TRANSIT ****

Set in present day Paris and Marseille but deliberately constructed as a first cousin to Michael Curtiz'
"Casablanca", "Transit" is the strangest of 'romantic thrillers', a WW2 movie, not just in modern dress, but set in something like an alternative universe and it works...beautifully. Indeed this may be director Christian Petzold's best film so far, superbly filmed, (and totally believable), with a terrific central performance from Franz Rogowski. Of course, the plot isn't lifted directly from "Casablanca"; that might have been too easy but with a little imagination think what might have happened if Rick had left Paris for Marseille with Victor Laszlo in tow where he would meet, not one but two, Ilsa's.

In many respects this is a sci-fi film in plain clothes narrated by a watchful bar owner as if he were an author narrating his novel, (it's based on Anna Seghers' novel which was actually set during World War Two). You might think a suspension of disbelief would be essential but from quite early on in this picture everything that happens seems perfectly natural as if this place and these people were the bedrock of a very ordinary world. A remarkable film in so many ways.

COVER UP no stars

Dennis O'Keefe co-wrote "Cover Up" almost certainly as a vehicle for himself. He plays an insurance investigator who comes to a small town to investigate an apparent suicide only to find the whole town's not talking and the suicide was probably murder. It's a film that can't make up its mind if it's a romantic comedy or a whodunit and finally fails at being either. William Bendix gets star billing as the local sheriff, (he kept reminding me of Bing Crosby), and walks off with the picture which is just strange enough to pass muster but that, by the way, is not a recommendation.

BLAST OF SILENCE **

Don't beat yourself up if you haven't heard of "Blast of Silence"; very few people have. Closer to a Z-Movie than a B-Movie it was the first film of one, Allen Baron who also wrote most of it and took the leading role and while his ambitions far outweighed his talents it is at least of passing interest and has since built up something of a cult following. He plays a hit-man from Cleveland on a job in New York over the Christmas period. Unfortunately, whatever skill he shows as a director, (he does have a remarkable visual eye), he was certainly no actor; this was only one of the two occasions in which he appeared in front of the camera. His weak performance and the weak performances of the rest of the cast might have killed the film but the superb location photography and a brilliant climax shot during a real hurricane more than make up for the shortcomings elsewhere.

WHEEL OF TIME ****

Werner Herzog's documentaries aren't like the documentaries of anyone else. Perhaps the best documentaries are unique to the people who make them. You can tell a Flaherty from a Wiseman just as you can tell a Maysles Brothers from a Herzog. Werner is interested in extremes, if only the extremes in subject matter. He will go out of his way to show us places and things other film-makers often ignore. "Wheel of Time" is his film about a place and an event not usually seen here in the West.

Its subject is a Buddhist initiation rite performed by His Holiness the Dalai Lama and attended by over half a million pilgrims. It's a ceremony of such complexity that Herzog's capturing of it is something of a miracle in itself and, of course, it is a thing of consummate beauty. This is what religion should be but very seldom is and Herzog is a masterful observer. He also narrates the film, informing us about what is happening when we need to know but most of the time simply showing us events as they unfold. Wonderful cinema and one of Herzog's best films.

ROPE OF SAND no stars

A look at the cast list of "Rope of Sand" and you might think you are seeing a "Casablanca" re-tread, (look, there's Claude Rains, Paul Henreid and Peter Lorre), but this thriller is a very different kettle of foul smelling fish and while watchable is never remotely in the same class as Curtiz' masterpiece. Burt Lancaster is the diamond prospector in South Africa who plans on recovering some diamonds from the mine ruled over by sadistic commandant Henreid. It's an attractive looking picture and well cast, (the leading lady was newcomer Corinne Calvet) but it's certainly no classic. It's that cast, (Sam Jaffe's in it, too), that just about saves it. Between them, they lift so-so material to a slightly higher level but in the end this is a decidedly minor affair.

DUVIDHA **

Mani Kaul was one of India's most important directors of 'art-house' cinema but his work is not really well known here in the West. "Duvidha" was his first film in colour and it's a strange, slow picture that should remind you of the work of the Georgian director Sergei Parajanov. It's a ghost story but not in any conventional sense. A young bridegroom has to leave his wife for business reasons and while he's away a ghost appears, takes the form of the husband and impregnates the wife; then the husband returns. It's as simple as that.

Of course, the narrative in this case hardly matters. Kaul tells his 'story' in purely visual terms, in images that are often no more than stills. It's certainly beautiful to look at but the funereal pace is bound to alienate most people. This is Art-House with a capital A and a capital H. Kaul's direction is fine but the amateurish performances of the mostly non-professional cast drag the film down.

YOUNG BESS *

"Young Bess" is a Reader's Digest view of history, more Mills and Boon than Hilary Mantel. Of course, when you see it's a Sidney Franklin production and that George Sidney was the director you know the last thing you are going to get is historical accuracy. On the plus side, it's splendidly cast. Jean Simmons is outstanding as 'Young Bess', or as she became known, Queen Elizabeth I, Stewart Granger is the Admiral Thomas Seymour who loses his head over her, Charles Laughton reprises his Oscar-winning role as King Henry and might have stolen the picture had they not killed him off early on and Deborah Kerr is stoic as Catherine Parr while a first-rate supporting cast includes a marvellous Kay Walsh, Guy Rolfe and Kathleen Byron. It also looks suitably authentic with Oscar-nominated sets and costumes. Unfortunately, it never adds up to anything other than romantic tosh, mildly entertaining for what it is and saved by a performance from Simmons that counts among her best.

APRILE ****

Most filmmakers don't use themselves and their families in such a shamelessly autobiographical fashion as Nanni Moretti. You could call him brave or, if a detractor, perhaps just lazy. I mean, it must be easy to regurgitate your life on screen in a quasi-documentary fashion except that Moretti is one of the smartest and funniest filmmakers ever to have come out of Italy and the shamelessly autobiographical "Aprile" is a small gem, (it's only 75 minutes long).

Moretti himself plays a film director called Nanni, planning to shoot a musical but finds he can't while his wife, played by real-life wife Silvia Nono, is pregnant, so instead he chooses to make a documentary on the Italian elections. "Aprile" itself isn't a documentary but a very charming if hugely self-indulgent comedy on the director's life. It is, in its way, another "Dear Diary" with its tongue lodged firmly in its cheek. How you respond to it, of course, will depend on how you respond to Moretti. I love him and am happy to take almost anything he sends my way. He may be indulgent but he's certainly a lot funnier and more likeable than Roberto Benigni, (he's closer to being an Italian Woody Allen). When I wasn't laughing out loud, which was frequently, I had a permanent smile on my face. See this.

MAN OF A THOUSAND FACES *

If the film displays all the pitfalls of the average Hollywood biopic, James Cagney's performance as Lon Chaney certainly doesn't; he's superb even if he was a bit too old for the part. "Man of a Thousand Faces" is a handsome, prestige production co-starring Dorothy Malone, fresh from her Oscar-winning success in "Written on the Wind", and Jane Greer as the two women Chaney married while Robert Evans pops up as a too baby-faced Irving G. Thalberg. Perhaps in this case it might have been better if the kid had stayed out of the picture.

If today it feels a little antiquated in its attitudes you have to remember it's set in the early years of the last century which were certainly not the most enlightened of times and it's probably at its best in recreating some of Chaney's more famous roles, (the Make-Up Department certainly deserved kudos). Unfortunately Joseph Pevney isn't the most imaginative of directors and ultimately it's just another addition in a long line of such biopics, no better, if no worse, than the rest.

CRIME AND PUNISHMENT *

This Josef von Sternberg adaptation of Dostoevsky's great novel is like a precis or a comic book version of the original and some of the supporting performances are very poor, (even Mrs. Patrick Campbell proves herself an old ham), and yet it's distinguished by Lucien Ballard's brilliant cinematography and by an excellent Raskolnikov from Peter Lorre and a terrific Porfiry from the great and somewhat underrated Edward Arnold. Of course, if you can forget the source material you can simply enjoy it as a decent enough murder yarn but one without any depth. Unfortunately it's very difficult to separate what we're watching from Dostoevsky's novel and you would be right in thinking that this is just a travesty. Still, it's impossible to dismiss it if only for those performances from Lorre and Arnold though you would never count it as one of von Sternberg's better films.

EDEN ***

"Eden" is Mia Hansen-Love's lovely ode to youth and music and while it may be one of the best French films of recent years it's hardly known at all. It's a youth movie in which the youths keep getting older, beginning in the early nineties and following Paul, (a marvellous Felix De Givry), and his friends through the music scenes of the period, (and there's some fabulous music to be heard), as he decides that his true vocation in life is as a DJ. In dramatic terms not a great deal happens, (though there is a suicide). Hansen-Love's style is observational and this is a slow-burn of a movie, perhaps too slow for the audiences that stayed away.

These characters' lives drift by but they're mostly such good company you're happy to spend time with them and amongst the almost exclusively French cast are Greta Gerwig, (as one of Paul's many lovers), and Brady Corbett and despite moving from Paris to New York and Chicago and back, this is a very French film. Hip Parisiennes just seem that much smarter than their counterparts elsewhere even if the drugs and the sex and the music are the same or maybe it's just hip Parisiennes all tend to be intellectuals. But you don't have to be an intellectual to enjoy this movie and, as I discovered, you don't even have to be young.

LILTING ****

"Lilting" is one of the great LGBT films; more significantly it's just a great film, faultless in both the writing and direction from first-time director Hong Khaou and in the performances. It's very funny and also deeply moving. Richard, (Ben Wishaw), and Kai, (Andrew Leung), are lovers. Richard is English and Kai is Chinese but then Kai is killed in an accident and Richard attempts to channel his grief by meeting with Kai's mother, Junn (Pei-Pei Cheng), who doesn't speak any English while he doesn't speak Mandarin so he hires a young translator Vann, (Naomi Yang), to help them communicate. However, Junn has also embarked on a relationship with Alan, (Peter Bowles), a fellow inmate of the home she lives in so Vann finds herself doing overtime in her translating duties.

This is a very simple movie about communication, about grief and about love that moves back and forth in time so we also get to meet the dead Kai and it could have been grim or sentimental but that's not Khaou's style and there's a great deal of comedy on view though fundamentally it's the relationship between Richard and Junn that gives the film its heart. The performances from everyone are excellent but Wishaw and Cheng are outstanding and for a film in two languages it's the moments of silence that are the most affecting. This isn't just a great feature debut but one of the best British films of recent years.

THE DEVIL AND MISS JONES ***

One of the great screwball comedies and one of the least known perhaps because, apart from a couple of Marx Brothers movies, Sam Wood wasn't really known for comedy. "The Devil and Miss Jones" is basically a fairy-
tale and a delightful one. 'The Devil' is Charles Coburn, at his very best, as the world's richest man, a curmudgeon who goes under cover in one of his department stores to ferret out agitators and, naturally, is humanized by the experience and in particular by Miss Jones, played splendidly by the great Jean Arthur. Unfortunately, the romantic lead is that dullard Robert Cummings but the terrific supporting cast includes Spring Byington, Edmund Gwenn and S.Z. Sakall. Woods simply takes a back seat here and lets them get on with it, helped by a wonderful script from Norman Krasna.

NASEEM *

I think a knowledge of Indian politics is, if not absolutely necessary, then certainly helpful in any appreciation of Saeed Akhtar Mirza's "Naseem" which deals in the main with an act of violence and its terrible aftermath. It was made in 1995, three years after the events it portrays and was probably a brave film for India to make at the time, (or indeed at any time), but Mirza 'hides' his political message in the story of a young girl and her grandfather and what it's like to grow up in a politically astute but very ordinary family.

Naseem is the young girl in question and life is seen through her eyes. It's certainly a heartfelt movie but as an outsider I didn't find it very engaging and the form it sometimes takes, (the grandfather narrates historical stories which are acted out and may not be all that reliable), can be confusing. On the plus side, Mirza's realistic approach to family life could have come quite easily from the likes of Ken Loach and these scenes of interrupted domesticity are the best in the film. It's an ambitious picture but even at a crisp 89 minutes it feels as if it has bitten off more than it can chew. The murky colour doesn't help either; this is a film that would have been better in black and white.

A DOUBLE LIFE no stars

Ronald Colman certainly didn't deserve the Oscar he won for "A Double Life", George Cukor's psychological thriller in a theatrical setting. He's the famous actor, past his prime, (a bit like Colman himself), playing Othello a little too realistically if not too well, so you don't have to be Sherlock Holmes to figure out where it's going. Ruth Gordon and Garson Kanin wrote it so its milieu is reasonably authentic but neither Colman nor Signe Hasso, his Desdemona, are up to it; indeed as Shakespearean actors they are both terrible hams. There's good work, though, from Edmond O'Brien as a press agent and Shelley Winters as a slatternly waitress and it's nicely photographed in noirish black and white by Milton Krasner. Otherwise, a minor work for all concerned.