THE EXCEPTION **

 "The Exception" is aptly named as this war-time-romance-cum-espionage yarn is very much the exception to the rule as to what we might have expected in our multiplexes in 2016. This is definitely a thoroughly old-fashioned film that wouldn't have been out of place in the 1940's albeit without the full-frontal nudity.

The setting is the home of the former Kaiser Wilhelm II, (a superb Christopher Plummer), where Captain Brandt, (Jai Courtney), has been posted, supposedly to protect the former Kaiser but really to spy on him for the Third Reich. There's also a British spy, (Lily James), in the household and it's not long before James and Courtney are banging about in the servant's quarters.

It's totally far-fetched, of course but it's got a good script and one that's not without humor and the performances are first-rate, (the cast also includes Janet McTeer. Ben Daniels and, as Himmler, an excellent Eddie Marsan). It's not the kind of film that was ever likely to win Oscars nor would it appeal to the Marvel crowd but it's very entertaining and certainly worth seeing.

THE GHOST AND MRS. MUIR **

 Charming frippery. No-one's quite at their best here, not Tierney, Harrison, Sanders or Mankiewicz but it has a lightness of touch that is very engaging and if we must have movies about people falling in love with ghosts and vice versa this is as good an example as we're likely to get. Tierney is the widow who moves to a seaside cottage with young daughter Natalie Wood but it's a cottage that's haunted by the ghost of Rex Harrison's gruff sea-captain. What follows may be predictable but it's nice to see Tierney in something light for a change. With a lesser director than Mankiewicz it might have fallen apart but he keeps it on course. No classic but perhaps unfairly overlooked.