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.