SEBASTIAN **

 'Sebastian' is the name Max uses when he's working as an escort and Max, his real name, is the one he uses when he's writing his novel about Sebastian, a young sex worker. The film "Sebastian" doesn't really go anywhere we haven't been before but this one is intelligent, well acted and just explicit enough to ring true, (well, you can't really make a movie about a sex-worker without showing some sex).

Newcomer Ruaridh Mollica as Sebastian/Max shows real promise but it's Jonathan Hyde as the older man who becomes his #1 client and later his friend and mentor and, I suppose, his lover who steals the movie. As written, Hyde's character might just have been another 'John' but Hyde embues him with layers of feeling and a depth that is actually quite moving.

It's also a telling picture of the London literary scene, packed with hypocritical sycophants dishing out faint praise like crumbs from a table and it's a scene Max finally embraces not as Sebastian but as himself. The cliches of violence and abandonment are still there but at least he gets his happy ending.

WOLFS ***

 Watching "Wolfs" I kept asking myself why aren't all George Clooney/Brad Pitt movies this good. In fact, I kept asking myself why aren't all movies this good and what, if anything, could I compare it to. I tried to imagine a gangster comedy scripted by Samuel Beckett and that really only got me about half way there. 

Jon Watts' movie is funny, very smart and a terrific vehicle for both Clooney and Pitt. It's also got a great supporting turn from Austin Abrams and is brilliantly photographed, at night, by Larkin Seiple. As with Beckett, the plot matters not a jot; in fact, the less you know about it the better.

You might say it's like a series of surreal sketches so completely off-the-wall that they are both ridiculous and inspired while the fact that it also enticed Francis McDormand to make a cameo (non) appearance says a lot. Don't miss it.

THE NIGHTCOMERS no stars

 This prequel to "The Innocents", the film version of Henry James' 'The Turn of the Screw', doesn't come remotely close to the poetry or the terror of Jack Clayton's extraordinary film. In fact, Michael Winner's "The Nightcomers" reputation as something of a dog in justly earned since nothing here works. Surely the evil that permeated "The Innocents", enough to perhaps bring the corrupters of the children Miles and Flora back from the dead, deserved better than a grunting, miscast, (as an Oirishman, no less), Marlon Brando and a prim but panting Stephanie Beacham as the embodiment of all that's bad, (at worst, they just come across as a couple of free spirits who enjoy kinky sex).

So what's the reason for "The Nightcomers" since it adds nothing to what we already knew about the characters of Quint and Miss Jessell. It's certainly not a horror film nor, despite the grunting and the panting, a sex film and as a vehicle for Brando, in what may be his worst performance, it's an insult. As for the 'children', (Verna Harvey was 19 when she played Flora), I  would have dropped the proverbial 16 ton weight on them five minutes into the film. Even the great Thora Hird can't save this crock. Definitely one to avoid.