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.