FALLEN LEAVES ****

 Ansa, (Alma Poysti) and Holappa, (Jussi Vatanen), are the "Fallen Leaves" of the title, cast adrift on the winds of fate and finally blown together as people often are. You might say they are two of life's losers; she works in a supermarket but is fired for taking home out-of-date produce while he is an alcoholic manual worker, fired after having an accident at work while drunk. In fact, you could say they are destined to be together.

Often laugh out loud funny, touching and melancholic in almost equal measure "Fallen Leaves" is one of cinema's great love stories and confirms director Aki Kaurismaki as one of the finest and most original directors alive today, a man whose empathy with the characters he has created is totally true and utterly lacking in condescension. I can't think of another director who could have told their story in this way without resorting to digs at the characters just to please his audience. Rather Kaurismaki and his two wonderful actors draw us in gradually until no outcome other than the one he gives us could possibly be the 'right' one. This is his best film in years and is quite simply a small masterpiece.

HOW TO BLOW UP A PIPELINE ***

 It may not have the most appealing title and there's a conspicuous lack of 'stars' but this independently made 'eco-thriller' may be the best thriller you will see this year. Basically you could say it does what it says on the tin as a group of 'eco-warriors', (good performances from a largely unknown cast), set out to sabotage the pipeline of the title. Think of it as a heist performed by eager, well-intentioned amateurs but with the pipeline standing in for the bank vault while director Daniel Goldhaber displays the same ability as the young John Sayles for eliciting first-rate work from his fresh young cast and for giving the film the feel of a documentary.

It's also genuinely exciting; for starters these guys are dealing with high explosives that could go off at any time with deadly results and secondly, whether or not you agree with their agenda, they remain a sundry bunch of criminals packing weapons and perhaps capable of anything. A neat ending, too, that isn't as predictable as you might think. All in all, one worth seeking out.

A VIGILANTE no stars

 The title says it all and not in a good way. "A Vigilante" has another abused woman fighting back scenario wrapped up as piece of cheap exploitation rather than as a serious study with the opening five minutes telling us all we need to know about what will follow. We are clearly in 'Death Wish' territory but this highly offensive film makes the Michael Winner movie seem like some kind of progressive masterpiece which it clearly wasn't.

Olivia Wilde is the kick-ass, (and a lot else), vigilante of the title who takes it on herself to rid abused women and children of their abusers. Written and directed by a woman, Sarah Daggar-Nickson, (Daggar? Can she be real?), the film, rather than highlighting the issues of abuse, by the sheer offensiveness of its tone and the almost total lack of talent up on the screen, seems almost misogynistic in its treatment of women. Shocking as in shockingly bad.

REINDEER GAMES **

 The critics hated it, (and basically so did the public), but John Frankenheimer's "Reindeer Games" is a surprisingly enjoyable movie let down only by a weak performance from Ben Affleck as the ex-con who finds himself embroiled in a Christmas heist, hence the title. It may not be one of Frankenheimer's better films but it's certainly not the Christmas turkey that its reputation might suggest and if Affleck lets the side down there's compensation in the form of Charlize Theron, Gary Sinise and Dennis Farina.

As written by Ehren Kruger it's a piece of pulp fiction with no pretensions to being anything else and it's a lot more violent than you might expect; it may be set during the season of goodwill but there's very little of that on display. In fact, it's just the kind of Christmas movie for people who hate Christmas movies. The plot may be totally daft but that's half the fun and Sinise makes for a terrific villain. A cult movie if there ever was one.

THE BURIAL ***

 Two absolutely terrific, Oscar-worthy performances from Jamie Foxx as a hot-shot, ambulance chasing lawyer and Tommy Lee Jones as his client, a funeral director suing a multi-million dollar company raise this feel-good courtroom movie to an altogether higher level. "The Burial" is a David and Goliath story based roughly on fact and it's hugely entertaining helped considerably by a cracker of a script by Doug Wright and director Maggie Betts from Jonathan Harr's 'New Yorker' article and a first-rate supporting cast that includes Jurnee Smollett, Bill Camp, Alan Ruck, Mamaudou Athie, Pamela Reed and Dorian Missick, all at their best. Indeed, "The Burial" is the kind of funny, smart, big-hearted movie we see much too seldom these days. I loved every minute.

THE KILLER ****

 There was a time when a David Fincher movie was something of an event but not any more. Movies like "The Game" and "Panic Room" were disappointments although he made a sterling comeback with "The Social Network" and showed he could still turn out a Grade A thriller with "Gone Girl". "Mank", however, for all the arty posturings, seemed like a step backward. Also he hasn't been particularly prolific with only twelve features in the last thirty years and, taken on face value, there was no reason to expect "The Killer", his first film in three years, would be anything but another disappointment, just another addition to the 'assassin-for-hire' genre but Fincher's never been a man to be discounted and this might just be the movie that will redeem him. It's certainly the best thing he's done since "The Social Network", a visually stunning, funny, exciting and hugely enjoyable entertainment and Fincher directs it magnificently.

Perhaps to work as well as it does, of course, it needs the right actor at the centre and in Michael Fassbender it certainly has that. With his granite features Fassbender is the perfect man to play an assassin...or James Bond, take your pick. The problem is he constantly looks like an assassin whether he's aiming a gun at someone or buying a pint of milk which, of course, may be no bad thing if you're dealing with the bad guys. The plot is the old chestnut of the hit that goes wrong meaning the hitter then becomes the target. We've seen it a hundred times before but seldom done with this much brio or style.

Fassbender is never off the screen which means any other actors of note, (Arliss Howard, Charles Parnell, Tilda Swinton), are merely satellites buzzing around him but they do what they have to do very nicely and in Swinton's case quite brilliantly while Andrew Kevin Walker's quick-witted and genuinely funny script from Alexis Nolent and Luc Luc Jacamon's illustrated novel tackles all the cliches head on, often pulling the rug away when we least expect it. In an age when so many movies look and sound just the like the one before it's a pleasure to find one as enjoyable and as original as this.

POSSESSOR no stars

 It certainly runs in the family though it could be said that nothing David Cronenberg did touched son Brandon's penchant for gore and sexual explicitness . Right from the start you need to have a strong constitution to watch "Possessor" without flinching. However, like his father, Brandon has a keen eye for a good image and whatever else you may say about "Possessor" it looks good, at least those bits of it that I saw; not being a fan of extreme gore I did shut my eyes several times.

The plot is a daft hybrid of sci-fi and 'assassin-for-hire' as Andrea Riseborough, through brain implant technology, (that's what it says on the synopsis), is able to inhabit other people's bodies turning them into disposable assassins. It seems like a clever idea though it never feels particularly original so it's left to Cronenberg's flashy direction of less than brilliant material to keep it together.

Unfortunately Cronenberg is more interested in shocking us than either entertaining or engaging us or indeed even keeping us up to speed, (maybe I just didn't pay close enough attention). Again like his dad he clearly has talent, making you wish he would apply it to something less silly than this. Jennifer Jason Leigh, Christopher Abbot and Sean Bean are also on hand but no-one in the cast is given the opportunity to break out of their limited, one-dimensional roles. Less yuckiness and less gobbledygook might have saved it but as it stands it's something of an offensive mess but at least one you are likely to forget five minutes after it's over.

SEQUIN IN A BLUE ROOM no stars

 The opening credits tell us that "Sequin in a Blue Room" is 'a homosexual film by Samuel Van Grinsven' which should be some kind of warning in itself. Any film that needs to trumpet itself as clearly as this one does also clearly feels the need to draw attention to itself and this one turns out to be an excruciatingly arty piece of gay soft porn as sixteen year old 'Sequin' cruises sex sites for casual one-off pickups leading him to the eponymous Blue Room, a 'no-talking, no-names' sex palace.

If it's Van Grinsven's intention to warn us about the dangers of cruising he obviously fails as Jay Grant's gorgeous cinematography makes it all look very enticing but neither is he interested in giving us any kind of story that we might engage with and apart from Sequin himself, (a pretty, prissy and far from likeable Conor Leach), there's really no one else in the film of any interest, (and even Sequin is a bit of a bore). If you're going to make a gay sex film at least make it sexy or provide a proper plot or characters we can get a handle on. Even at 80 minutes this becomes tedious very quickly.

A HAUNTING IN VENICE no stars

 No-one would deny that Kenneth Branagh is a talented man and, in the right role, is certainly a fine actor but he's no Olivier and he's certainly no Orson Welles but he seems to have the ego of both. He gave us a fine "Henry V" and then an elephantine, full-length "Hamlet" that almost put me off Shakespeare for life. Now it seems he's put the Bard to bed and decided that he's the best man to take on the mantle of Hercule Poirot but I forgot to mention that he's also no Ustinov, Finney or David Suchet.

His remakes of "Murder on the Orient Express" and "Death on the Nile" were both well below par and now he's turned his attention to an Agatha Christie novel not previously filmed. "A Haunting in Venice" is his version of "Hallowe'en Party" and it's just as tawdry as the others. To make matters worse this one lacks the star power we've become accustomed to in movies of this kind. Yes, there's last year's Best Actress Oscar winner Michelle Yeoh as a medium but basically that's it.

As for the rest there's Jamie Dornan acting, or perhaps not 'acting', like he would rather be home in Belfast while his "Belfast" son, Jude Hill, is once again cast as his son. Elsewhere Tina Fey, Kelly Reilly, Camille Cotton, Kyle Allen and a few other less than famous faces mug their way through as various suspects. The setting is a 'haunted' mansion in Venice, there's been a murder and once again we are back in a stationary Orient Express as Branagh locks everyone in until he's solved the case. A disaster that should never have seen the light of day.

KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON ****

 There are some directors whose every new movie is 'an event', a film we have to seek out and judge for ourselves even if the initial reviews have been less than enthusiastic. We must compare these new films with the director's previous work to see where it sits in the canon. Scorsese is clearly one such director and his gigantic "Killers of the Flower Moon", a marathon at around three and a half hours, is one such 'event'. In some circles it has been called a masterpiece and Scorsese's best film in decades. I don't agree with either of these assessments but it is certainly unmissable in its own right and a remarkable piece of cinematic storytelling.

Based on fact it's about the Native Americans of the Osage tribe who found themselves on oil-rich land making them among the richest people in the country, (even if they were still among the most discriminated against), and of how cattle baron William Hale, (Robert De Niro), their supposed friend and benefactor, sought to take their wealth from them even if it meant killing them off one by one.

However, "Killers of the Flower Moon" is not quite like a Scorsese picture; the pace is stately rather than kinetic and it's often more talkative than visual. There are a few of the director's trademark flourishes such as the customary tracking shots but they don't draw attention to themselves. This is very much a heavily plot-based film and it unfolds more like a novel than a film and one relying heavily on its cast.

The central roles are played by Scorsese regulars Leonardo DiCaprio and De Niro and newcomer Lily Gladstone. DiCaprio is the nephew returned from war, a heavy drinker and a weak-willed man, who will do anything for his uncle De Niro, including murder. He's a dour character and DiCaprio plays him dourly. There is no boyish charm on display, (even at age 48 DiCaprio still looks boyish), and while he is more than adequate in the role he still feels miscast, maybe a little too 'modern' for a man of the time. De Niro, on the other hand, is magnificent. In his case this really is his best work in decades, a smiling villain as finely drawn as any created by Shakespeare and he is surely a front runner for the Best Supporting Actor Oscar.

The most difficult role, however, is Gladstone's. She is the rich Osage woman that DiCaprio must woo, marry and dispose of. In the first half of the film she clearly has the upper hand, taking the initiative and using her sexuality to her advantage while in the second half she begins to fade into the background yet must continue to make an impression; she must remain the film's centre of attention and this Gladstone does beautifully.

Indeed, in a large cast there are several outstanding supporting performances from the likes of Jesse Plemons, John Lithgow, Scott Shepherd, Ty Mitchell and country singers Jason Isbell and Sturgill Simpson and they ensure the tale flows freely and never feels like its length. It may not be the best of Scorsese's films or the late masterpiece we might have been hoping for; it feels too 'matter-of-fact' and despite its length almost too constrained by the weight of its subject matter but it is still essential viewing, an 'event' movie worthy of the name. It also has probably the best last ten minutes of any movie you are likely to see this year.

THE COMEDIANS no stars

 Peter Glenville was a fine stage director but he didn't seem to possess the temperament for cinema and consequently the films he made remain in large part actor's pieces but not much else. With this screen version of Graham Greene's "The Comedians", shot in Panavision and on location in the Caribbean, he had the opportunity to branch out and make something expansive and yet the film is dull and sluggish, unforgivably so since it is set in Haiti during the time of Papa Doc and should, at least, have had a sense of danger. Also the casting of Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor was an obvious mistake; they are clearly performing in 'movie star' mode and are in need of a better director and better dialogue. Despite being written by the author himself the film has the stilted ring of a soap opera.

The supporting cast, on the other hand, do go some way in trying to redeem the film. Alec Guinness is a superbly seedy Major Jones, Peter Ustinov a nicely pathetic cuckold and Paul Ford and Lillian Gish are excellent as the naive Smiths, pedaling their creed of vegetarianism. There's also fine work in smaller roles from Roscoe Lee Brown, Raymond St. Jacques, Zakes Mokae and a young James Earl Jones but in the end even the cast can't save the film which amounts to a series of missed opportunities and it just drags along for its 150 minute running time. Perhaps it really needed a Carol Reed to do it justice.

PRIMROSE PATH no stars

 Cast as the tomboy daughter of a family of 'loose women', (not quite identified as prostitutes in this 1940 film), Ginger Rogers was given the chance to show she was more than a great dancer and fine comedienne and failed miserably. She was way too old for the part and considering the background of her character, far too naive. She falls for nice guy Joel McCrea, also totally miscast, and marries him but when he meets her family their marriage runs into trouble.

"Primrose Path" was a cliche-ridden mess only marginally redeemed by Marjorie Rambeau's performance as Ginger's no-good mother, (Rambeau was Oscar-nominated). The director was Gregory LaCava who did his best with the material which was based on Victoria Lincoln's novel "February Hill" and the subsequent play by Robert L. Buckner and Walter Hart but by 1940 it already seemed three decades out of date. Of course, in the same year Ginger also made "Kitty Foyle", a somewhat better romantic melodrama, and won the Academy Award. She didn't deserve it but at least in "Kitty Foyle" she showed some of the skill that had made her a household name. "Primrose Path" is best forgotten.

UNDER SUSPICION *

 Another case of America taking a fairly well-known 'foreign language' film and remaking it for audiences who don't like reading subtitles and probably haven't seen the original, in this case Claude Miller's "Garde a vue". As it turns out, I haven't seen the original either so this 'did-he-or-didn't-he-do-it' thriller wasn't ruined for me by any knowledge of the outcome. This is very much a talkative, character-driven piece with Morgan Freeman as the police chief and Gene Hackman as his friend and now murder suspect.

Two young girls have been raped and murdered and Hackman has found the body of the second victim but is now the prime suspect in both killings and has been brought in for interrogation during which we get, not just the events surrounding the murders, but Hackman's life and marriage dissected with Freeman breaking down the fourth wall by entering into events as a character.

I found this device alienating rather than involving and the material itself somewhat old-hat but what just about redeems the film is, as has been so often the case, Hackman's performance. He strips his character to the bone making him a truly tragic figure in a film that aspires to tragedy but which never rises above the routine. I can only presume the French version was better.

SICK OF MYSELF ***

 Poor Signe, (a brilliant Kristine Kujath Thorp), doesn't get a lot of attention, particularly not from her boyfriend Thomas, (Eirik Saether), for whom craving attention is like his need for oxygen. Then one day day a woman staggers into the bakery where Signe works, covered in blood, and falls into Signe's arms. Later Signe walks home wearing her blood-splattered clothing and suddenly finds she is getting at least some attention and so begins Kristoffer Borgli's brilliant and very black 'body-horror' comedy "Sick of Myself".

Of course, the more Thomas ignores Signe the more she goes out of her way to feign illness but when that doesn't work she goes to even greater extremes like taking a drug she's read about online and which causes severe facial disfigurement. Now Thomas is taking notice but is it enough?

"Sick of Myself" is the blackest of black comedies, taking in not just body horror but brilliantly lampooning our constant need to be the centre of attention, to be looked at and talked about in this age of social media. Both Signe and Thomas suffer from it though both react differently; Signe in disfiguring herself and Thomas in stealing stuff which he uses in his exhibitions, (he's an artist who wants to be more famous than he is). Disturbing and very funny in equal measure, this is unquestionably the most original and best comedy you are likely to see all year.

SNATCH ***

 This classic British gangster comedy is just the type of film Quentin Tarantino might have made if he had been born and raised in London's East End but Guy Ritchie's "Snatch" is a lot funnier than anything Tarantino has given us and it's got one of the best casts, as well as one of the daftest, yet most original, plots of any 'heist' movie although any attempt at summing it up would be wasted.

This is a movie that is best approached raw; just sit back and revel in Ritchie's quick-fire direction, his brilliant and, at times, incomprehensible dialogue and that terrific cast, (Brad Pitt, who may as well be speaking in tongues, might just be giving his best performance here). All you need to know is that involves a very large diamond, a lot of very incompetent gangsters, a load of gypsies, of whom Brad Pitt is one, and Benicio Del Toro as a gambler called Frankie Four Fingers. This is a movie you might even call obscenely enjoyable.

THE WOMAN IN QUESTION no stars

 "The Woman in Question" may be the least well-known of Anthony Asquith's films and to be honest, I'm not surprised. It's a fairly routine 'Rashomon'-style murder yarn. Jean Kent is the victim and we see her through the eyes of five different people, (the movie's told in a series of flashbacks), each one describing her in very different terms giving Kent a chance to display what little acting chops she had.

It's got a decent enough cast, (a young Dirk Bogarde, Hermione Baddeley, excellent as a gossipy landlady, Stewart Granger lookalike John McCallum, Susan Shaw, Charles Victor, taking the acting honors and the always reliable Duncan Macrae as the investigating copper), but the script's poor and the film's only 'novelty value' lies in which version of the truth is true, if any.

It's a nice idea, badly handled and Bogarde's dreadful, initially putting on a terrible American accent before actually admitting he's from Liverpool which in itself takes some swallowing. Bogarde and Asquith completists may get something out of it but everyone else should give it a wide berth.

FAIR PLAY **

 No-one can say we're not getting our fair share of psychological 'thrillers' these days. Like buses, as soon as one comes along there's another one behind. The question is, are they any good as in, are they original, are they 'thrilling' and how soon will overkill set in. "Fair Play" is actually very good indeed as well as being highly original. It's set in the world of high finance where the term 'cutthroat' can be both metaphorical and literal especially if sex is also involved. Emily, (Phoebe Dynevor) and Luke, (Alden Ehrenreich, in a role finally worthy of his considerable talents), work together but have been hiding their relationship from colleagues. When one of the them gets a promotion things in general start to go pear-shaped.

What distinguishes "Fair Play" from its rivals is its attention to detail. Here we have an environment that feels painfully real and a plot that initially might seem unlikely yet doesn't actually feel that contrived. It's not perfect. I found it hard to believe that its protagonists could not only live together but also be engaged without anyone at work catching on. Nevertheless, as a movie about the toxicity of office politics where men and women think they can compete on an equal footing with disastrous results "Fair Play" ultimately lands a gut-punch thanks largely to terrific performances from Dynevor and especially from Ehrenreich as well as an excellent turn from Eddie Marsan as the boss from hell. Not necessarily pleasant viewing but certainly a cut above.

REPTILE **

 This slow-burner of a murder yarn may just turn out to be the best thriller of the year. A realtor is found dead by her colleague and partner who naturally becomes a suspect but then there are a few other men in her life who are also suspects; so far, so common-place but Grant Singer's "Reptile" is as much about the police investigating the killing as it is about the investigation. These are a close-knit bunch of cops who both work and play together and who may not be as clean as they should be.

A sterling cast, (Benicio Del Torro, Alicia Silverstone, Justin Timberlake, Eric Bogosian, Michael Pitt, Frances Fisher), add a further touch of class to an already classy thriller and one that is as far from conventional multiplex fare as you are likely to get. It may not always be that easy to follow and midway through the killing seems to fade into the background but it's always highly intelligent and while it may not appeal to a mass audience I think it has cult status written all over it.

PLEASE BABY PLEASE no stars

 Beyond bad! The credit sequence is just dandy so long as you love pinks, blues, highly stylised camp and a little violence. Amanda Kramer's "Please Baby Please" is more of a homage to Kathryn Bigelow's "The Loveless" than it is to "Absolute Beginners" but with a very Queer agenda and while visually this is often easy on the eye its socio-political posturings are very hard to swallow and given the dreadful dialogue they have to speak leads Andrea Riseborough and Harry Mellings simply can't create characters who either seem real or with whom we can empathize.

You might call "Please Baby Please" a queer, feminist, art-house semi-musical shot, again in homage to films of the past, in Panavision and giving Demi Moore the 'guest starring' role. It is, in other words, pretentious in a very bad way, a one-of-a-kind movie that makes you glad it is; at least another one won't be coming along any time soon. What attracted Riseborough to rubbish like this is a mystery.

TIGHT SPOT **

 Excellent, hard-boiled crime movie that wastes no time in getting down to the action and then never really lets up, despite its enclosed setting, (it was based on a play). Ginger Rogers, (very good), is the tough-talking jailbird taken from prison so she can testify against the mob though Ginger isn't too keen on talking and the mob aren't too keen in keeping her alive.

Brian Keith is the cop whose job it is to ensure she stays alive and Edward G. Robinson, (superb as ever), is the District Attorney who wants her to testify. The director of "Tight Spot" was Phil Karlson and this was right up his street and it's still one of his best films. Talkative, yes, but then the talk is good and while it may have been a B-Movie it was certainly a first-class one.

THE BARRETTS OF WIMPOLE STREET ***

 Sidney Franklin's first screen version of "The Barretts of Wimpole Street", (he remade it again in 1957), is a ridiculously entertaining period piece about the blossoming romance between the poets Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett, (Fredric March and Norma Shearer, both excellent in their very Hollywood way), and how finally Elizabeth and the rest of the Barrett clan, (there were nine of them), rebelled against their tyrannical father, (a superb Charles Laughton, at the time only three years older than Shearer).

It was a very typical prestige production of the period. Irving G. Thalberg was the producer and he obviously chose it as a vehicle for the missus, (he was married to Shearer at the time), but it's almost stolen by Maureen O'Sullivan, surprisingly good as one of the Barrett girls and Una O'Connor is a delight, gliding across the room as if on wheels. The source was a play by Rudolph Besier and it's the kind of thing that would have gone down a treat on the London and Broadway stage, the archetypical 'well-made-play'. Yes, it's decidedly old-fashioned and very talkative and unlikely to appeal to today's audiences but it's also very good, a little on the camp side certainly but a very fine example of just how good the studio system could be at its best.

DONKEY SKIN *

 Jacques Demy was certainly a frivolous film-maker but what's wrong with frivolity in the name of art? "Peau D'ane" was his very literal fairy-tale made in homage to Cocteau's "La Belle et Le Bete" down to the casting of Jean Marais among a litany of famous French actors and while it was never going to be in the Cocteau class it certainly looks like a highly attractive entertainment and features a luminous Catherine Deneuve in the central role of a princess who must flee her home when she is forced to marry her own father, the king, (don't ask!).

Naturally, this being a Jacques Demy film every tiny detail of its production design is close to perfect and the cast, that also includes Delphine Seyrig, Jacques Perrin and Micheline Presle throw themselves into the confection with abandon and yet it's all a little too twee to be considered among Demy's better works. It might appeal to little French girls and bigger French boys with a crush on the gorgeous Deneuve but Demy aficionados will be disappointed. Oh, and the songs are pretty bad, too.

BARBIE ***

 "Barbie" is undoubtedly one of the most enjoyable films I've seen this year and yet it's also the most infuriating. Highly imaginative, (it's got the best pre-credit sequence in years), and laugh-out-loud funny it's got ideas to burn and therein lies the problem. Director and co-writer, (with partner Noah Baumbach), Greta Gerwig has set out to make the ultimate feminist tract dressed up in the brightest of pinks as a satire and while it works perfectly well as a satire full of self-conscious digs at its very creation, (we are constantly being reminded this is a movie called "Barbie" that we're watching), it's as a tract that it's in danger of sinking. That it doesn't is very much to Gerwig's credit; she's much too smart to really ruin her product and there is an awful lot here to enjoy.

The thin plot has Barbie and Ken leaving Barbieland for the real world so Barbie can repair some sort of hole in the spectrum or some such nonsense that has allowed 'real' feelings (of a negative kind) to slip in and, naturally, since this is a film about dolls coming to life, it's decidedly silly and if had stayed silly it might have been inconsequential fun but Gerwig and Baumbach wants this to be 'consequential' fun, a laugh-a-minute message movie. Unfortunately one message doesn't appear to be enough; there were times I felt I was being battered to death by a giant message-wielding Barbie and by the time Will Ferrell's CEO of Mattel has left the real world for Barbieland the laughs had begun to dry up.

Perhaps if someone had snipped about 20 minutes from the running time and dropped a few of the film's sermons this might have been the classic it was clearly aiming to be; that said, there are a lot of plusses here. It looks fantastic, the best gags are as good as anything Gerwig or Baumbach have given us in the past and best of all, it's got a couple of living dolls worthy of the name.

Margot Robbie was born to play Barbie, (there's even an in-joke about her in the movie), and, of course, she's wonderful and yet the film isn't hers. Barbie really belongs to Ryan Gosling who might become the first actor to be Oscar-nominated for playing a doll and given that the film is structured to make him a mouthpiece for its creators he brings an uncanny degree of feeling to the role and his performance is up there with his very best. As for Gerwig, maybe now that she's got her inner Barbie out of her system she might finally settle down to make comedies that are funny and meaningful and leave the sermons at home. We already know how good she can be.

OPPENHEIMER ****

 Like Martin Scorsese and Alfred Hitchcock before him Christopher Nolan is one of the few directors who can guarantee a paying audience as surely as any of the big box-office draws in the acting profession. A film-maker of great skill he has nevertheless often eschewed 'seriousness' to work, if not necessarily in the 'popcorn' market, then certainly in the commercial field and that's where he has built up his following. But what will his followers think of "Oppenheimer"? Will today's movie-going generation even know who J. Robert Oppenheimer was, (at the full-house screening I attended I saw two people leave), and can Nolan do justice to his subject?

To that last question the answer is undoubtedly yes. As I say Nolan is a film-maker of great skill and "Oppenheimer" is unquestionably his best film to date. It's an old-school epic, three hours long, superbly shot on the biggest of canvases and with an all-star cast even if some of those Oscar-winning actors are reduced to cameos, (Gary Oldman as a devious Harry Truman). At its centre there's a terrific performance from Irish actor Cillian Murphy as Oppenheimer, chosen perhaps for his slight resemblance to the man but also because Nolan clearly saw in Murphy talents other of his screen roles never fully explored.

Of course, in typical Nolan fashion the narrative isn't linear. The film may begin with Oppenheimer the Cambridge student and end with Oppenheimer the decorated old man but in-between Nolan skips back and forth in time, shooting both in colour and in black and white and framing his film around two sets of 'hearings', one in which Oppenheimer, late in his career, appears before a committee of three to see if his security clearance will be renewed, knowing that this is nothing more than a kangaroo court; the other, filmed in black and white, the much larger senate committee hearings set up to determine the suitability of Lewis Strauss to be U.S. Secretary of Commerce in Eisenhower's government and in this role Robert Downey Jr. not only give the best performance of his career but should be a shoo-in for the Best Supporting Actor Oscar. These scenes form the backbone of the film and may prove too talkative for Nolan's customary audience. That said, this is a beautifully composed and highly intelligent picture, clearly aimed at an adult audience. I wouldn't be at all surprised if it sweeps the boards at next year's Oscars.

BEAU IS AFRAID ***

 It's little wonder "Beau Is Afraid" since his life is hell. You might even say he lives in Hell and the demons in his life are determined he won't get out. When Ari Aster's magnificent mess of a new movie opens Beau is due to travel home to visit his mom on the anniversary of his father's death but those demons and circumstances in general contrive to keep him in his hell-hole of an apartment in his unnamed city where street violence is a given 24/7. It takes a car hitting him at speed just to get him away from the apartment he seemed fearful of leaving in the first place.

Beau is played by Joaquin Phoenix, never off the screen in this three hour movie and giving us yet another tour-de-force performance and that car is driven by Amy Ryan who, rather than take him to a hospital, brings him to her home where her husband Nathan Lane is a doctor. It looks like they want to 'adopt' this sad, depressed and fearful middle-aged man but Beau is determined to make it 'home' to mother, (Patti LuPone when she finally does appear and not the kind of mom anyone would want to spend time with).

His journey there is a Kafkaesque nightmare that culminates in a Kafkaesque trial with Beau the hapless prisoner in the dock. Like "Hereditary" and "Midsommar"  before it, "Beau is Afraid" is a horror movie that exists in its own Asteresque fantasy world and yes, like any good horror film it's deeply unsettling while at the same time being very funny but at three hours it also goes way beyond its point of tolerance. There are sequences here, spread throughout that epic running time, as good as anything you will see this year and yet at other times there are scenes that either seem to miss the point or just drag on too long. The word that seems to be missing from Aster's vocabulary is 'cut'; knock forty minutes or so off the 179 minute running time and this might have been a really great film. As it stands it may be a bit of a mess but it also confirms Aster as one of the most exciting people making movies today. Personally I can't wait to see what he does next.

OUTSIDE THE WALL no stars

 A very average B-Movie from the little-known Crane Wilbur, "Outside the Wall" finds basically innocent, nice guy Richard Basehart getting out of prison after serving 15 years on a murder rap committed when he was 14 and falling into bad company in the form of gold-digging nurse Marilyn Maxwell and ex-con John Hoyt's wife Signe Hasso and her murderous associates, one of whom happens to be Harry Morgan. It's certainly nobody's finest hour, least of all Basehart's, though both Maxwell and Hasso just about redeem themselves and Morgan makes for a surprisingly good villain. Unfortunately the far-fetched plot is wafer thin and Wilbur's direction is poor. One to avoid.

HOPSCOTCH **

 If Ronald Neame was never likely to be considered an auteur he could usually be relied upon to give us some good solid entertainments of which "Hopscotch" was one. It's an amiable comedy-thriller with the emphasis more on the comedy than on the thrills with Walter Matthau as an ageing. Disgruntled CIA agent who 'retires' and then writes a 'tell all' book about the organization forcing him to go on the run.

Matthau never turned in a bad performance and more often than not turned in some pretty terrific ones. Here he's got the late, great Glenda Jackson as back up and although she gets star billing her's is more of a supporting role and something of a waste of her talents. Faring a lot better are Sam Waterston, Herbert Lom and especially Ned Beatty. If the film itself is no classic, (it's much too far-fetched for that), in it's daft way it is certainly entertaining.

ASTEROID CITY **

 You might describe Wes Anderson's "Asteroid City" as the most Wes Anderson of Wes Anderson's films or even the most marmite movie ever made and I'm sure it's a film that will divide even his most ardent admirers. Personally speaking I'm still not sure where I stand on it; there is a lot here I liked and yet for about the first twenty minutes or so it seemed like a film I was destined to hate.

To say what it's about would clearly be a waste of time since it isn't really 'about' anything. I've often described Anderson's films as being like a series of New Yorker cartoons brought to life but they were New Yorker cartoons embedded in some pretty decent storytelling. Here he seems to have dispensed with storytelling altogether and just given us the cartoons voiced by his all-star cast. For a good deal of the time it works though sometimes the 'cleverness' just falls flat.

It's really another 'movie-within-a-movie' though as we are told by narrator Bryan Cranston at the beginning what we are seeing is a play in three acts, interrupted by inserts of 'behind the scenes' stuff. You could say the inserts represent real-life; everything else is the play with Anderson choosing black-and-white Academy ratio for the reality and widescreen and colour for the play which is set in the fictional Asteroid City of the title and where a group of junior star-gazers and others find themselves. The year is 1955, atomic tests are going on in the background and there's a spaceship and an alien on the prowl.

To be honest it's probably the slightest of all Anderson's constructs but it's certainly gorgeous to look at and given that they have nothing tangible to do or say the cast are actually very good and it's often very funny. It's certainly a marked improvement on "The French Dispatch" but I still long for the days of "The Royal Tennebaums", "The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou" or "Moonrise Kingdom" where the actors not only had roles they could flesh out but where Anderson found a humanity in the clever wordplay and where the background stayed in the background. The way he is going now he may as well ditch the actors altogether and just film his admittedly eye-candy sets.

GUILTY BY SUSPICION no stars

 Yet another movie about the HUAC and the Hollywood Ten but far from the best. Irwin Winkler directed and was given screenplay credit after the original writer Abraham Polonsky insisted on having his name removed from the credits, (the central character is based on Polonsky). Winkler takes a gloves-on approach and yet one at times that seems to border on hysteria and despite a first-rate cast this is still a pretty terrible movie.

Robert De Niro is the Polonsky character, a director returning to Hollywood in the middle of a communist witch-hunt where it seems anyone working is an informer and anyone who doesn't 'name names' can't get a job. It's fundamentally fiction but fiction that mixes in real characters such as Darryl F. Zanuck, Sterling Hayden, Howard Da Silva etc. For added 'authenticity', (there's even an abysmal reference to "High Noon"), but this only reduces everything to the level of caricature and as movies about Hollywood in general go, this one is way down the pecking order.

De Niro, probably thinking by appearing he was doing his bit for 'liberalism', tries very hard throughout to make his character seem in some way profound but fails miserably. Annette Bening is his faithful ex-wife, Martin Scorsese, in a good cameo, is a director based on Joseph Losey but it's left to Sam Wanamaker as a lawyer on the side of the committee rather than his clients to give the film a modicum of class. The movie does kick-start magnificently in the last ten minutes when De Niro gets in front of the committee and does his Joseph N. Welch bit but by then it's much too late. How could a movie with this subject matter and this cast be this bad?

ROBBERY **

 Peter Yates' "Robbery" may be based on the Great Train Robbery but it begins with a spectacular car chase through the streets of London after a robbery of a lesser kind. It may not be up to the standard of Yates' later "Bullitt" or "The French Connection" but as car chases go it does the business and sets the scene for an above average crime flic and one that's been largely forgotten.

Stanley Baker, who also co-produced, is the mastermind and other villains include Barry Foster, Frank Finlay, George Sewell, Clinton Greyn and William Marlowe while an unlikely James Booth is on the side of the law. It came at the tail-end of a good period for British crime movies and was probably influential in giving Yates his break in America. Joanna Pettet gets star billing as Baker's wife but may as well not be in the picture.

A PAGE OF MADNESS ***

 This avant-garde silent classic is like a Japanese version of "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari" and since there are no inter-titles we have to figure out for ourselves what is happening, not always easy when the imagery is as elusive as this. Of course, the title "A Page of Madness" and the setting, presumably a mental hospital or asylum, should be more than enough but as for figuring out what is 'real' and what is not, now that's another matter entirely but then, you may ask yourself, in a film like this should we worry too much about 'plot'. Better instead to concentrate on Kinugasa's extraordinary direction, his brilliant use of the camera and the incredible performances of his cast which seem to go beyond anything as simple as mere acting. If this were a Russian or German film it would probably be high in the polls of the greatest films ever made and yet it is hardly known at all. You may not understand it but I defy you not to be blown away by it.

PRIVATE WORLDS no stars

 I suppose in 1935 this was considered a fairly daring movie; a 'serious' look at psychiatry and the goings-on in a mental hospital, clearly designed to educate as much as entertain. Times have changed, however and today "Private Worlds", directed by the redoubtable Gregory LaCava from Phyllis Bottome's novel appears both ridiculously outdated and patronizing as progressive doctor Claudette Colbert, (miscast), and new superintendent psychiatrist Charles Boyer learn not only to work together but to fall in love at the same time.

At least both these actors are sufficiently talented to spark off each other when together though the rest of the cast are very much a mixed bag. As the doctor passed over for promotion in favour of Boyer and his mousy wife Joel McCrea and Joan Bennett are frankly terrible but Helen Vinson as Boyer's pushy sister who seems to be suffering from more than a little dose of nymphomania and the great Esther Dale as the old-fashioned matron are fun to watch. It may not be much of a movie but in its sensationalism, (some scenes could be lifted from Samuel Fuller's "Shock Corridor"), at least it's entertaining.

GERONIMO, AN AMERICAN LEGEND ***

 One of Walter Hill's very best pictures and one of the most underrated of all Westerns, "Geronimo, An American Legend", deals only with that period when Geronimo jumped the reservation having initially surrendered to General Crook until his final surrender and imprisonment in Florida and it's a film very much on the side of the Native American.

Geronimo, beautifully played by Wes Studi, is neither hero nor villain but simply a proud man forced to take a stand when circumstance dictates. It's a violent and certainly an action-packed picture that doesn't sensationalize events or exploit its protagonists. To give it an added air of authenticity it is narrated by a young lieutenant played by Matt Damon and there are fine performances from Jason Patric, Gene Hackman (General Crook) and Robert Duvall as an embittered scout. Unfortunately it wasn't a success but seek it out as it's certainly much better than its reputation would suggest.

KATALIN VARGA ***

 British director Peter Strickland didn't make his debut here in the UK but in Romania and like his subsequent films it was a horror movie but also like his subsequent films it wasn't a horror movie in any conventional sense. "Katalin Varga" is a story of revenge. Katalin is a rape victim and from that rape she had a son. Now, eleven years later the secret she hid from everyone rises to the surface. Her husband and her village treat her as if she were a 'whore' and banishes both her and her son so Katalin sets off in search of revenge.

Although set in the present events could just as easily be happening centuries ago. Katalin's means of transport is a horse-drawn wagon and the setting is the Carpathian Mountains. It's a film mired in the past, like the attitudes of its protagonists and it reaches its grisly conclusion in unexpected ways. Strickland may not be the most prolific of directors but he remains one of the most original working in world cinema today and this powerful, disturbing picture certainly marked him out as an exceptional talent.

THE HALFWAY HOUSE ***

 This virtually unknown little gem was recently picked by my friend Alex Ramon as one of his ten best films in the 2022 Sight and Sound poll of the greatest films ever made. While I wouldn't go that far it's certainly extraordinary and hopefully, thanks to Alex, a film well worth discovering.

"The Halfway House" of the title is a place not dissimilar in cinema to many other houses in which a group of people find themselves trapped, metaphorically or literally, in what we might describe as a loose genre that stretches from "The Old Dark House" through "Dr. Terror's House of Horrors" all the way to some of the home invasion movies of today.

Set during the closing years of the Second World War, the people here are a sundry bunch who arrive at an Inn in the Welsh countryside but it's an Inn that really shouldn't exist, having been destroyed by a bomb the previous year. Their hosts are Mervyn Johns, (always good in a ghost story, for indeed this is what it is), and his real-life daughter Glynis Johns, and all of them have problems that need sorting out.

It's clear from quite early on that this will indeed be a ghost story of sorts. It's also an Ealing comedy and a piece of wartime propaganda, (Ireland's neutrality and possible 'friendship' with Germany is touched on and how many war films of the period would think of that angle). You might even say it's an anti-war film since the futility of war is also a theme.

Very loosely adapted by Angus MacPhail and Diana Morgan from the play "The Peaceful Inn" by Denis Ogden it's also beautifully acted by its ensemble cast with Francoise Rosay, Esmond Knight, Alfred Drayton and Tom Walls the standouts. Basil Dearden was the director though Alberto Cavalcanti also had his hand in it and it's not only one of Dearden's most neglected films but also one of his best. Perhaps not top ten material, then, but one for the ages nevertheless.

MEMORIA ****

 Nobody goes to an Apichapong Weerasethakul film for action or excitement unless, of course, they like their excitement to be of the purely cerebral kind. Weerasethakul makes films so slow there are times when you think they've stopped altogether. In "Memoria", his first film largely in English (and Spanish), Tilda Swinton is the woman who hears loud noises in her head, like a heavy object being dropped, and which of us hasn't been awakened from sleep on hearing something similiar? But strange things happen around Tilda, such as car alarms going off for no reason or a man seemingly dying and then coming back to life as he sleeps beside her.

Sounds of every kind play a major part in "Memoria" and naturally where you have sound you must also have silence and from that silence the 'recreation' of sound and therein lies the cerebral excitement of Weerasethakul's most recent feature, the external piecing together of what is happening inside Swinton's head and since we can't physically get inside her head it's left to the actress to convey in her expressions and her movements what she is experiencing, more often than not without the help of dialogue, (this is a film of long silences).

Of course, Weerasethakul's films have always been about the relationship of a character to their environment, emphasised by the amalgamation of sound and vision, "Tropical Malady", being perhaps the most notable example as reality and the purely fantastical merge without explanation and this could be its sister film. Is Swinton simply suffering from a tropical malady or, like Uncle Boonmee, could she be recalling past lives?

In some ways this is Weerasethakul's most accessible film. Always a sublime maker of what we might term 'metaphysical thrillers' but which tend to keep us at a distance here, thanks to Swinton's quietly magnificent performance, he really draws us in. With its allusions to mysticism and danger we are practically in the realms of a suspense movie though certainly not one that will appeal to a mass audience. Weerasethakul will always remain an art-house director and it's in art-houses that this extraordinary film will prosper. See it at all costs.

THE SON *

 Florian Zeller wrote three separate plays, "The Father", "The Son" and "The Mother", though the plays are not directly connected. In 2020 he made his directorial debut with "The Father" and showed great skill in transforming a very theatrical piece into something wholly cinematic. Now he has given us the film version of "The Son". The subject is mental illness and how families deal with it and cinema has been dealing with these kind of issues almost since the beginning and family dramas like this have been grist to the mill for American cinema for decades, usually treating the subject sensationally. Zeller, however, treats the subject with a clinical coolness and it's a failing the film never recovers from.

Here a seventeen year old boy, Nicholas, (beautifully played by newcomer Zen McGrath), finds difficulty in just living. His parents, (Hugh Jackman and Laura Dern), are separated. Jackman now lives with his partner Vanessa Kirby and has a new baby son and Nicholas, who has been living with his mother, now wants to move in with them. He does but his situation doesn't improve. Nicholas is seriously ill and needs treatment, not just a change of scene.

In many ways this is an actor's piece and all the performances, including a cameo from Anthony Hopkins, are first-rate but it's the cool detachment Zeller brings to the material that keeps us at a distance, never allowing us to get emotionally involved. This is a deeply serious subject and Zeller treats it with an appropriate seriousness and yet there were times when I craved for the psychodramas of the past. Like Jackman I, too, felt shut out from Nicholas' pain and the last thing a film like this should do is alienate its audience; sometimes good intentions just aren't enough.

MARLOWE no stars

 You could say Neil Jordan has gone down in the world. This neo-noir based, not on a Raymond Chandler novel but on John Banville's more recent take "The Black-Eyed Blonde", is a very poor addition to the genre, handsomely shot by Xavi Gimenez to resemble Edward Hopper paintings but totally lacking in thrills or atmosphere and surprisingly badly acted.

An over-the-hill Liam Neeson plays an over-the-hill "Marlowe", (that's the title but in this day and age that name in itself is unlikely to draw in an audience; a dear friend of mine actually thought it might be a biopic of Christopher Marlowe). For the uninitated he's the same Philip Marlowe who's been played by Mitchum, Garner, Gould, Dick Powell and both Montgomery's, Robert and George and of course most famously by Bogie but Neeson's Marlowe is instantly forgettable.

He's been hired by femme fatale Diane Kruger to find her lover who's disappeared. It's the same old schtick movies like this thrive on but here the tortuous and convoluted plot feels like a pale imitation of the real thing as if someone came up with the idea of let's make it more baffling than "The Big Sleep". Jessica Lange, far from her best, is Kruger's mother but it's left to Danny Huston, now almost a dead ringer for his father, to breathe a brief modicum of life into proceedings. Unfortunately, some smart one-liners aside, the movie was dead before it started.

ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT **

 It was perhaps the greatest of all antiwar novels and in 1930 it became the greatest of all antiwar films and until this day that American film version, directed by Lewis Milestone, remains largely unsurpassed. In 1979 there was a television version directed by Delbert Mann which was given a cinema release in some countries and now Germany itself has tackled "All Quiet on the Western Front" in this epic version directed by Edward Berger..

It's all there; the multitudinous corpses, the dead animals, the mud in the trenches, the gas. What isn't there is Remarque's novel. For some reason Berger and fellow writers Lesley Paterson and Ian Stokell have chosen to veer away from the original though he does keep a few key incidents. As war films go, however, this one is certainly grimly realistic even if there is still something vaguely 'Hollywood' about it, brilliantly photographed but perhaps a little over-egged in the art direction department. The battle scenes may be among the finest ever filmed, (they are certainly among the most horrific), but maybe they are just 'too much'; never has the old adage 'War is Hell' been more appropriate. Berger has conjured up a hell on earth and on a huge scale. He makes his point and then he makes it again and again.

The film's hero is young Paul Baumer, (very well played by Felix Kammerer), who goes from idealistic schoolboy to battle-scared veteran almost overnight. He's joined in his living nightmare by 'Kat', (Albrecht Schuch, also very good), an older veteran but closer in age to be more of an older brother than a father figure as was Louis Wolheim to Lew Ayres in the original.

It very seldom leaves the battlefield except for those scenes with the high command and with Daniel Bruhl as the diplomat charged with trying to negotiate a ceasefire. A certain cynicism is the order of the day here that leaves a somewhat sour aftertaste. Is it as good as Milestone's version? No, but then less is more and sometimes the horrors left to our imagination are greater than all the blood and guts contemporary cinema can serve up. On a technical level it is very well done and I don't see it going away empty-handed at the Oscars but neither do I see it going down in history as one of the great (anti)war films.

THE OUTFIT ***

 In this cleverly title picture Mark Rylance is the bespoke tailor in 1950's Chicago who finds himself caught in the middle of a gang war. "The Outfit" of the title could refer to the kind of outfit who kill people or to the kind that Rylance makes in his workshop. The action never leaves said workshop yet director Graham Moore never lets the tension flag.

Rylance, as ever, is superb and there's excellent supporting work from Zoey Deutch as the receptionist in over her head and from Dylan O'Brien, Johnny Flynn and a delightfully over-the-top Simon Russell Beale as various goodfellas. There's also a very nice streak of black humour running through the film and while this may be a 'small' picture it is, in its own way, close to perfect.

PINOCCHIO *

A very different take on "Pinocchio" which, despite the inevitable cuteness, (those awful kid's voices, some terrible songs), is also much darker than expected. Producer, co-director and co-writer Guillermo Del Toro has chosen to set it in fascist Italy, (Mussolini himself is a character), and death, real and imaginary, is never far from the surface. It certainly looks amazing and is something of a technical marvel but both children and their parents will surely miss the fairytale magic that made the Disney version unique.

This might well have seemed like a good idea but that mixture of cuteness and ghoulishness never really gels and its all-star cast struggle to bring it to life, (Ewan McGregor makes for a very annoying cricket). I'm also not sure young kids will get it nor am I sure adults will appreciate Del Toro's messing with familiar material. Indeed it's something of a mess if, at times, a brilliant one.

WHITE NOISE ****

Noah Baumbach's most ambitious film to date is this comedy adapted from Don DeLillo's supposedly unfilmable novel. "White Noise" is in some parts Spielbergian sci-fi and Godardian fantasy with even a dash of Altman thrown in for good measure and you may have trouble finding the Baumbach we all know and love in this heady brew...or perhaps not. Baumbach was always at his best lampooning a certain kind of American lifestyle and this really is a brilliant satire.

Baumbach finds fun in all sorts of places; a disaster movie scenario, a send-up of academia, consumerism and the pharmaceutical industry and once again makes great use of Adam Driver's hang-dog persona and Greta Gerwig's vacant kookiness. He also casts Don Cheadle beautifully against type.

He and Driver are professors in the 'College on the Hill', Cheadle specialising in celebrity studies and Driver in Hitler studies, (apparently Driver's so charasmatic in his work that no-one can mention Hitler's name without a nod in Driver's direction). It may also be Baumbach's most accessible movie to date despite its unlikely source, very funny in a New Yorker kind of way and even serious enough to touch a nerve now and then. It may not be quite in the class of "Marriage Story" but it does confirm Baumbach as one of the best directors in America today.

CRIMES OF THE FUTURE *

 Many have tried but few do 'body-horror' quite like David Cronenberg so I suppose fans should welcome "Crimes of the Future" as a return to the kind of movies that turned us on, or indeed turned us off, Cronenberg in the first place. This is a sci-fi movie grounded in some kind of reality. Yes, there are 'monsters' but the monsters are us, recognizably human, but transmogrified into something beyond what we are now.

You see, humans are growing new organs and the most famous of these is Saul Tenser, (Viggo Mortensen, looking rather disinterested in what's going on). Saul has his new organs removed by his glamorous assistant Caprice, (Lea Seydoux), in a public display, captured mostly on people's mobile phones, which they call 'performance art'. Once upon a time this would qualify as a 'freak-show' but in this age of political correctness there are no longer any 'freaks'; vive la difference!.

You might say with this movie Cronenberg is challenging us to look at the human body differently and defying us to put words like 'freak' or 'deformed' out of our minds entirely or more cynically you could say he was exploiting his characters, feeding on our desire for the bizarre. Is "Crimes of the Future" any less of a horror film than "Shivers" or indeed "Freaks" or even "Nosferatu"?

It seems we love, not only to be frightened, but to be disturbed and it seems once again Cronenberg is out to disturb us. Unfortunately it also seems he may be out to bore us; there are no 'frights' in this horror film which moves at a funereal pace, an exploitation picture that is pretentious enough to think we should take it seriously and it is likely its limited appeal will be only to diehard Cronenberg fans. I doubt if anyone else will consider it one of his better pictures