ELEPHANT WALK **

This exotic melodrama benefits considerably from some luscious scenery and that includes leading lady Elizabeth Taylor, still only twenty-two, as the new wife of tea-planter Peter Finch. The setting is Ceylon and "Elephant Walk" isn't just the mansion in which Taylor and Finch live, (it's called a bungalow here), but the route the elephants would take on their way to their watering-hole if someone hadn't built a house in their path.

Thanks to Loyal Griggs' Technicolor photography this is a gorgeous looking picture, (Taylor never looked more beautiful than she did here), with a decent storyline. Throw Dana Andrews into the mix and you have a perfect romantic triangle. Add Abraham Sofaer as a sort of male 'Mrs. Danvers' and we're almost in 'Rebecca' territory. It may never rise above soap-opera but with an elephant stampede and cholera dampening the flames of passion it's a very enjoyable example of its kind.

PAWN SACRIFICE **

I'm not really a sporting kind of guy, (but then is chess a sport or just 'a game'?). I mean, I don't watch football and I've never gotten into cricket but I've always enjoyed tennis. I actually find it exciting so maybe it's just team sports I'm not into. Until recently I thought chess might be the most boring game/sport on the planet until, thanks to the lockdown, I actually learned to play it, (I've even won a few games). I mention this because I've just watched "Pawn Sacrifice", Edward Zwick's 2014 film about the rivalry between chess champions Bobby Fischer and Boris Spassky. I suppose it qualifies as a Bobby Fischer biopic as he's the central character and we see him right through from childhood to the legendary 'Match of the Century' and he's superbly played by Tobey Maguire who makes him a brilliant, arrogant and highly unstable genius. Spassky is an equally good Liev Schreiber and there's nice supporting work from Michael Stuhlbarg and Peter Sarsgaard.

Of course, fundamentally Steven Knight's excellent script is a movie as much about the Cold War as it is about chess and it's a rather special kind of thriller. I've discovered just how thrilling, (or boring), chess can be but here is a movie about a volatile young man who may go off the rails at any moment as well as film about the broader political spectrum and it works on every level, (it's also a kind of real-life "Rocky" story). Unfortunately, chess, Fischer and the Cold War were not the stuff of box-office glory and the film just disappeared. Of course, the title might not have helped; "Pawn Sacrifice" is hardly likely to attract a mass audience on as Saturday night or any other night, come to think of it. See it.

THE FRONT RUNNER *

"The Front Runner" in question is Presidential hopeful Gary Hart, another politician whose failure to keep it in his pants cost him, not just the White House, but a very promising political career. Who doesn't love a scandal. especially when sex is involved and political scandals are always the juiciest. It hardly matter if the film about the scandal isn't very good, just get the facts right, or at least 'the facts' as we know them, cram some good actors on screen, throw in dialogue that sounds like we're listening to a newsreel, have lots of it overlap and the rest should take care of itself.

Jason Reitman's movie is certainly entertaining but it's no "All the President's Men", (despite having the characters Ben Bradlee and Bob Woodward). It has a Made-For-TV-Movie feel to it and while Hugh Jackman is excellent as Hart, politically he comes over as something of a lightweight thanks largely to the cliche-ridden script which isn't too hot on the sex angle either. If this movie is to be believed, Hart was a shallow man; that he made it as far as he did comes as something of a surprise. But hey, this is America; we're talking about a country that put a bad actor into the White House and now, in the 21st Century has the worst President in the country's history so maybe Hart wouldn't have been so bad after all. Of course, I guess I have no room to talk. I didn't know Hart's political views from a hole in the ground and this dirt-dishing movie isn't likely to teach anyone too much about 'The Front Runner'. It's third-rate but it's fun.

THE CLIENT **

"The Client" is one of the better big-screen adaptations of a John Grisham novel and it's largely down to a terrific cast. some of who weren't even 'names' at the time. The plot is fairly typical Grisham, (a witness to a killing needs to be protected from the killers), but the twist here is that the killing was a suicide, the victim a mob lawyer who blurted out where the body was hidden before blowing his brains out and the witness, an eleven year old street-wise kid.

It's a decent thriller plot and it does make for an entertaining picture but it's given quite a lift by a whole host of superb actors with Susan Sarandon taking the lioness' share of the honors, (she won the BAFTA), as the hard-nosed lawyer the kid hires. Other lawyers determined to bring down the mob include Tommy Lee Jones, J.T, Walsh, Bradley Whitford and Anthony Heald while Anthony La Paglia is the principal bad guy and there's a very nice supporting performance from the great Will Patton as the kind of policeman you're not sure if you can trust or not. Brad Renfro is the kid. Unfortunately, the director was Joel Schmuacher who doesn't bring a lot of imagination to the party but keeps things moving along in predictable fashion. A better director might have turned this into a classic.

CHLOE **

I have to admit I'm not really a fan of Atom Egoyan; his films always feel a little too 'antiseptic' for my tastes but "Chloe", a remake of the French film "Nathalie", works surprisingly well. A middle-aged woman, (Julianne Moore), who feels she's no longer that attractive and suspects her husband, (Liam Neeson), of playing around, hires a young escort, (Amanda Seyfried), to test his fidelity only for things to slip out of her control. It's a high-toned movie about the miseries of the rich which, to those of us who don't move in such salubrious circles, might not seem quite so miserable and it's set in a wintery Toronto.

Moore is superb but the real revelation of the picture is Seyfried who is outstanding as Chloe, (Neeson is miscast as an academic). This is Egoyan in De Palma mode; you keep expecting the inevitable lesbian relationship to develop and maybe even a knife to glint in the winter sunshine. Certainly Chloe's character fits the profile of potential movie psycho, either that or just a very sad young woman. If the plot twists are predictable, it hardly matters; this still looks and feels like a class act. Of course, it may be nothing more than high-class soft porn for the intellectual set. The choice, as they say, is yours but for once this was one Egoyan picture I could finally get my teeth into.

CLOAK AND DAGGER *

The Second World War may have ended but by 1946 Fritz Lang was still making propaganda pictures in America or, at least, anti-nazi pictures. "Cloak and Dagger" wasn't quite singing the praises of the Atomic Bomb but it was certainly making sure we got the message that it was something to keep out of the hands of the Nazis. Fundamentally, it's a spy movie about an atomic scientist, (a miscast Gary Cooper), flown into Switzerland to find out as much as he can as to how far Germany has advanced with its plans to develop the A-Bomb only to turn into a kind of chase thriller when the Nazis kidnap his contact.

It's reasonably exciting and Lang does direct with some aplomb but it's hardly a memorable picture; the material is second-rate, (but think what Hitchcock could have done with it). The best thing about it is how Lang makes everyone suspect; his cynicism seeps through and gives the film a spark but it's not much of a spark. The plot is too far-fetched and Cooper looks very uncomfortable. However, Lili Palmer is excellent as a member of the Italian Underground and there's a brilliant murder scene near the end but that's too little too late. Lang completists will certainly want to see it but overall it's a disappointment.

LA PRISONNIERE **

Clouzot's last film, (and his only completed film in colour), takes him, perhaps, further away from the mainstream than almost anything he had done previously and this, being the late sixties, allowed him a much greater freedom of expression in terms of content. "La Prisonniere", or "Woman in Chains", may not be the late masterpiece some might have hoped for but it certainly didn't deserve its fate of almost disappearing from view entirely.  It's not really a thriller but a tale of obsession as artist's wife and television journalist Elisabeth Wiener develops an unhealthy attachment to art dealer Laurent Terzieff after catching husband Bernard Fresson being unfaithful; (she's also doing a documentary on women being abused). Its setting also gives Clouzot the opportunity to indulge his passion for art in all its glorious forms and seldom has a director dipped into colour so imaginatively first time out; this is a fabulous looking film.

Its languid pace may dissipate its potential for suspense but as a tale of a sadomasochistic relationship it does exert a creepy fascination that says as much about Clouzot as any of his previous films, more so in fact; this is confessional cinema at its most extreme which probably accounts for its failure. Had he lived and had the studios let him I can see Hitchcock going down the same road, ditching suspense entirely and leaving just the psychology. There is no denying its brilliance but I just wish I could have liked this more. This odd blend of Hitchcock, Bergman, Antonioni and Michael Powell's "Peeping Tom" finally bites off more than it can chew.

THE NIGHT OF THE FOLLOWING DAY *

This kidnap drama from Hubert Cornfield wasn't a hit despite having Marlon Brando leading the cast but it has since become something of a cult movie. He's one of the kidnappers; the others are Richard Boone, Rita Moreno and Jess Hahn and Pamela Franklin is the victim and the setting is France or rather a house by the beach where a lot of the action takes place. This is the one in which Brando sports a blonde hair-do and plays a beatnik very badly. Boone is the sadist in the group and is very good while Rita Moreno almost walks off with the film. Franklin acts as if she's been heavily sedated throughout and Cornfield directs as if he's never actually seen a thriller. The source material was a novel by Lionel White and the whole thing is very bizarre, too bizarre in fact to be just written off as a failure. There's also a kind of jazzy and inappropriate score by Stanley Myers and Annie Ross does get to sing a bit of a song on the soundtrack.

WOMAN ON THE RUN ***

This San Francisco set and shot B-Movie Noir may be no masterpiece but as B-Movie Noirs go, it's really a terrific example of its kind that wastes no time in getting down to business. Ross Elliot is the witness to a gangland murder. He calls the police but then goes on the lam, leaving the police, his hard-boiled wife (an excellent Ann Sheridan), and the killer to find him. In fact, this is just the kind of little programmer you will probably remember long after you've forgotten the main feature. The director was Norman Foster, no slouch at this sort of thing, and Hal Mohr did the superb noirish photography, mostly on location. The leading man is Dennis O'Keefe and he's very good and the supporting cast includes Robert Keith, John Qualen and Steven Geray. You can be forgiven if you haven't heard of it as the original print was destroyed but an existant third-rate print was recently restored by UCLA. Seek it out.

THE CURRENT WAR **

Little did I ever think I would enjoy a movie about Thomas Edison, (Benedict Cumberbatch, very good), and his 'discovery' of electricity but "The Current War", which pits Edison against the industrialist George Westinghouse, (an even better Michael Shannon), is a real surprise with a smart, witty and engrossing script by Michael Mitnick and fine direction from Alfonso Gomez-Rejon. It's certainly not a film that will find a mass audience but it's one of the better biopics, though strictly speaking it isn't really a biopic and if it is, it's the biography of electricity and not its inventor and it's constructed like a thriller and a chase movie and even though we may know how the chase ends there are enough ups, downs and diversions along the way to keep us entertained. It's also beautifully designed and acted and, no pun intended, it moves at the speed of light and all lovers of cinema will surely get a little lump in their throats by the end.

MAN IN THE MIDDLE **

A first-rate cast, a fine script, a decent plot and a so-so director, (Guy Hamilton), so why wasn't "Man in the Middle" a better movie. It's certainly not a bad film but Hamilton was a dull director, ("Goldfinger" being the notable exception), who lacked imagination and the most he does here is help the movie plod along in an entertaining, if unimaginative fashion. It's set in India in the closing days of the Second World War and begins when an American soldier, (Keenan Wynn, very good), shoots dead a British soldier in full view of witnesses.

Robert Mitchum is the poor sap of an American officer drafted in to defend him and what looks like a cut-and-dried scenario is soon revealed to be anything but. Given the material, (it's based on a good Howard Fast novel), it ought to have been much more complex and exciting than it is but it's certainly a very handsome looking picture, nicely shot in black-and-white Cinemascope by Wilkie Cooper. Never destined to become a classic, it's still fine Saturday Afternoon Matinee fare.

THAT MOST IMPORTANT THING: LOVE *

Another movie about the movies and the theatre and about acting but since this one is by the Polish director Andrzej Zulawski and filmed in France it's a far cry from Hollywood movies about the movies or indeed from something Truffaut might have done. At its core is the three-way relationship between a serious actress reduced to doing soft-core porn, (a terrific Romy Schneider who won the Cesar for her performance), her doormat of a husband, (an excellent Jacques Dutronc), and a down-on-his-luck photographer, (Fabio Testi, very good), and of course it's far from conventional.

What Zulawski gives us is a cerebral view of life far removed from reality with characters who are simply that, characters created to be nothing more than the mouthpieces of the author and it's constructed very artificially. The minute Klaus Kinski appears you know exactly how unreal things are going to get. I'm not even sure we are meant to 'follow' it or take it very seriously. It's also the kind of art-house movie that's so personal it was never even guaranteed an art-house audience and it quickly disappeared. A curiosity at best.

SLEEPERS no stars

"Sleepers" has all the makings of one of those big, door-stoppers of a best-selling novel, which indeed it was, an epic of the streets covering a number of years and apparently based on 'truth'. The writer and director was Barry Levinson, no Scorsese but a maker of reasonably intelligent pictures nevertheless. Levinson's strength was spinning narratives and this one has perhaps too much narrative, too many characters, too much plot, enough indeed for a mini-series but very little depth.

It's also got one of those all-star casts that movies like this invariably have to have with Robert DeNiro as a tough-talking priest, Dustin Hoffman as a shady lawyer and Jason Patric, Brad Pitt, Billy Crudup and Ron Eldard as the adult versions of the kids we meet at the beginning while Kevin Bacon and particularly Terry Kinney are outstanding as sadistic prison guards and it's very well photographed by the great Michael Ballhaus but it's also morally suspect, very far-fetched and ultimately leaves a very bad taste in the mouth. For all its obvious skills it's neither a pleasant film to watch or indeed believe in and it certainly could do with some pruning.

THE GREATEST STORY EVER TOLD no stars

Excruciating Biblical epic on the life of Christ that drags on for what seems an eternity but which are really only the longest three hours of your life.  (the original Cinerama version lasted almost four and a half hours). At times it looks terrific, (director George Stevens always did have a great eye and there are a few sequences that betray Stevens' abilities), but the script, with a lot of dialogue lifted directly from Scripture, is piety run rampant as perhaps the starriest of all-star casts flit across the screen, many of them in 'blink-or-you-miss-them' cameos. It isn't even redeemed by the casting of the great Max von Sydow as Jesus, (he looks like a refugee from "The Seventh Seal"). Not a patch on Ray's "King of Kings" and light years behind Pasolini's "The Gospel According to Saint Matthew".

21 BRIDGES **

The "21 Bridges" of the title are the twenty-one bridges that link Manhattan Island to the rest of New York in Brian Kirk's excellent, if a little over-the-top, thriller. Chadwick Boseman is the detective who takes the decision to close them in his hunt for the killers of several New York cops except this just isn't a straightforward manhunt; there is a lot of drugs involved as well as probable police corruption. It's a taut, (an economical ninety-nine minutes), exciting little picture, beautifully shot by Paul Cameron, almost entirely at night, and well cast and played. Of course, we aren't talking Michael Mann here, (though Mann could do a lot worse); this is a much smaller affair and its set pieces are a lot less expansive but it's also one of the better action pictures out there at the moment and it shows that Kirk could be a genre director well worth the watching.

POSSUM ***

At first glance "Possum" is the kind of small, independent horror movie that the Brits do very well but which seem to crop up every couple of weeks; movie-making on the cheap that stand or fall on their writer's and director's imagination. Here the writer and director is Matthew Holness and this is his first film. Fundamentally, it's an actor's piece and there's really only two of them in it. Sean Harris is the seemingly crazy puppeteer, (Possum is his puppet, a spider-like thing that he carries around in a bag), and Alun Armstrong his possibly just-as-crazy uncle and the setting is a terrace house on the wrong side of derelict and some not very hospitable marshes.

This is the kind of thing that Samuel Beckett might have written and once upon a time it could have been a play on television. Of course, the idea of a puppet with a life of its own is nothing new and has been a staple of horror movies certainly as far back as "Dead of Night" but seldom, if ever, has it been done like this and never, to my knowledge, with a spider, albeit one with something resembling a human head. That it is genuinely disturbing is down in no small measure to Holness' direction, the utterly brilliant performances of Harris and Armstrong and a terrifically discordant score by The Radiophonic Workshop and being something of an arachnophobe myself I am sure it will give me nightmares. It may not burn up the multiplexes on a Saturday night but it's definitely the kind of edgy and intelligent cinema we should cherish

.