THE MAN WHO KILLED DON QUIXOTE ****

 An opening credit informs us that this is the film that Terry Gilliam has been making for the last 25 years, (and then 'unmaking'), or rather for the last 25 years Gilliam has been trying to make a film of Cervantes' masterpiece 'Don Quixote' that never happend and this, "The Man Who Killed Don Quixote", is the outcome of those attempts. It is, of course, another movie about a man making a movie, in this case Adam Driver's Toby, (Gilliam's alter-ego we must assume), making his film of 'Don Quixote' and failing and what's left is this glorious mess, a series of scenes, (very fantastical, very Gilliam), that in their way manage to approximate closely to what might have been in a 'real' film version of the novel and in some ways this might be the best version yet.

Jonathan Pryce, (superb as always), is Toby's Quixote, a cobbler the director discovers and who really believes himself the real thing and who also in turn mistakes Toby for his Sancho Panza. Their 'adventures' together make up the Cervantes side of the story until finally, and accidentally, Toby 'kills' off his hero just as perhaps Gilliam killed off the Quixote of his dreams leading, not to the film he wanted to make, but to the film we are watching. It should have been a disaster, and maybe Gilliam thinks it is, but I loved every mad moment.

It's not as funny as it thinks it is or it should be but it is highly imaginative and there are scenes here as good as anything Gilliam has given us. Of course, it helps if you know the movie's backstory, how it came to be made etc.; there's certainly more here than meets the eye. If Pryce's Don never finds his Dulcinea, Toby does in the form of Angelica, (the lovely Joana Ribeiro), the village girl cast as Dulcinea and in the end it's Toby who becomes his own Quixote. All the performances are fine and, of course in typically Gilliam fashion, it looks terrific, so even if it's not perfect it's so much better than we had any right to expect. Don't listen to its critics and seek this one out for yourselves.

2 DAYS IN THE VALLEY **

 Something of a mess, (I think it's meant to be a black comedy), but this amalgam of stories set, as the title tells us, over "2 Days in the Valley", involving a dozen or so characters is at least a very enjoyable mess with a terrific cast while the stories themselves are very nicely linked together. What it lacks is a decent script. That terrific cast aren't given the material to sink their collective teeth into so players as talented as Charlize Theron, Marsha Mason, James Spader, Eric Stoltz, Keith Carradine, Jeff Daniels and Teri Hatcher never rise to the occasion. Only Danny Aiello as a not very successful hitman and, surprisingly, Paul Mazursky, gently sending himself up, as a suicidally down-on-his-luck writer/director hit the mark. There's certainly a lot going on and since the main story involves a psychopathic killer, (Spader), it's never less than interesting.

FALLING *

 Often terrifically well acted and very nicely directed and yet this tale of the fractious relationship between a middle-aged gay son and his elderly homophobic father never catches fire. Perhaps the fault lies with the screenplay which seems to search too hard for 'drama' or maybe it's the continuing jumping back and forth between the past and the present so our attention is never really focused. Long before we get to the half way mark we get the point and we soon tire of the father's bile and the son's self-sacrificing.

The writer and the director and the actor playing the middle-aged son are all Viggo Mortensen which makes you wonder how much, if any, of himself is invested in his character and if there is why don't we feel anything. Cliche climbs upon cliche, (during one argument the climatic scene of "Red River" is playing on the television), until it all becomes very tiresome. That said, Lance Henriksen is terrific as the father, Sverrir Gudnason is very good as his younger self and both Mortensen and Laura Linney, in much too small a role, are first-rate as the grown-up children. For Mortensen this may have been a labour of love but it's one that has backfired. Let's call it an interesting failure.

RULES DON'T APPLY ***

 This was the movie that brought Warren Beatty out of his own self-imposed retirement playing Howard Hughes at much the same advanced age as Beatty was at the time. There are two plots going on in "Rules Don't Apply", one involving Hughes' attempts at keeping TWA in the air, so to speak, and the other involving Lily Collins as a starlet who has come to Hollywood to audition for Hughes and who starts up an on-again, off-again romance with one of Hughes' drivers, (Alden Ehrenreich).

It might have looked like a very good idea at the script stage, (Beatty not only stars and directs but co-wrote the original story with Bo Goldman as well as writing the screenplay), and yet the film's a mess, a very charming mess I admit but a mess nevertheless. Beatty was still able to convince an all-star cast to contribute cameos including Mrs. Beatty herself as Collin's uptight mother and the film itself, (set in the years 1959 and 1964), looks great.

It flopped, of course, not being rom-com enough to appeal to contemporary rom-com audiences and not being enough of a biopic or movie about the movies to appeal to film aficionados and yet it is a very difficult film to dislike. There are some really fine sequences here and Ehrenreich displays real star quality, (I'm still waiting for him to break through into the big time). Maybe one day it will be rediscovered as a cult movie and I'm certainly looking forward to revisiting it.

THE COWARD ***

 This Satyajit Ray movie, made in 1965, is virtually unknown here and while it's not one of his great masterpieces it is very fine and well worth seeing. "The Coward" is very much a chamber piece with really only three main speaking parts. The great Soumitra Chatterjee is Amitabha Roy, the screenwriter who finds himself stranded in a remote backwater after his car breaks down. He is 'rescued' by a friendly plantation owner, (Haradhan Bannerjee),, who invites him home for the evening but when he gets there he discovers the plantation owner's wife, (the equally great Madhavi Mukherjee), is his old love he let go years before. He still carries a torch for her but she seems indifferent to him.

Is Chatterjee the coward of the title for not committing himself to Mukherjee when he had the chance or is she the coward, unable or unwilling to face up to her feelings in the present? In just seventy minutes Ray presents us with a devastating character study as he peels away layers from each of the three protagonists revealing the feelings and the frustrations beneath. (He's also not afraid to tackle issues like colonialism and the caste system). In the grand scheme of things this may be 'minor' Ray and yet it is a film that will stay in your memory long after it's over.

MUSIC BOX no stars

 It's hard to believe that the same Costa-Gavras who made "Z" and "Missing" made this thick-eared melodrama about a war crimes trial. Costa-Gavras' heart may have been in the right place but his ultra-liberal agenda clearly got the better of him and everything is written in capital letters, every T crossed and every I dotted with no room for manoeuvre.

Armin Mueller-Stahl is the man accused of being a former member of an SS death squad now being defended by his daughter, no less (Jessica Lange doing her best to underplay). A totally miscast Frederic Forrest is the prosecutor and real-life judge James Zagel, acting under the name of J. S. Block, is the presiding judge.

Perhaps in Europe, 20 years earlier, Costa-Gavras might have made something out of this material but this is a Hollywood version of the Holocaust and Hollywood has never been known for its subtlety so what should have been shocking or at least moving is now merely offensive while the father/daughter scenario completely backfires. As always Mueller-Stahl is very good but even his performance is not enough to save this deeply mediocre film.

PERSUASION no stars

 Almost nothing about this new version of Jane Austen's "Persuasion" works from its multi-cultural cast, (perfect in "Bridgerton", incongruous in Austen), its mismatched central pair of lovers, (Dakota Johnson and Cosmo Jarvis), or our heroine's constant asides to the audience. The comedy is forced, the romance never catches fire and any attempts at making it all feel more 'modern' totally backfires. It's a Netflix production and it does have that 'made-for-tv' look about it. In the end it's left to Richard E. Grant as Mr. Elliot to give it whatever lift it has but his part is much too small to make much of an impression. A major disappointment.

THE WEAPON **

 The most interesting thing about this Val Guest directed thriller is its use of actual London locations, something of a rarity at the time, and which gives it that touch of realism missing in the script. Overall, "The Weapon" isn't a bad little B-Movie, about a boy, (Jon Whiteley, Britain's favourite child star until Haley Mills came along), who finds a gun in some ruins and accidently shoots another boy with it. Of course that means young Whitely takes off while said gun had been used in a murder ten years before and it's up to Steve Cochran, Herbert Marshall and seemingly not very concerned mother Lizabeth Scott to find the boy before the killer does as well as catch the killer at the same time. It's a decent enough plot and Guest handles it more than competently. Unfortunately the performances let it down making this more of a guilty pleasure rather than a contender but it's still a pleasure and worth seeing.

MONEYBOYS no stars

 The clue may lie in the title. "Moneyboys" is about male sex workers in Taiwan and one sex worker in particular. Liang Fei, (Kai Ko), is gay and has moved from his village to the city where he can be himself or at least use his body in ways he couldn't back home and it's there he finds love but not happiness. C. B. Yi's feature debut is a slow, depressing film with an unsympathetic hero. It's certainly well made and Yi uses the widescreen to good effect but without what we might call a 'story' or characters we can identify with or feel anything for this is something of a long haul and a dull one at that.

MISTER BUDDWING no stars

 A good director, (Delbert Mann), and a fine cast, (James Garner, Jean Simmons, Suzanne Pleshette, Angela Lansbury, Katharine Ross), can do nothing to save what the French might call a 'pot de merde'. "Mister Buddwing" is based on an Evan Hunter novel and has Garner waking up in Central Park not knowing who he is; he's the amnesiac to end all amnesiacs and he spends this dumb movie wandering around New York looking for himself and a woman named Grace, (well, he does remember that much), meeting mostly women who may or may not be said Grace. There are flashbacks to an earlier life that are just as bad as the scenes in the present. Is this meant to be a drama, a thriller or, God forbid, a comedy, (it's certainly unintentionally funny), and what audience did they think would pay money to see it? Garner himself hated it; 'the worst film I've ever been in', he said and he most probably was right.