right to joke about Hitler and the Nazis and most of "JoJo Rabbit's" critics have tended to come from the moral Right and to give Mr Waititi his dues he has pushed the boat out here. The hero is a ten year old member of the Hitler Youth whose imaginary friend is none other than the Fuhrer himself and he's played by Waititi much in the style of Dick Shawn's L.S.D. Indeed, the first thirty minutes or so are very funny if, like me, you enjoy bad taste and have a Brooksian sense of humour and then it all goes disastrously wrong. Waititi gets serious with a major sub-plot involving a young Jewish girl hiding in the attic, (a kind of Anne Frank minus the family), and our youthful hero undergoes a change of heart from Nazi sympathiser to love-struck puppy while there are long, glum patches with not a laugh in sight but much squirming in the seat. It does pick up a little towards the end with the reintroduction of some more bad tasted gags and scenes that resemble a kind of comic version of "Germany Year Zero" but by then I had basically given up the ghost.

On the plus side it is very well acted. When he's not required to be serious young Roman Griffin Davis is fine as JoJo though it's Archie Yates as his friend Yorki who comes close to stealing the movie. Scarlett Johansson is also superb as JoJo's mother, a German sympathiser to the Jewish cause while Sam Rockwell and Stephen Merchant are both brilliant as 'comic' Nazis, one basically a nice guy and the other just the kind of Nazi we all love to hate and Rebel Wilson is splendidly over-the-top as a Nazi who is basically just a baby-making machine. As the girl in the attic, Thomasin McKenzie is basically wasted So a film of two halves, the better half being the tasteless one when the villains are reduced to ludicrous caricatures. When he puts on his serious face, however, Waititi just ends up by being sanctimonious.

UNDERTOW *

Terrence Malick was one of the producers of "Undertow" so you should have a fair idea of what to expect, particularly when you see that the director is David Gordon Green who made "George Washington". Yes, we're back in "Badlands" territory again but this time with runaway boys, one of whom is Jamie Bell with a very convincing American twang, and a villainous uncle in pursuit which has also lead to comparisons with "Night of the Hunter". So far, so not very original. Still, as rural Americana movies go "Undertow" isn't that bad. Its decent cast, (including a very young Kristen Stewart), carries it along and its mix of grim poetry and violence works most of the time. Unfortunately there are also moments when Green thinks he is Malick remaking "Night of the Hunter". He isn't; this is a B-Movie of the kind Joseph H. Lewis might have made and that's the level on which you should take it.

THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING ***

"The Theory of Everything" is an apt title; James Marsh's film certainly encompasses much. It's both biopic and love story, you might say in equal measure. As a biopic it's much less sentimental than I had expected, given its subject, (Professor Stephen Hawking), and for most of the time, as a love story, it eschews sentimentality, too. Of course, the love story at the centre and which takes up a good deal of the film, is that between Hawking and his first wife Jane, on whose book the film is based. On a lesser level it's also a film about science and about an illness, Motor Neuron Disease. It tells us little about either but that's hardly a fault. It is a film about human beings and not about molecules and I have to confess I was surprised at just how good it was.

I had expected something tantamount to a Masterpiece Theatre production and while it's certainly cosy at times and very British, it's also extremely intelligent, (Anthony McCarten's screenplay is first-rate), and it never dwells for longer than is necessary on any issue once its point has been made. Consequently, it never feels anything like two hours in a cinema. The director, James Marsh, has proved his pedigree in the past in the field of documentary ("Man on Wire", "Project Nim") but that earlier work doesn't really prepare you for something on this scale. The film feels epic and intimate at the same time.

It's also superbly played. Redmayne, surely, has to be the one to beat when it comes to handing out prizes. His performance is not only a brilliant physical transformation but he somehow seems to get inside the mind of Hawking as well. I'm not saying it's easy to play someone who is severely physically handicapped but I think it must be harder to convince us when you're doing very little or nothing at all and it's in these quiet moments that Redmayne is at his best.


As Jane, Felicity Jones, (she was Dickens' mistress in "The Invisible Woman"), is also superb. She gives Jane a much steelier edge than may have been expected. Jane sacrifices almost everything but is the first to pull the plug on the marriage. A host of outstanding character actors give us various parents, colleagues and carers without ever lapsing into caricature. Charlie Cox's almost too-good-to-be-true choir master is a case in point. The character may be the dashing white knight who comes to Jane's rescue but manages to give us a glimpse into the soul of the man. There's also a lovely supporting turn from David Thewlis as Stephen's professor at Cambridge. It's not totally perfect; one or two of the romantic moments tend towards the mawkish but these are fleeting. All in all, this is something a triumph and a rather unexpected one.

TO JOY *

The title is a bit misleading since there isn't that much joy to be found in Ingmar Bergman's 1950 film "To Joy". It begins with the off-screen death of one of its two leading characters and is then told in flashback. They are violinists in an orchestra who marry but find living together difficult. She's Maj-Britt Nilsson and he's Stig Olsen and the conductor is played by Victor Sjostrom.

The music's great but the material is just another chilly Bergman view of infidelity and an unhappy marriage; watching it you feel as if the director had all of Olsen's character's ambition but had yet to fully realise his talent. Nilsson's beauty and natural warmth shine through and Gunnar Fischer's cinematography is suitably crisp but overall, a minor addition to the Bergman canon.

MRS LOWRY AND SON ***

In Adrian Noble's virtual two-hander "Mrs Lowry & Son", the son is the painter L.S. Lowry and this beautifully detailed chamber piece is about his relationship with his cantankerous mother, who not only took no pleasure in her son's work but actively discouraged him. It's an actor's piece and since the actors are Vanessa Redgrave and Timothy Spall it's a magnificent one.

There's no great dramas here, just the simple banalities of everyday life, which in the hands of these great artists becomes great art. When finally Lowry rebels, (in his own almost insignificant way), against his mother's brutal put-downs it's like being inside an erupting volcano. It's also very theatrical and the director is indeed better known for his stage work and while it moves very slowly is never boring. This is a glimpse into the 'real' world as opposed to the fantasy world mostly served up in the cinema today. It has its own beauty and is deeply moving; I think it's a small gem.

THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS no stars

Dumber than dumb! This is the movie that spawned a dynasty of sorts and encouraged numerous little boy and girl racers the world over to turn up the gas. It's a crime caper with a fetish, not just for sleek, fast cars, but for handsome men with buffed up torsos, (the 'attraction' between leads Paul Walker and Vin Diesel makes this possibly the most homoerotic movie of its decade). Ironically, and tragically, Walker himself was to die in a motor accident several films down the line.

There isn't a frame of this nonsense you can believe in and the driving sequences, which make up most of the movie, are the stuff of fantasy. Nevertheless, enough boys, (and girls), with a penchant for boy's toys loved this enough to make 'The Fast and the Furious' movies one of the most successful franchises of all time. Give me "Bullitt" any day.

A FORTUNATE MAN no stars

Atrocious; not so much the film itself, (it's tolerable), but the fact that it's been dubbed into English or rather 'American', which makes what could have been a silk purse into something like a sows ear. It's based on a novel by the Nobel-prize winning author Henrik Pontoppidan about an ambitious, social-climbing young engineer in 19th century Denmark and it's certainly a handsome looking period piece directed by the gifted Bille August but it's also very long, (it lasts almost three hours), and in this dubbed version you never really get a feel for the performances. (There is a subtitled version available so catch that if you must see it at all). It's the kind of noble, starchy affair that plays out like an abridged mini-series which, of course, it was. There's a four part television version, too. Despite its efforts to be a fully-fledged epic I found the material dull though in the end it's those accents, and dialogue that sounds like it came from a dime-store novel, that scuppers it and makes this a very long three hours indeed.