BAD BOYS **

 A prison movie with a difference. As the title suggests, "Bad Boys" is set in a reform school and while the boys are certainly 'bad' legally, morally and in the eyes of society the film's message is that they are the products of their environment. Sean Penn is the most recent inmate, a bad kid with a record who, during a botched robbery, accidentally kills the younger brother of a gang member. Of course, we know that while Penn acts tough he's sensitive at heart so what has to go down for him to redeem himself?

All the usual prison movie cliches are here albeit in junior form but director Rick Rosenthal handles them with considerable ease and manages to draw excellent performances from his mostly young cast. Penn, in an early role, shows real promise and young Eric Gurry is very good as his smart, street-wise cell mate. It's hardly ground-breaking but as genre pictures go it's definitely well above average.

HIT MAN ***

 Thanks in large part to an absolutely brilliant performance from Glen Powell, Richard Linklater's new comedy "Hit Man" turns out to be one of his very best films. It's something of a 'true' story since the character Powell plays, Gary Johnson, really existed. He's a university professor who also finds himself working for the New Orleans police department pretending to be a hit man so as to entrap potential killers who don't want to do the killing themselves.

It's totally far-fetched but who says that even 'true' stories have to be believable ; as a certain Mr. Hitchcock said, 'it's only a movie' and this 'screwball-rom-com-neo-noir' certainly is no documentary and as a genre piece it hits all the right buttons while still managing to appeal to the usual Linklater aficionados. Chuck in a star-making performance from Adria Arjona as the femme fatale that Johnson falls for and what's not to like.

POSSESSION no stars

 My Turkey of the Year back in 1981 I've naturally avoided watching "Possession" again during the last 40 plus years but then it has built up something of a cult critical reputation and Isabelle Adjani did win both the Best Actress prize at Cannes and the Cesar for her performance so perhaps I was wrong? Let's just say that it's definitely an acquired taste and one that I didn't have back in the day. Now, having seen it again, I can safely say it's a taste I have yet to acquire nor one that I want to.

Back then I thought it was just a 'bad' movie but now it's almost like a parody of a bad movie, part horror film and part send-up of those deeply serious Eastern European or Nordic sagas of failed marriages, shot in English, (big mistake thought I'm sure subtitles wouldn't work any better), and appallingly acted by both Adjani, (Best Actress? What were the Cannes jury thinking of?), and Sam Neill. I can understand it having a cult reputation in the 'bad movie' stakes but I certainly can't understand the critical praise that's been heaped on it over the years. Yes, forty years on it still stinks to high heavens!

THAT THEY MAY FACE THE RISING SUN ****

 Joe, (Barry Ward), and Kate, (Anna Bederke), have returned from London to rural Ireland. He writes, perhaps a novel, perhaps not, while she sketches and makes little decorative pieces from twigs and bits of wood. The rest of the time they simply try to manage the small farm holding on which they live, mostly with the help of kindly neighbors. The seasons pass and nothing out of the ordinary happens; one neighbor marries and another dies and we simply observe the small details that make up these people's lives.

Based on John McGahern's novel, Pat Collins' really quite extraordinary and quite extraordinarily moving film "That They May Face the Rising Sun" could best be described as Ireland's answer to the films of Ermanno Olmi or maybe the Taviani Brothers. Gorgeously shot on location in County Galway this is one of the greatest of films about rural life and the day-to-day existence of people who have nothing and yet who want for nothing.

Director Collins is fundamentally a documentary film-maker and he brings a documentarian's eye to bear on proceedings here drawing extraordinarily naturalistic performances from his cast. Veteran Irish actors like Sean McGinley, Lalor Roddy, Ruth McCabe and Brendan Conroy are doing perhaps their best work here and it's hard to believe that Phillip Dolan as one kindly neighbor has never acted in a film before. Leads Barry Ward and Anna Bederke are also superb in their quietude and their empathy, outsiders who nevertheless feel like the backbone of their community, magnets drawing others to them for help or just for a listening ear. A masterpiece that simply has to be seen.

AFIRE ****

 I still tend to think of Christian Petzold as a 'new' director though he has made 10 feature films in the past 23 years. German born, you might say he's an art-house director who makes commercial films or at least films that are accessible to a commercial audience but which are intelligent and more cerebral than anything you are likely to see in your average multiplex.

"Afire" begins and remains something of a chamber piece as holiday-makers Leon, (a superbly sullen Thomas Schubert), and Felix, (Langston Uibel), are forced to share their holiday home in a forest on the coast with Nadja, (Paula Beer), a friend of the owner who happens to be Felix's mother. Initially not a lot happens as the two men bicker over work assignments, (Thomas is a writer and Felix is a photographer), and household chores while Nadja is having rather loud sex in an adjoining room while the forest fires that have been plaguing the area move closer.

Petzold's genius is for taking the banalities of everyday life and building them into a series of little dramas helped considerably by the brilliant performances of his small cast and by not giving too much away. Are Leon and Felix lovers or just very good friends and who is Nadja and why is she even there and is Devid, (Enno Trebs from "The White Ribbon"), Nadja's summer fling or something more?

Petzold only lets us get to know his characters gradually just like we might get to know them in life and they turn out to be affectionate and funny people in what is really an affectionate and funny film but also a very sad one. Life may deal us a bad hand but we make the most of it just like the people in Petzold's lovely, if ultimately tragic, new film.

THE PROUD ONES **

 As Dilys Powell said, there are no bad westerns; there are great westerns, there are good westerns and there are just plain westerns and "The Proud Ones" is certainly a good one. The director was Robert D. Webb, hardly an auteur but a decent jobbing director and this thoroughly old-fashioned oater, nicely shot in Cinemascope, starred Robert Ryan, (the good guy), Jeffrey Hunter, (not quite the bad guy he first appears to be), and Virginia Mayo, (somewhat wasted as the girl in love with Ryan), while the fine supporting cast includes Walter Brennan, Arthur O'Connell and Robert Middleton, (the real bad guy), and thanks to an above-average screenplay from Edmund H. North and Joseph Petracca and highly watchable work from its highly watchable cast it's consistently enjoyable. As Dilys said, there are no bad westerns.

TOTEM ****

 Tona is dying and this is the day of his birthday and his family are holding a party for him. Lila Aviles' stunning debut feature "Totem" observes the events of the day in almost forensic detail and how they impact on all the participants; Tona's father, his sisters, his extended family and friends, his carer and most of all on his young daughter, Sol, who doesn't know her father is dying yet senses it nevertheless.

There's nothing sentimental nor particularly dramatic in Aviles' film. It's as if she and her camera just dropped by to record the events of just one day in these people's lives and what happens is both funny and moving like life itself. All the performances are superb and Naima Senties is often quite extraordinary as Sol. On the strength of this one film Aviles would seem to have quite a future ahead of her.

THE QUICK AND THE DEAD ***

 More of a parody than a homage, Sam Raimi's western "The Quick and the Dead" is something of a one-off, an ultra stylish exercise in what might best be described a 'pure cinema' with style of the pop-art variety dominating virtually every frame and if the, admittedly gorgeous imagery isn't enough, there's always that cast, (Sharon Stone, Gene Hackman, Russell Crowe, Leonardo DiCaprio, Pat Hingle, Keith David, Kevin Conway, Lance Henriksen, Gary Sinise, Roberts Blossom et al).

The thin plot has Stone riding into town with the sole intention of avenging her father's killing only to find herself in the middle of a gunfight competition, a kind of last man, (or in this case, woman), standing and the incentive for all this gun-play and almost surrealistic killing is a large pot of money for the eventual winner.

Of course, Raimi's name on the credits should be a clue as to what kind of film you are going to get. Dante Spinotti provides the sometimes mind-boggling images and Pietro Scalia's editing is as quickfire as the gun play but it's Hackman who owns the film, giving it that added touch of class it would otherwise have lacked. Naturally it draws attention to itself from one frame to the next but it's also ridiculously entertaining. Perhaps too popular to be called a 'cult movie' it's some sort of classic nevertheless.

INNER SANCTUM **

 Don't worry if you haven't heard of "Inner Sanctum"; I certainly hadn't until now but this 1948 B-Movie is surprisingly good, if not in terms of cinematic skill then at least in terms of storytelling. It's actually a story within a story as the mysterious and apparently psychic Dr. Valonius, (Fritz Leiber), regales a woman on a train with a tale of a murderer hiding out in a small-town boarding house.

Clocking in at just 62 minutes it's the kind of story you might find in something like "Dr. Terror's House of Horrors" and it has a surprisingly good script and some very decent performances from the likes of Lee Patrick, Billy House and Roscoe Ates. There's even a lot of genuinely funny and intentional humor running through the picture as well as some real suspense. If it isn't quite in the class of "Detour" it's still a Grade A Guilty Pleasure

DUNE PART TWO **

When Denis Villeneuve decided to remake David Lynch's film "Dune", or rather adapt Frank Herbert's novel for the screen, he claimed there was too much material for just one film and that a "Dune Part Two" would follow. Well now it seems even a lengthy Part Two can't contain it all and it ends, like any other serial, with audiences hungry for what-happens-next. Or are they since Villeneuve's "Dune Part Two" is no "Star Wars" but an often ponderous meditation on the mystical, more Tarkovsky than George Lucas and whether audiences will really want to come back for more remains to be seen.

Whereas Villeneuve's first "Dune" film was an exciting sci-fi adventure yarn, coupled with just the right amount of character development to draw audiences in, this second film seems to have dispensed with character development altogether, save for making its hero, Paul Atreides, (a glum Timothee Chalamet), arrogant and not very likeable. Instead it opts to go heavily into the quasi-religious mysticism hinted at in the first film, a plot device that only succeeds in weighing the film down and it isn't until close on the halfway mark it actually kicks off thanks in no small measure to Austin Butler's first appearance in a sequence filmed in black and white in a massive CGI arena.

Butler is one of the villains of the piece and like the Devil he has all the best tunes. It isn't a big part but he steals every scene he's in. It's hardly great acting but it's definitely a star turn. For acting one must look to the great Stellan Skarsgard as the film's chief villain and perhaps to Charlotte Rampling but neither have sufficient screen time to make much of an impact. Visually, of course, it's a treat; a movie to be seen in cinemas on the largest screen possible. The action scenes are splendid and they do manage to keep boredom at bay but a third part? Surely not, Denis; "Dune Part Two" conjures up enough mystical gobbledygook to last a lifetime. Enough is enough.
 

NO HARD FEELINGS **

 If you think Jennifer Lawrence has sold out her street cred for rom-com anonymity think again, "No Hard Feelings" is no ordinary rom-com. For starters it's a lot raunchier and a lot funnier than your average rom-rom and Lawrence is as good as she's ever been. She's the foul-mouthed, over-sexed bartender who answers an ad to date a shy 19 year old college student, (placed by his parents, no less, in order to bring him out of his shell). She does this because she needs a car and that's what's on offer.

With a cracker of a script by Gene Stupnitsky and John Phillips and surprisingly intelligent direction from Stupnitsky as well as a terrific performance from newcomer Andrew Barth Feldman as the son, (and nice work, too, from Matthew Broderick and Laura Benanti as his parents), this is as sweet-natured as it is laugh-out-loud funny and is certainly a cut above most multiplex movies aimed at a young audience. One for all the family, in fact, just so long as the family are over fifteen.

RED SUN **

 As international co-productions go, Terence Young's "Red Sun" isn't at all bad, thanks in large part to its starry cast, (Charles Bronson, Toshiro Mifune, Alain Delon, Ursula Andress and Capucine). It opens with a fairly spectacular train robbery and it never really lets up after that. Best of all is the plot. You see, on that train is the first Japanese ambassador to the US and he's carrying a valuable ceremonial sword as a gift for the President. When Delon steals the sword and tries to kill fellow train-robber Bronson the chase is on to retrieve it with Mifune's samurai naturally taking centre stage turning this into a highly enjoyable Samurai Western, ("Yojimbo" meets Randolph Scott by way of Sergio Leone). Very handsomely shot by Henri Alekan, action-packed throughout, (the climax is an Indian attack), and, of course, Mifune and Delon add that touch of class if might otherwise not have had.

NYAD **

 "Nyad" is yet another inspirational, true-life story, this time about how champion long-distance swimmer Diana Nyad reached the age of sixty and decided she wanted to fulfill her lifelong ambition of swimming from Cuba to Florida, something she attempted in her late twenties but failed at and it's distinguished, not so much by its story, exciting as it is, but by a terrific performance by Annette Bening in the title role. Indeed Bening is so good she lifts the movie out of the realms of the merely conventional bio-pic.

Co-directors Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi just seem to have sat back and allowed Bening loose on the material. Perhaps not knowing anything about Diana Nyad helped me to appreciate the handling better. There is a good script by Julia Cox, fine supporting performances from Jodie Foster and Rhys Ifans and it's beautifully photographed by Claudio Miranda and while it may not break any new ground on its own level it really is rather good.

CRASH *

 For those who like this sort of thing, this is the sort of thing they like as Miss Jean Brodie might have said and "Crash" certainly has its fans. There's no denying it's brilliantly done for what it is and there's the rub since what it is is a thoroughly unpleasant picture of thoroughly unpleasant people doing thoroughly unpleasant things. I've never liked the film but I certainly wouldn't advocate censoring it or banning it as happened at the time of its release.

Based on J. G. Ballard's novel, David Cronenberg's film is about people maimed in car accidents who get their rocks off simply from that very fact; it's their wounds and the pain that provide the pleasure, the ultimate S&M trip, the ultimate body horror movie. Sex predominates and a brilliant cast, (James Spader, who just happens to be playing a character called J. G. Ballard, Holly Hunter, Elias Koteas, Deborah Kara Unger, Rosanna Arquette), throw themselves into it like there's no tomorrow which for some of them there might not be. It's also superbly photographed by Peter Suschitzky though you might feel like averting your eyes from the screen every now and then. Far from pleasant, then, but undeniably erotic and often quite brilliant.

SISU *

 "Sisu" is an ultra-violent Finnish action flic set during the closing days of WW2 in which grizzled old warrior Jorma Tommila slaughters hordes of Nazis as he tries to hold onto the gold he has found. Dialogue is kept to a bare minimum, (Tommila doesn't speak until the last minute, literally); blood and spilled guts are the order of the day and if it's about as nonsensical as any of the John Wick movies at least it's terrifically well done like an X-rated Roadrunner cartoon brought to gory life.

Whether director Jalmari Helander could handle a rom-com is another matter but with this kind of thing there are probably very few who can touch him. You might even say this is a brilliant example of its kind though I'm amazed that something this violent got away with a 15 certificate while "Poor Things" was slapped with an 18 certificate because of the sex scenes. Go figure.

POOR THINGS ****

 I can virtually guarantee you've never seen a mainstream movie like "Poor Things" nor are you likely to ever see anything like it again. Adapted, (brilliantly), by Tony McNamara from Alasdair Gray's novel this is a cinematic tour-de-force from director Yorgis Lanthimos, (his masterpiece and is he likely ever to surpass it), with a career-defining performance by Emma Stone.

She's Bella Baxter, the 'creation' of Dr. Godwin Baxter, (a never better Willem Dafoe), who likes people to call him God, in the same way that 'the monster' was created by Dr. Frankenstein, (Godwin resembles Karloff's 'monster' rather than Colin Clive's doctor); a cadaver brought back from the dead with the brain of her own unborn baby planted in her head.

This is, however, far from any conventional horror film. Rather it's a work of pure imagination; a vast, darkly comic epic, (and a very funny one), that blends past, future and pure fantasy in one glorious X-rated mix, (think a porn version of "The Bride of Frankenstein"). It's a movie that never quite goes where you expect it to and in ways that at times seem revolutionary.

Stone commands the screen, (she's seldom off it), for its two hours and 20 minutes running time backed by a brilliant supporting cast. As her creator Willem Dafoe gives us the most sympathetic mad scientist in movie history. Mark Ruffalo, brilliantly cast against type, is the roue who doesn't so much seduce Bella as take her on a mad sexual adventure. Ramy Youssef is Dafoe's kindly assistant who loves her while both Hanna Schygulla and Kathryn Hunter are remarkable as women who befriend her for good or ill. By the time Bella becomes the mistress of her own future and domain you may just feel like standing up and cheering her on and if you do the kudos will lie with both Stone and Lanthimos, an actor/director team made in heaven.

ONE FINE MORNING ****

 With a Mia Hansen-Love film you know precisely what you are going to get; love stories filled with passion yet passion so artfully disguised you might even mistake it for indifference. No such chance of that happening in "One Fine Morning", however. The passion in Hansen-Love's new movie is almost tangible. Sandra, (a never better Lea Seydoux), is a single mother who also looks after her elderly father, (Pascal Greggory), while working as a translator. One fine morning she meets Clement, (Melvil Poupaud), an old friend and embarks on an affair with him despite his being married.

The passion here isn't just sexual. Hansen-Love gives us a sometimes angry but always passionate account of the ageing process, of illness and of a daughter's love for her father and it's certainly one of her finest and most moving films and every performance is superb down to the smallest part. The director has great affinity, not just with the professional actors but also with the non-professionals she casts as well and that affinity allows her to turn her characters into real people that we, too, can relate to as clearly as Hansen-Love does. Funny and at times painfully sad, just like life, this is a truly wonderful film.

THE DAM BUSTERS ***

 Stiff upper lips seldom came quite so stiff as they did in "The Dam Busters", Michael Anderson's really rather splendid tribute to British wartime heroism and British wartime ingenuity. It's the story of how Barnes Wallis, (Michael Redgrave, excellent), designed a bouncing bomb for the precise job of blowing up German dams and of how Guy Gibson, (Richard Todd, also very good), and his squadron carried out Wallis' plans to the letter.

Anderson directs with a documentary-like fidelity, R. C. Sherriff provides a surprisingly engaging and intelligent screenplay and a whole host of British actors do their best in ensuring those upper lips remain stiff throughout. The superb cinematography, both on the ground and in the air, was handled by the great Erwin Hillier and, all in all, this is one of the best of British war films.

THE NIGHT HOLDS TERROR ***

 An early John Cassavetes performance, (it was his first credited film role), isn't the only reason to see this excellent B-Movie thriller from director Andrew Stone, (he also wrote and produced it). Cassavetes is one of three hoodlums, (the others are Vince Edwards and David Cross), who hijack Jack Kelly on the road and then hold him and his family hostage hence the title "The Night Holds Terror". Stone may have been no auteur but he certainly knew how to make a good suspense movie and this is one of his very best, a first-rate police procedural done in an almost documentary fashion.

Based, we are told. On a true story and shot largely in the locations where the events portrayed actually happened this is a movie that deserves to be a lot better known that it is. The performances may not be Oscar material but they are more than competent, (Cassavetes and Edwards are the stand-outs) and it's very nicely shot by Fred Jackman Jr. See it.

CROSS OF IRON ****

 Despite the odd casting, (James Coburn, James Mason and David Warner as German soldiers), "Cross of Iron" remains one of Sam Peckinpah's masterpieces, one of the greatest of war films and one of the most important and most undervalued American films of the seventies. Based on Willi Heinrich's novel it deals with one particular platoon of German soldiers fighting and losing on the Russian Front during World War Two and for the most part all anti-Nazi, fighting a war they don't believe they can win.

Peckinpah handles the battle scenes superbly but at the heart of the film is the battle of wills between Maximilian Schell's cowardly officer who will do anything to get the Iron Cross and Coburn's sergeant who hates the very uniform he wears and which places the film in the same ballpark as Kubrick's "Paths of Glory" and Aldrich's "Attack". Terrific performances, too, from Coburn, Schell and Mason. Now if last year's German remake of "All Quiet on the Western Front" were only a tenth as good as this...