WHERE'D YOU GO, BERNADETTE? ***

 Bernadette is the kind of woman you would cross the road to avoid and who would also cross the road to avoid meeting you and she's just the perfect character for Cate Blanchett to add to her portfolio of oddballs. She's also married to something of an oddball, (Billy Crudup), who's some kind of computer genius and between them they have managed to create a nice, normal teenage daughter, (newcomer Emma Nelson, superb), and they all live in a Seattle mansion that is literally falling apart. But Bernadette isn't just a sociopathic oddball; she is, or was, a great architect who dropped out and whose midlife crisis has lasted a couple of decades.

"Where'd you go, Bernadette" is a Richard Linklater comedy so you know we are in oddball territory to begin with. What you might not realise is that it's also very funny and naturally more than a little sad. It's like a walking, talking New Yorker cartoon brought to glorious life and not just by Blanchett, (no-one does crazy quite like her), Crudup and Nelson but by a terrific supporting cast headed by Kristen Wiig and with pitch-perfect turns from Judy Greer, Zoe Chao, Laurence Fishburne, David Paymer and Steve Zahn. I loved every crazy, off-the-wall and marvellously moving moment.

JERICHOW **

 Yet another variation on "The Postman Always Rings Twice". "Jerichow" is a Christian Petzold film so you know it's going to be a more esoteric, slightly off-the-wall thriller. Petzold is not a conventional director even if his plots tend to be. Thomas, (a taciturn Benno Furmann), a dishonourably discharged Afghanistan veteran, needs a job so after doing a favour for drunken businessman Hilmi Sozer, he ends up working for him and his beautiful, unhappy wife so you can imagine what happens next but, like "Transit", his very un-Casablanca like take on "Casablanca", this doesn't quite stick to the formula and perhaps you can tell that it won't from the unrelated opening scene.

Petzold doesn't really go for the big dramatic flourish so this tale of lust and murderous thoughts is surprisingly low-key but like the James M. Cain novel it's loosely based on, it all ends in tears. Indeed there are times when you wish Petzold would just opt for the more melodramatic course; as a thriller this is just a little short on suspense. The three leads are fine and there's a neat twist or two towards the end giving the film a more tragic dimension a more conventional ending would have lacked. Not Petzold's best film, then, but certainly worth seeing.

YOUTH WITHOUT YOUTH **

 Coppola's first film in ten years was this very strange and somewhat unwieldy adaptation of Mircea Eliade's novella about a professor who, after being struck by a bolt of lightening, regresses to a much younger self, (a kind of Benjamin Button in reverse), allowing him to go find his 'lost' love and continue his life studies, beginning during the rise of Nazism in Europe and moving into the atomic age. It's the kind of wordy, literary picture that the American cinema often tackled as if doing us a favour by bringing the great works of literature to the masses and which, in too many cases, were often just clunking bores but then this is Coppola, a man never afraid of experimentation or of taking a risk so "Youth Without Youth" is, if nothing else, a bold movie.

It was a failure, of course. Critics no longer raced to find a lost master making a grand comeback and audiences, the few that went to see it, found it bewildering and bewildering it is. Tim Roth, a great actor who has never really been given his dues, is the professor and he's perfectly cast here but Coppola's screenplay does him no favours while poor Bruno Ganz is straddled with the awkward role of the doctor who helps him while Coppola, who despite his best efforts, is still guilty of literaryitis, (this is wordy in the worst possible way). Who did he think would go to see it? On the plus side, like so much of Coppola's work, it looks terrific. Cinematographer Mihai Malaimare Jr. bathes the film in a gorgeous autumnal glow. Yes,  it may ultimately be a failure but it's an honourable one and is still worth seeking out.

FRIENDS WITH MONEY ***

 If this small gem of a movie feels at times like an extended episode of a really rather good television series, don't knock it. Good television these days is often so much better than many mainstream movies. Nicole Holofcener made "Friends with Money" in 2006 and the friends, as we have come to expect from Holofcener, are female though the title is a misnomer since not all the friends have money. They are Frances McDormand, Catherine Keener, Joan Cusack and Jennifer Aniston and Aniston is the poor one. She's also the single one; the others are married to Simon McBurney, Jason Isaacs and Greg Germann and like all good friends they not only interact but interfere in each other's lives.

As you might also expect from Holofcener, "Friends with Money" is often very funny, touching and whip-smart and all four women are superb with Aniston proving the real surprise. The men mostly trail behind them though Britain's McBurney is excellent as McDormand's husband that everyone just assumes is gay while Scott Caan makes for a terrific sleaze-ball of a personal trainer who will sleep with any woman that moves. Never destined for mainstream success, this may have slipped off the radar but it's a movie that cries out for rediscovery.

THIRST **

 If you know the original source novel it may take you awhile to recognize Zola's "Therese Raquin" in this tale of a vampiric priest, transposed to present day South Korea. The priest is Father Sang-hyun, (a superb Kang-ho Song), whose crisis of faith leads him to take part in a somewhat extreme medical experiment and since this is also a horror film, as well as an off-the-wall adaptation of a literary classic, naturally the experiment goes wrong and very soon the good father is lusting after blood and the nubile young wife, (Kim Ok-bin, also superb), of an old boyhood friend.

"Thirst" is a Chan-wook Park film so you know there will be a lot more sex and blood than religion and its horrors will be poetic as well as extreme. Park may be one of Asian cinema's foremost stylists but you mustn't take any of this too seriously. Since Dracula we've had all sorts of vampires, some exploring the myth with a high degree of seriousness, others poking fun; Park tries to combine the two with a reasonable degree of success. It's certainly stylish and it's certainly different and yes, it even manages to get Zola in there, too. Just don't expect too much of him.

MAGNUM FORCE **

 With a screenplay by John Milius and Michael Cimino, "Magnum Force" really out to be better than it is but then you realise the director is Ted Post so maybe we should be thankful it's as good as it is. Post was a jobbing director of limited talent so you might say he was really only as good as his material. "Magnum Force" was the second, in what turned out to be, the 'Dirty Harry' franchise and as follow-ups, (as opposed to sequels), go this is an enjoyably crude yarn.

This time round a group of rogue cops, (David Soul, Tim Matheson, Kip Niven and Robert Urich), are dispensing their own brand of justice, killing bad guys, (and anyone else who gets in their way), and it's up to Harry to stop them. Are you in any doubt that he would? It's a good plot and, to be fair, Post handles the action sequences with considerable aplomb. Unfortunately Clint walks through it as if on autopilot but then, as actor, he too was really just as good as his material.