INFLATABLE SEX DOLL OF THE WASTELANDS no stars

 Genres come in all shapes and sizes apparently. I recently opened a can of worms on Facebook trying to define film-noir, a genre that, according to some, has lasted from the early forties, perhaps earlier, to the present day. In Japan, however, we had 'film-pink' or rather pinku-eiga, a series of sexploitation pictures totally unlike the sexploitation pictures popular in Europe or America. Some of these films could indeed be described as 'inscrutable'.

"Inflatable Sex Doll of the Wastelands" is one of the best known of the 'pinku-eiga' pictures. Shot in widescreen, black and white it is a kind of esoteric Yakuza film with gangsters and snuff movies very much to the fore. It's certainly sexually explicit for a movie made in 1967 though perhaps no more so than a European sex film of the period but what passes for a plot marks it out as very much an art-house affair, (I doubt if the Soho 'dirty-mac' brigade would sit through it to the end). Visually it's often extraordinary and it wears its American influences well, down to a somewhat jarring jazz score and it has cult movie written all over it. I'm sure there's an audience out there somewhere for it but personally I thought it a load of pretentious rubbish and its disappearance over the years is perfectly understandable. Of course, if you haven't heard of it it's possibly because in the West it was called "Dutch Wife in the Desert" for reasons perhaps even more obscure than the film's plot.

THE RAZOR'S EDGE **

 Tosh of a very high-minded kind and magnificently entertaining. W Somerset Maugham's novel was a po-faced tale of unmitigated seriousness filled to the brim with 'grand themes' and a better director than Edmund Goulding might have made an equally serious and po-faced film. Goulding's pedigree was trashy women's pictures and he had the knack of making silk purses out of sow's ears. He may have dumbed down Maugham's novel but at least it's lively and at times wonderfully over-the-top as well as being beautifully photographed and designed. It may be deeply silly but it's never dull.

Unfortunately that handsome clothes-horse Tyrone Power is there in the central, crucial role of Larry Darrell, the existentialist hero traveling the world in search of 'enlightenment'. Power lacks the natural gravitas the part demands. Luckily he's surrounded by players who are so much better than he. The under-rated Gene Tierney is wonderfully wilful as the rich girl who marries someone else, Anne Baxter, who won the Oscar for her part, is the dipsomaniac Sophie and best of all there is Clifton Webb, robbed of an Oscar, as the arch snob Elliot Templeton who, naturally, has all the best lines. Herbert Marshall also keeps popping up as Maugham, narrating the story as if it's all real.

I think we were meant to find it all profound and uplifting and I'm sure some people took it all very seriously. But we can no more take this seriously than if the original novel had been written by Harold Robbins or Jacqueline Susann. It's trash and so long as you accept it as such you might just love it. The remake, with Bill Murray, did take itself seriously and failed miserably.

THE MOLE AGENT ****

 Nominated for Best Documentary Feature at this year's Oscars, Maite Alberdi's "The Mole Agent" may have a preposterous scenario for a documentary, (it would be preposterous even in a fiction film), and yet it works and works beautifully. The filmmaker's explain everything that's to follow in the first ten or so minutes and after that it's basically plain sailing. "The Mole Agent" of the title is Sergio, a man in his eighties planted as a 'spy' inside a nursing home  in Chile to record anything that might be happening to an elderly female inmate whose daughter fears is being abused. The crew making the film we are watching have been given permission to film inside the nursing home but only they know Sergio's purpose in being there.

The result is both deeply moving and often very funny as Sergio goes about his business like an octogenarian  James Bond, taking notes, writing in his journal  and filming people with his 'spy' pen and 'spy' glasses and despite making himself fairly obvious on occasions is the least likely and most charming agent imaginable. Alberdi's terrific film is like a non-fiction version of "Carry on Spying" with a cast of geriatrics.

It's also undeniably sad since we know that none of these people are acting and that their lives are far from perfect; there is genuine loneliness and real heartbreak here though if anyone can alleviate it it's Sergio who seems to move from secret agent to guardian angel in no time at all and as he sweet-talks the little old ladies, prompting at least one of them to contemplate marriage, it's impossible not to be charmed by him. This is his movie and I, for one, would certainly like to know what happened to him since filming was completed.

ONE DEADLY SUMMER ***

 Newcomer to the village, Eilane, (Isabelle Adjani), is certainly a stunner and soon she's driving all the boys wild but it's mechanic and fireman 'Pin-Pon', (Alain Souchon), who woos her and wins her even though on their first date he sees a side to her that would have most men fleeing to the hills. Eilane may indeed be gorgeous but she's also clearly psychotic or worse. Jean Becker's "One Deadly Summer" is just yet another in a long line of superb French thrillers in which bad things take place in bright sunlight and people seem to have an ulterior motive for everything while Adjani joins a long list of very fatal femmes. She's terrific as usual but then so is everyone else in a movie that sets out its stall early on and then proceeds to give to the cold creeps for the next two hours. If you wished you could call it Chabrolian but I think this is a darker film than even Chabrol might have given us. Well worth seeking out.

BORAT SUBSEQUENT MOVIEFILM **

 Borat's back and unless he can get his act together, hopefully for the last time. You would think, given the potential targets, (Trump, Covid), this could be the best Borat film yet and yet a lot of gags fall flat. Yes, i laughed and loudly every now and then but nowhere near as often as I thought I would. Still, "Borat Subsequent Moviefilm", to give it its short title, (and that title in itself reeks of desperation), is still worth seeing thanks to a brilliant, star-making turn from Maria Bakalova as Borat's daughter, Tutar.

The very thin excuse for a plot has Borat revisiting America with said daughter in tow and a plan to offer her as a gift to VP Mike Pence, (yes, that's about as original as it gets). Needless to say, Pence isn't interested though his appearance does mark one of the film's few inspired moments so the sights are set on Rudy Giuliani who is either even dumber than we thought or a rather good sport for going along with it. The candid-camera style sequences still work but much of this looks rehearsed and the wonderful Miss Bakalova deserves better. Will she deserve the Oscar should she win? Probably not but I can certainly see a long future ahead of her.

TO OLIVIA no stars

 In roles previously played by Dirk Bogarde and Glenda Jackson, Hugh Bonneville and Keeley Hawes are now the writer Roald Dahl and his actress wife Patricia Neal. Both Bonneville and Hawes are very fine actors in their own right, if perhaps more famous on television than in the cinema and anyone who, in recent years, has seen "Bodyguard", "Line of Duty" or "It's a Sin" will know just what a chameleon Hawes can be and you think that even an Oscar-winning American actress might not be a stretch and that Dahl would be a walk in the park for Bonneville.

As befits a film about the author of children's books, John Hay's film "To Olivia" is as much about the children in the Dahl/Neal marriage as it is about the adults but despite decent work all round this never rises above a conventional Sunday night BBC or ITV drama, (and good as Hawes is, she's certainly not Neal). Quite frankly, this could be a movie about any middle-class couple living in any English village and finding they don't get along and you certainly won't learn anything about either of its central celebrities. Both Neal and Dahl had their fair share of tragedy, treated here as soap opera. As Geoffrey Fisher, one-time Archbishop of Canterbury, the wonderful Geoffrey Palmer has no trouble stealing the film but ultimately this is a film that is not worth stealing or indeed seeing.

BAD TALES **

 Co-directed by brothers Damiano and Fabio D'Innocenzo "Bad Tales" is a dark, downbeat and really rather unpleasant film seriously lacking in the 'feelgood' factor. It's also rather good in a horrible, queasy kind of way; a film to admire for the obvious skill the filmmakers demonstrate but certainly not a film to like. Set during one summer in a suburb outside Rome it looks, somewhat forensically, at a couple of very dysfunctional families much in the style of Yorgos Lanthimos. The brothers never quite reach the heights that Lanthimos does but we are definitely in the same perverse ballpark. 

Both adults and children are treated with the same off-hand cruelty while their actions are never really explained. There's something almost surreal going on here and not in a good way but then the film is called "Bad Tales" so don't say you weren't warned. I doubt if I'll be returning to it anytime soon but while the brothers may not be the Coens I will certainly be interested to see what they do in the future.

ROCKS ****

 The surprise recipient of seven BAFTA nominations, "Rocks" is the kind of low-budget, highly imaginative and beautifully made movie that should be winning awards and drawing audiences from all over the globe but which so often slip through the net and, on hindsight, its seven nominations should come as no surprise at all. Sarah Gavron's terrific film is about a teenage schoolgirl, Shola or 'Rocks' to her friends, (an excellent Bukky Bakray), suddenly forced to take care of herself and her younger brother, (D'angelou Osei Kissiedu, wonderful), after their single mother abandons them. Gavron's film is fiction and is scripted, (beautifully by Theresa Ikoko and Claire Wilson), but it could be a fly-on-the-wall documentary. There isn't a false note in any of the performances and Gavron never puts a foot wrong in her observation of life in Britain today and although set largely in an ethnic community the scope of this extraordinary film stretches much wider.

This is a truly multi-cultural movie, a film about race, family, identity and a state-of-the-nation movie to rank with the best of them. Never does it pander to the cliches of movies about abandoned children or go for the easy option. It's certainly never sentimental and while dealing with material that's undoubtedly downbeat is never in itself depressing. This is an optimistic film, thanks in large part to the wonderful performances of Bakray and Kosan Ali as her best friend and I have no doubt it will be considered a classic of realist British cinema in years to come.

THE WALKING HILLS **

 This little known John Sturges movie boasts a fine cast, (Randolph Scott, John Ireland, Arthur Kennedy, Ella Raines, William Bishop), and a screenplay by Alan Le May, (he of "The Searchers" fame), and while it's no classic is certainly worth seeing. Scott is the leader of a group of gold hunters in Death Valley and "The Walking Hills" has been described as a Western Film-Noir. At times it resembles a B-Movie version of "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre" which came out the year before but as B-Movie homages go this is definitely a cut above and Sturges makes the most of the material. A little more action wouldn't go amiss but the film-noir credentials are all there with Raines making an excellent, hard-boiled leading lady and Scott playing nicely against type at times. It even manages to incorporate flashbacks into its neat 78 minute running time and almost enough songs by Josh White to turn it into a folk-musical-film-noir-western.

WHITE GOD **

 Never work with children and animals and once upon a time films featuring children and animals were so saccharine you might have said never watch films in which children and animals appear. In Kornel Mundruczo's "Whiite God" there is a child, (the excellent Zsofia Psotta), and an awful lot of animals, (in this case, dogs), but there is nothing saccharine about this powerful Hungarian film; indeed the complete opposite is true. This violent, adult movie is sure to upset animal lovers and it's certainly not aimed at children.

It begins when Lili, (Psotta), goes to stay with her estranged father, bringing her beloved dog with her but her father refuses to keep the dog in the apartment and lets it loose to roam the streets of Budapest leaving Lili to search for him. Mundruczo's film is like an X-rated version of "Lassie Come Home". It begins benignly enough even if there is an underlying tension between the characters, (Lili is one of the very few sympathetic people onscreen and even she isn't particularly likeable), before moving into much darker, surreal horror-movie territory. Disturbing as these climatic scenes are, I feel the film and its message would have been better served with a more realistic approach. Still, it makes for suitably uneasy viewing while the dogs themselves 'perform' quite magnificently.

NEVER RARELY SOMETIMES ALWAYS ****

 Covid 19 might have closed cinemas and put the brakes on those big studio blockbusters a lot of people were looking forward to in the last 12 months, meaning we had to get our kicks at home and, if we're honest, where better to see 'small', largely independent films and to realise just how many good movies are currently being made by first-time or fledgling directors and just how many of these directors are women. Eliza Hittman's "Never Rarely Sometimes Always" is just one of these films and it's undoubtedly one of the best.

This is just Hittman's third film, (her last was the excellent "Beach Rats"), and her star Sidney Flanigan's debut. Flanigan is Autumn, a 17 year old girl from Pennsylvania who, with her friend Skylar, (an excellent Talia Ryder), travels to New York to have an abortion. This is a woman's picture in the very sense of the term, dealing with the kind of issues only women have to deal with since only women and girls get pregnant and Hittman approaches the subject in a very matter-of-fact, open-ended fashion. Autumn seems to want an abortion because she doesn't think of the baby she is carrying as a person but more of an illness, something she needs to be cured of, both physically and psychologically; a stigma to be removed. Hittman's film is neither pro nor anti-abortion but a picture of a young girl in a situation not of her making and the circumstances of her pregnancy are withheld from us for some time and then only revealed slowly through the questions that give the film its title..

Hittman films it like a documentary. It helps that her actors are not known to us and both Flanigan and Ryder underplay beautifully, (Flanigan has already won the New York Critics' Best Actress prize), and unlike other films dealing with abortion Hittman isn't judgemental nor is her film particularly grim. There's nothing melodramatic in the way she tells her story. I can just imagine how Hollywood would have handled this, milking it for every emotional response an audience is capable of. Indeed, not a great deal happens; we get to know Autumn gradually and Flanigan is good enough for us to wonder where the actress ends and the character begins. It's certainly not a film that will appeal to a mass audience but it may be the best film you will see all year.

DICK JOHNSON IS DEAD *

 "Dick Johnson is Dead" is a documentary but it's not like any documentary you might have seen since director Kirsten Johnson constructs this portrait of her father like a work of fiction; an apparent 'tribute' to her father as he approaches death done as a series of surreal sketches in which Dick, the dad in question, 'dies' over and over again in a variety of ways. Of course, for the purposes of the film it's not the real Dick who is dying but a number of recruited stand-ins while death, in some form, permeates the picture. Now I don't have a problem with death but as someone who loves life and who wants to hang on to it for as long as possible, I'm not sure I go along with Kirsten's fantastical view of what might take Dick from this earth and what might happen to him after he goes.

If Heaven is anything like Kirsten imagines then keep me from it, (it's a kitsch, camp John Waters version). What keeps you watching is Dick himself. A one-time psychiatrist, he's the kind of personable, sweet, funny father we might all wish for and I just wish his daughter could have celebrated him in a less morbid fashion. Ultimately this is a professional home-movie the Johnson family might treasure but it feels just a little too personal for the rest of us while the final 'funeral' scene, meant to be uplifting no doubt, I found almost unendurably tasteless.

WALK A TIGHTROPE no stars

 Americans Dan Duryea and Patricia Owens made this truly dreadful little programmer in Britain in 1964 and it's almost certainly the worst thing either of them ever did. The British cast includes one-time James Bond wannabe Terence Cooper and Richard Leech. Cooper's married to Owens. Duryea is the hitman hired by who to kill who and Leech is the friend who witnesses the hit and they are all dreadful; this movie may have the worst acting to be seen in the sixties. The plot itself isn't bad and director Frank Nesbitt makes good use of his London locations, (which is about all you can say in his favour; he only made three films of which this was one), and while it only lasts 69 minutes it feels much, much longer. It is, in fact, the kind of Z-movie that gives Z-movies a bad name. To be avoided at all costs.

ALL IN A NIGHT'S WORK ***

 No classic but this Joseph Anthony directed romantic comedy is genuinely funny and really deserves to be better known. Dean Martin is at his suave best as the playboy who inherits his uncle's publishing empire after his uncle is found dead in bed with a smile on his face and a girl's earring on the floor and Shirley MacLaine exudes star quality as the girl whose earring it was. Of course, she's totally blameless and as sweet as they come and engaged to Cliff Robertson's vet. Sharply, and very wittily, scripted by Edmund Beloin, Maurice Richlin and Sidney Sheldon from Owen Elford's play, "All in a Night's Work" is a real treat with a first-rate supporting cast that includes Charlie Ruggles, Jerome Cowan, Jack Weston and the great Gale Gordon. Made in 1961, it could just as easily have come out twenty-five years earlier with Cary Grant and Jean Arthur in the Martin/MacLaine roles and Ralph Bellamy as the vet. Hardly ever revived, it's well worth seeking out.