THE LITTLE THINGS no stars

 Another serial killer movie more "Se7en" than "Zodiac" but nowhere near as fresh as either despite having three Oscar-winning actors heading the cast. An unusually subdued Denzel Washington is the slightly grizzled older cop, (been there, done that), Rami Malek is the young detective desperate to shake off any resemblance to Freddie Mercury and Jared Leto is the probable killer. It's a slow, handsome-looking film, so determined not to be sensational that it veers towards the dull side. The writer and director is John Lee Hancock so I guess the blame lies largely with him.

Denzel's character, the great detective whose intuition is almost superhuman, is a cliche too far; he's now the right age to channel his inner Morgan Freeman while Malek is just sleep-walking through his role. Leto, however, is outstanding, giving the movie a much needed kick as well as a touch of class, acting his co-stars off the screen though that fine and underrated actor Terry Kinney gives a lift to his few scenes as Malek's boss. Still, despite the cast and John Schwartzman's superb cinematography this could be just another episode of "C.S.I. Crime Scene". A real disappointment.

WITHOUT HONOR **

 This little B-Movie, clocking in at a very economical 69 minutes, could easily have been an episode of "The Alfred Hitchcock Hour" with some top-notch guest stars, one of whom gets dispatched in the first ten minutes and he's the biggest name in the picture. The ridiculous plot hardly bears thinking about and yet it's that very plot that makes this so interesting. Laraine Day is the adulterous wife who accidentally stabs her lover but that's only the beginning of her troubles. While her lover lies conveniently in the box-room her snake of a brother-in-law, her lover's wife and her husband all gather in the sitting room; yep, it's mostly all done on the one set. It gets progressively sillier as it goes along but the very game cast, that includes Franchot Tone, Dane Clark and Agnes Moorehead, add a welcome touch of class, (Moorehead's terrific). It may not be in the same class as something like "Detour" but it's still so much better than a lot of big studio productions of the time.

FAREWELL AMOR ***

 "Farewell Amor" is director Ekwa Msangi's feature film debut but you would never guess it as this remarkable film feels like the work of someone who has been making films for years. The plot revolves around an Angolan woman who comes to America with her teenage daughter to be reunited with her husband after an absence of 17 years only to discover they are virtually strangers and it's told from the point of view of all three of them. However, this is no grim problem picture but a surprisingly upbeat account of lives coming together and how something as simple as dance, for example, can engage people on the most basic of levels.

The three central performances are outstanding as Msangi glides her cast seamlessly through the twists and turns of her characters' lives while getting in some nifty dance moves in the process. The fact that the wife and mother, (a splendid Zainab Jah), is deeply religious while her husband, (Ntare Guma Mbaho Mwine, equally good), has lost his religion, if he ever had any, doesn't help matters just as her fidelity and his infidelity over the years proves a major hurdle they must overcome. But, as I said, grimness is put on the back-burner and this lovely character study is all the better for it.

TIME ****

 This astonishing documentary, with footage taken over two decades, is essentially a video diary in which Fox Rich fights to have her husband released from prison where he is serving a 60 year sentence for armed robbery but, as the title "Time" attests, it also deals with the time that passes from the opening home movie shots of a young Fox Rich and her family to the present day where we discover that Fox has had a successful life and runs her own business as well as successfully raising a large family. Of course, this hasn't stopped her continuing the fight on her husband's behalf but using her success to her and her husband's best advantage.

It's structured like a fiction film in which every moment is real and it's as gripping as any Michael Mann thriller and it's so magnificently shot, (in black and white by Nisa East, Zac Manuel and Justin Zweifach), and edited, (by Gabriel Rhodes), it almost takes a suspension of disbelief to realise that everything we are seeing is real. This is one of the great documentaries, (the director is Garrett Bradley), mainly because it subverts the documentary genre. This is no 'bleeding hearts' portrait of despair, (Fox and her husband really did carry out the robbery), but the study of a powerful woman doing what she can to fight a system rigged against her.

If this were fiction it would probably be an Oscar-bait vehicle for Viola Davis but you know that no-one, least of all Fox herself, is acting and yet she is giving a performance, performing in the hope that everything she says and does will get her husband Rob paroled and as we follow her on her journey we also follow her sons on theirs. As a study in resilience and what is possible this is amazing and deeply moving. It's a demonstration of what I would call 'pure cinema' where the only dramatic effects come from the material itself; a masterpiece.

THE WOMAN WHO RAN ****

 I remember once generalising that any film that takes three hours to tell its story can't really be that good. Of course, such generalisations are rubbish; films are as good or as bad as they are whether they are ten minutes long or ten hours but there's something to be said for 'the miniature'. Little films can be beautifully polished gems and there are many small films of seventy-five minutes or so that you wish would go on forever.

Sang-soo Hong's "The Woman who Ran" is one such film. It's a conversation piece and there's a lot of small talk but it's so beautifully directed and acted you feel a sense of privilege just being with these people and these people are mostly female friends, or maybe just acquaintances, spending time together. When a man makes an early appearance, in a terrifically written and very funny single take sequence, he seems something of an intruder but Hong has so much fun with the scene he makes for a very welcome intruder. Mostly, however, it's just women talking about their lives, the men in their lives, their pasts and the pleasure or otherwise of eating meat and I wish it could have gone on for another hour or so.

FOXTROT ****

 Samuel Maoz's first film, "Lebanon" introduced us to a world-class director and to one of cinema's great debuts. Its follow-up, "Foxtrot" confirms his stature and makes you wish he were more prolific, (they are the only two feature films he's made in eleven years). Both deal with the conflict in the Middle East and what distinguishes both films from, say, American films covering similar material is Maoz's complete lack of sentimentality and his meticulous attention to detail.

"Foxtrot" begins with a quiet and devastating exploration of grief as parents are told of a son's death and the details of the funeral rite are explained. What isn't explained are the circumstances surrounding the death. Then, in a twist we aren't expecting, events change and the film takes an almost surreal turn away from what we had been watching like a tragic-comedy with the tragedy very much to the fore.

As in "Lebanon", which took place almost entirely in a tank, Maoz demonstrates a remarkable visual sense in a film full of extraordinary imagery and yet somehow these images don't seem to relate to the film we thought we were watching. This is a war film and a film about conflict unlike any other. Of course, you could argue it isn't about conflict at all but about family, guilt and love and is wholly original. With only two features to his name Maoz has earned his place among the best directors in world cinema today. 

INTERIOR. LEATHER BAR no stars

 This cross between a documentary and a piece of staged 'cine-fiction' speaks volumes about James Franco as a film-maker and probably as a person. You might say it's as close to a major player 'coming out' on screen without actually saying 'I'm Gay'; rather what does come out is Franco's ego though if he thinks "Interior. Leather Bar" is some kind of testimony to his genius as a film-maker he's sadly mistaken.

The idea is that Franco and co-director Travis Mathews are 'recreating' the lost forty minutes cut out of "Cruising" by the studio at the time while at the same time making a documentary about the making of the film or 'the footage' and what emerges is an extremely boring picture of beautiful young men showing their ignorance about cinema and life in general as well as a lot of stiff genitalia.

If there is plus side to any of this it's that the 'recreations' of the scenes from "Cruising" are very well done and much more sexually explicit than anything a mainstream movie might give us but divorced from Friedkin's film they just seem like so much porn and in this context, totally pointless. Franco's heart may be in the right place but if he and Mathews are to convince us of their talents they need to do a lot better than this.

DAMSELS IN DISTRESS ***

 If Jane Austen were a man and lived in the 20th century she would be Whit Stillman whose last film was indeed an adaptation of Austen's novella "Lady Susan" and like Austin he isn't prolific. In fact, he's only made five features in the last thirty years and each is an event though his smartly funny and hugely intelligent comedies have never been box-office giants; maybe he's the only director whose entire filmography consists of five cult movies.

"Damsels in Distress", which he made in 2011, is set in an American college where Emma-esque heroine Violet, (a terrific Greta Gerwig), and her band of female followers spend their every waking moment helping (i.e. messing up), the lives of their fellow students and run, God help us, the Suicide Prevention Centre where their main source of therapy is tap-dancing.

While we may be in an American college we are definitely in Austen territory, (any of Stillman's earlier films are much closer to Austen way of thinking than Amy Heckerling's 'Emma' adaptation "Clueless"), and where the battle of the sexes never amounts to more than a ticklish skirmish. This, like everything Stillman's done, is a gem.

THE TERMINAL ****

 The premis of Steven Spielberg's "The Terminal" might seem far-fetched, (a non-English speaking Eastern European tourist is stranded in limbo in JFK airport after a military coup in his own country has left him citizen-less, unable to enter US soil or return home), and since he's played by the very non-Eastern European Tom Hanks, the whole thing should fall flat on its very Spielbergian face and, of course, it's sentimental in the extreme. However, "The Terminal" is based on an actual incident that occurred in France, even if the director has taken considerable liberties with it.

In the hands of anyone else, it would probably have just been plain silly but Spielberg knows exactly what he's doing and in Hanks he's got a sublime actor who can actually carry this potential nonsense off. The critics mostly hated it and the Academy ignored it but it's actually very funny and superbly acted, especially by Hanks and Stanley Tucci as the less than likeable Head of Security. I've seen it described as Capraesque but fundamentally it's 100% Spielbergian and this gem isn't just one of his most underrated films, it's also one of his best.