ONE FROM THE HEART ****

 When Coppola made "Finian's Rainbow" quite early in his career he took the hokiest of old Broadway shows and revamped it for the hippies so why suppose his next musical would be any different? Knowing that the musical as a genre is pure fantasy from the very start, with "One From the Heart" he created a Las Vegas that didn't exist, (he built it in the studio), with a pair of star-crossed lovers who couldn't sing, or at least didn't sing, but rather than dub them he got Tom Waits to write an original song score and then sing it off-screen with he and Crystal Gale standing in the for leads, Frederic Forrest and Teri Garr.

This was a musical for cineastes and jazz aficionados. It cost a fortune and it lost a fortune and it bankrupted Coppola but it was obviously 'one from the heart', as filled with Coppolaesque passion as his 'Godfather' movies or "Apocalypse Now" and it looks ravishing, (Vittorio Storaro and Ronald V. Garcia did the cinematography and Dean Tavoularis and Angelo Graham designed it).

If Coppola's films can be divided into 'the big successes' and 'the smaller cult movies' then this is the cult movie to end them all. Is it a masterpiece? Perhaps, but I think it is let down just a little by Armyan Bernstein and Coppola's screenplay which is formulaic and banal. Of course, could this be part of the fantasy, Coppola's way of divorcing everything, including what's said, from the real world? Again, perhaps. It's certainly a movie you will either relate to totally or run a mile from but if you liked "The Umbrellas of Cherbourg" you'll love this.

DON'T LOOK BACK ****

 D. A. Pennebaker's "Don't Look Back" is one of the great documentaries. An intimate portrait of Bob Dylan's 1965 tour of the UK it's also one of the few films about 'celebrity' that feels both truthful and unforced. Pennebaker may have idolised Dylan but his film is never sycophantic yet is so deeply affectionate it almost hurts and Pennebaker's use of the close-up is extraordinary. This may have been his way of getting as close to Dylan's 'soul' as was possible since Bob's utterances are, perhaps, less profound that we might expect and it's left to the songs to speak for him.

Dylan, himself, comes across as a likeable, if not always modest, young man, (at one point he compares his singing voice to that of Caruso), easily approachable by fans and the obsequious journalists who seem to want to build him up and pull him down at the same time, clearly not understanding a word he says or sings. Subsequent Dylan films have explored in even greater detail his progress from unkempt youth to Nobel-Prize winning elder statesman but if you really love Dylan this film is the gift that keeps giving.

TEXAS LADY **

 21 years after winning her Oscar as a runaway heiress in "It Happened One Night", Claudette Colbert was the "Texas Lady" who, by rather roundabout means, inherits a newspaper in a small Texas town where she comes up against corrupt cattle barons Ray Collins and Walter Sande and their hired gun Gregory Walcott. If, on the surface, Tim Whelan's western seems like a slight affair, think again. Horace McCoy's screenplay crams more plot into the films 80 odd minutes than most films manage in 3 hours, (and remember he was the author of "They Shoot Horses, Don't They?") and while not always the most probable of plots, it's nevertheless very entertaining. Of course, Colbert herself was always one of the most likeable and watchable actresses ever to come out of Hollywood even if, as here, she's somewhat miscast and a good decade older than her love interest. Barry Sullivan. Minor perhaps but a curio that's worth seeking out.

MIDNIGHT LACE **

 What's not to love? Doris Day, in gowns by Irene, no less, being menaced in the London fog by a mysterious, unseen man threatening to kill her while a cast that includes Rex Harrison, John Gavin, Myrna Loy, Roddy McDowell, Natasha Parry and Herbert Marshall swan around wondering if she's actually being menaced or just imagining it and if she is being menaced which of these prime suspects is doing it? You see, Doris is rich and it seems everyone else isn't and would kill for her money.

"Midnight Lace" was a 1960 Ross Hunter production, directed by David Miller and based on a little known Janet Green play with the terrible title "Matilda Shouted Fire" but if it's a fairly creaky thriller it's also a hugely entertaining one. You know, of course, that Doris is going to be alright since that most urbane of police inspectors, John Williams, is on the case, (well, he did bring Ray Milland to justice), and you don't have to be Sherlock Holmes to figure out the villain long before the end. It may not be much of a film but it is a great guilty pleasure.

THE WOMAN IN THE WINDOW **

 Sometimes it's nice to see a director normally given over to highfalutin literary-based works slumming it which is precisely what Joe Wright is doing here. "The Woman in the Window" is another literary adaptation, (it's from an A. J. Finn novel), but it's a far less po-faced one than Wright usually gives us. In fact, as adapted by Tracy Letts, this is just a slice of grand guignol and it's great fun, referencing Hitchcock, (most obviously "Rear Window"), and film noir in general.

Amy Adams is the agoraphobic former child psychologist who spends her time spying on her new neighbours who all seem to be as loopy as she is and, of course, if you've seen "Rear Window", and who hasn't, you know what happens next; right, murder most foul though it's at this point that things start to diverge from Hitchcock's masterpiece. Did Amy really see a murder or is she as mad as a hatter?

Since we've seen variations on these themes countless times before, this is where the guessing games begin and if the punchline is a little less effective than it might have been you can always chalk it down to that old saying 'there's nothing new under the sun'. Adams, of course, is terrific and is ably backed up by those fine actors Gary Oldman and Julianne Moore, (but don't expect too much from Jennifer Jason Leigh who seems to have been denied permission to speak in this movie). It's trash or at best, pulp fiction; a junk-food movie from a man who, in the past, fancied himself something of a Michelin Star chef and I really enjoyed it.

DAUGHTER OF THE NILE ****

 Another early Hsiao-Hsien Hou film that reveals his great capacity for tenderness and for getting deep inside the family psyche, in this case a family living on the margins. Lin is the "Daughter of the Nile" of the title, a fantasy character in a graphic novel she's reading. In reality she's the oldest sister in a family of petty criminals, struggling with her education as well as her background and almost everything is seen through her eyes.

The plot hardly matters; this is an observation of life in a very westernized Taipei in the eighties; we could be almost anywhere in America or in any UK city where people steal for a living and call it work and even back in the eighties it was clear that Hsiao-Hsien was a master filmmaker and a great director of actors. The performances here are beautifully naturalistic with Lin Yang outstanding in the lead. It's a little rough around the edges, perhaps and maybe a little too indebted to Ozu's style of filmmaking but it remains an essential work in the director's canon nevertheless and shouldn't be missed.

SONGS MY BROTHERS TAUGHT ME ***

 Of course by now everyone reading this should know that Chloe Zhao is only the second woman to win the Oscar as Best Director and that her film "Nomadland" also won Best Picture. What many people may not know is that "Nomadland" was only Zhao's third feature film, the others being the very moving and blissfully beautiful ""The Rider" and this, "Songs My Brothers Taught Me" and that together they make an extraordinary trilogy of films about the American hinterland. "Nomadland" had a major star at its centre but for the most part was populated by real people playing variations of themselves and while this is fiction and scripted, "Songs My Brothers Taught Me" could be a documentary with Zhao again using non-professional actors in major roles. Visually the obvious influence is Malick but Zhao's films are uniquely her own and if you watch these films back to back they are unmistakeably Zhao's. This did reasonably well on the festival circuit but was obviously never aimed at the mass market. If you haven't seen it, seek it out. Like "The Rider" and "Nomadland" it's a gem.

THE TIN STAR ***

 Anthony Mann made this superlative western after completing the last of the Jimmy Stewart westerns, ("The Man from Laramie"), and before he made the Gary Cooper starring "Man of the West" and somehow it got lost along the way despite having been nominated for a BAFTA Best Film award.  Instead of either Stewart or Cooper, Mann cast Henry Fonda as the laconic, decent bounty hunter who take a greenhorn young sheriff, (a beautifully cast Anthony Perkins), under his wing.

It's a very simple, traditional piece, shot in black and white by Loyal Griggs and dealing very much in black and white issues.  It is a movie with straightforward heroes and villains, (Neville Brand is principal among the bad guys), a strong heroine, (Betsy Palmer), and even a sweet, likeable kid, (Michael Ray).  If it lacks the psychological undercurrents of other Mann westerns it more than makes up for it in good old-fashioned action and suspense and of all his westerns this may be the most underrated.

MOTHERLESS BROOKLYN **

 You know that "Motherless Brooklyn" is going to be a different kind of crime movie from the brilliant opening sequence which introduces us to its narrating anti-hero, a Private Eye with Tourette's Syndrome, played by the film's director, Edward Norton. The sequence is superbly set up but it doesn't explain anything and the bad guys in the scene are shot in shadow and in ends with a killing; yes, we know this movie is going to be 'different'. The period is the late fifties, perfectly captured in Beth Mickle's design and beautifully shot by the great Dick Pope which gives the film the noirish look Norton is after and it's very well cast with Norton himself terrific as the Tourette's inflicted shamus. So far so good.

Unfortunately the plot, (corruption in high places), is old hat and as a director Norton is more interested in flash than form; even his use of a hard-boiled narration is a cliche. This is a film eager to be liked but wanting to be original at the same time and failing at it. It's certainly not dismissible; Norton, when he's good, as he is here, is always worth watching and it is certainly a beautiful looking picture. It's just that with a better script, (which Norton also wrote from Jonathan Letham's novel), it could have been so much better and at almost two and a half hours, it's way too long.

STRANGER IN THE HOUSE no stars

 Georges Simenon's 1940 novel "A Stranger in the House", rechristened "Cop-Out" for the American market and transferred to Swinging Southampton, (yes, Southampton), in the sixties was the only film to be directed by the writer and producer Pierre Rouve. It's really quite atrocious despite a cast headed by James Mason, Geraldine Chaplin and, again for the American market, Bobby Darin. Mason is the drunken former barrister who comes out of retirement to defend daughter Chaplin's boyfriend, (newcomer Paul Bertoya who, despite his good-looks, quickly disappeared from the scene), on a charge of murdering Darin. For some reason, Rouve took the 'arty' approach rather than the conventional one and the film's all the worse for it, working neither as a drama nor a thriller. It's badly acted, (even by Mason), badly directed and the denouement, delivered Poirot-style at a twenty-first birthday party, is jaw-droppingly awful. Often thought of as a 'lost' movie, this one would have been better staying lost.