THE ROSE GARDEN **

 Yet another film on the legacy of the Holocaust. Maximilian Schell is the concentration camp survivor on trial for attacking the former commandant of the camp in which his sister was murdered and it's a great performance. There's fine work too from Liv Ullmann as the woman who takes on his defence, Hanns Zischler as the prosecutor and, perhaps surprisingly, Peter Fonda as Ullmann's ex-husband who happens to sway to the right.

Dutch director Fons Rademakers' "The Rose Garden", filmed in English, has its faults, (would a woman as supposedly intelligent as Ullmann really leave her young daughter alone overnight after their apartment had been attacked), but unlike other similar movies it's not exploitative nor is it overly melodramatic, at least not until it pulls its 'surprise' witness out of the hat. Indeed it's chillingly level-headed throughout, perhaps too much so; the flashback at the climax would have been better described rather than shown. A minor film then but both heartfelt and shocking which, in this case, is very much to its credit.

THE GOOD BOY ***

 After scrolling through about a mile of credits listing all the production companies involved two names pop up on the screen, Jeremy Thomas and Jerzy Skolimowski, and suddenly you sit up and take notice since both have the kind of pedigree you don't find too often in so-called commercial movies these days. "The Good Boy" (aka "Heel") is the new film from director Jan Komasa who also made "Corpus Christie" and it could best be described as a deeply unsettling horror-comedy about a demented do-gooder, (a terrific Stephen Graham) who kidnaps a sociopathic youth, (Anson Boon, also superb), and keeps him chained up in the cellar of his country house, aided and abetted by his initially near-comatose wife (Andrea Riseborough), 10 year old son (Kit Rakusen) and illegal immigrant Monika Frajczyk who comes in to clean two days a week.

Where "The Good Boy" differs from other films of its kind is in what lies behind Graham's actions. He's no ordinary psychopath out to torture and murder his victim but to rehabilitate him. "No-one is ever harmed in this house" he says at the beginning but he's just as mad, bad and dangerous to know as any serial killer and while Boon's Tommy might be a first cousin to Malcom McDowell's Alex in "A Clockwork Orange", like Alex,  it isn't long before your sympathies shift to him. He may be something of a monster but then so too is Graham and it's clear from the start that this brilliant film is never going to provide any easy answers. Yes, it may seem far-fetched at times but given the world we are living in, perhaps not that far-fetched after all.

BACKROOMS no stars

 "Backrooms" is the kind of horror film that throws everything into the mix including several kitchen sinks, or at least a lot of household furniture, in the hope that some of it sticks and I suppose you could say some of it does. You might even say that this is a film that displays a degree of imagination and giving credit where credit's due it marks some kind of achievement for first-time director Kane Parsons.

Of course, it's also way too long at almost two hours and despite casting two talented actors, (Chiwetel Ejiofor and Renate Reinsve), in the main roles it never displays any connection with them as people nor does ever attempt to work on any level outside that of a very predictable horror yarn and yet audiences and critics seem to love it. Am I missing something or have I just grown too jaded by horror films that are just basically nonsense? This may be Parson's nightmare but it certainly isn't mine.

SISU: ROAD TO REVENGE no stars

 The "Sisu" movies are like the Mad Max movies but for geriatrics, (their 'hero' is a cross between Walter Brennan and the Frankenstein monster with a large dollop of Superman). In terms of logic they don't make much sense but as Mr. Hitchcock might have said, it's only a film.

This one is called "Sisu: Road to Revenge" so you can expect the many gory killings of the first to quadruple at the very least. I admit the appalling action is virtually non-stop but since the whole film is like being stuck inside a video game the movie is mercifully short at 89 minutes and as Jean Brodie might have said, for boys who like this sort of thing this, most definitely,  is the sort of thing they like. Personally, I would flush it down the nearest sewer.

AMERICAN GANGSTER **

 American Gangster" is a perfectly fine crime movie but it's not a great crime movie and the reason is that Ridley Scott isn't Martin Scorsese and the best he can bring to the picture is a solid professionalism which, of course, is no bad thing. It's the story of Frank Lucas, (Denzel Washington), a New York drugs lord who was brought down by a dogged, honest cop, (Russell Crowe).

They are the lynch pins of an excellent cast that also includes Chiwetel Ejiofor, Josh Brolin, John Hawkes, Ruby Dee, Cuba Gooding Jr. And Armand Assante. If Crowe is clearly 'acting' his little cotton socks off, Washington is casually inhabiting his character, quietly beautiful and truly terrifying and owning every scene in which he appears. It's a beautiful piece of acting because he doesn't seem to be acting at all. So yes then, a very solid entertainment that could have been so much more.

FATHER MOTHER SISTER BROTHER ****

 Jim Jarmusch doesn't really 'tell' stories, at least not in any conventional sense. He simply places his characters in front of us for us to observe, listen to what they tell us and sometimes to infer from their silences what they might be thinking. In this sense Jarmusch is the most minimalist of directors and writers. His latest film, "Father Mother Sister Brother" is about family but it's not about the same family. This time he gives us three separate tales linked only by various motifs, here skateboarders, a rolex watch, water, photos of the characters as children and driving; there may be more if you pay close attention.

The first piece is simply called Father, the second Mother and the third Sister Brother. The first, the most accessible and also the funniest, has Tom Waits at his crustiest as a father living very much in the middle of nowhere, (it's New Jersey), visited by his overly generous son, (Adam Driver) and daughter, (Mayim Bialik) and it's clear to us, if not to them, that dad is stringing them along, getting money from Driver for house repairs that don't need doing and spending the money on a rolex, fancy furniture, which he tries to hide, and a new car. This is Jarmusch winking at us but taking his time as he always does and it's a deeply affectionate portrait of estrangement.

In the second piece, set in Dublin, two sisters, (Cate Blanchett and Vicky Krieps), approaching middle age, make their annual visit to their mother, (Charlotte Rampling), a famous novelist, for afternoon tea. Again very little is said, (the silences between these three seem to go on forever), but it's clear that the sisters don't really relate to each other nor do they get on with their mother and that mother still treats them like children, (neither sister has really 'grown up'). It's also clear that one sister is trying to hide her sexuality from ma who looks like she couldn't care less.

In the third and longest piece a brother and sister in Paris meet up to pay a final visit to their parent's empty apartment after their parents were killed in a private plane crash. Nothing much happens; they reminisce, particularly about the way their parents raised them, leaving them very much it would seem to raise themselves and leaving them, after their deaths, with unpaid debts. This is the most wistful piece, any humor almost accidental, (we keep watching and waiting for the motifs from earlier episodes).

If taken together these three stories seem amongst the the lightest and most inconsequential of Jarmusch films but individually their cumulative effect is quite overwhelming proving that what Jarmusch leaves out can often be much more profound that what he puts in and that sometimes it's really up to his audience to do the work. It's beautifully acted throughout and often very moving and personally I can't wait to see it again.

UN FIN DU JOUR ****

 One of the lost masterpieces of French cinema, popular at the time, (it was released in 1939), but not much seen since. It was directed by the great Julien Duvivier, perhaps the most underrated of all the early French masters, (he also did "Pepe Le Moko" and "Un Carnet de Bal"), and the setting is a retirement home for aging actors and it stars three of the greatest actors of European cinema, Michel Simon, Victor Francen and Louis Jouvet.

Jouvet is the vain newcomer to the home, a matinee idol with a large female following and the one-time seducer of the wife of another resident, (Victor Francen, who may have been a great actor but who was never popular), and who may have been responsible for the suicide of Francen's wife. Simon is the home's resident rogue and life and soul of the place and the film is a love letter to French theatre and the art of acting. Often very funny and deeply moving and magnificently played by the three leads.

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.

CODE OF SILENCE **

 An above-average Chuck Norris vehicle perhaps because it was directed by Andrew Davis who also made "The Fugitive". The plot, involving drug wars and corrupt cops, is nothing you haven't seen a hundred times before and Davis gives it a lot of zap and there are several first-rate set pieces as well as an excellent use of Chicago locations. Norris is as stiff and wooden as ever but it's always nice to see Henry Silva as a suave villain even if he's underused. In fact, this is a movie that does exactly what it says on the tin. Perfect Saturday night popcorn fare.

CICADA no stars

 "Cicada" is heartfelt and clearly autobiographical but also excruciatingly boring. Matthew Fifer and Sheldon B. Leonard are the lovers coping with the traumas of their past, both sexual and racial. They also wrote the film and Fifer co-directed it with Kieran Mulcare. I kept wanting to engage with them but they are very dull company and this feels like their home-movie, both a vanity project and a kind of exorcism as it flits back and forth through their relationship, feeling ultimately like a movie made for themselves and for their friends but if they do want anyone else to feel involved they need a much better script and maybe a couple of more polished actors to play them. I found this Dull with a Capital D.

BRING HER BACK no stars

 Children have been a staple in horror movies for decades bur rarely have they been used so offensively as they are in "Bring Her Back". After the death of their father Andy (Billy Barratt) and his stepsister Piper (Sora Wong) find themselves being fostered by Sally Hawkins' clearly deeply disturbed Laura whose own daughter Cathy has drowned in their swimming pool. Laura would appear to have one other kid in her care, silent Oliver who likes to put his hand through glass panels and chew on butcher's knives and who isn't above taking a bite out of Laura on occasion.

As Oliver Jonah Wren Phillips is extraordinary and yet I kept feeling his performance was almost tantamount to child abuse on the part of the films directors, brothers Danny and Michael Philippou. I don't know how old young Phillips is but surely no child should be put through the rigors that he seems to have been  put through. Barratt, too, is excellent and Hawkins is terrific, (but isn't she always), while the brothers direction is mostly first-class but the film itself is far too unpleasant to pass as entertainment. This is a horror movie, alright but not in a good way.

THE RAINS CAME *

 From a time when 'blackening up' wasn't just acceptable but apparently essential if you wanted to make a movie set in some exotic locale. "The Rains Came" is set in India so in the absence of any Indian actors of note or indeed of any Indian actors at all, here we get Tyrone Power, H.B. Warner, Joseph Schildkraut and that go to actress when you need someone to play someone of whatever nationality going, Maria Ouspenskaya, (this time she's a Maharani), applying the make-up and going native.

It might seem offensive today but if you can get your head around such carryings on back in the day then this is a slightly better than average melodrama with some really special special-effects, (they won the Oscar), comprising not just the rains of the title but also an earthquake and a flood, killing thousands no doubt but sparing most of the cast at least until the plague hits, (disaster movies really lived up to their name in the thirties).

Cast somewhat against type as a rich bitch who finds love and a kind of salvation when the rains come, Myrna Loy gives the movie a touch of class while the supporting cast of Hollywood regulars are all excellent. Remade as "The Rains of Ranchipur" with Richard Burton applying the paint as the Indian doctor and Lana Turner as the self-sacrificing lady but despite all the glitz and glamour it never measured up to the original. For reasons that should be obvious it's unlikely that either version will be seen much today.

ROMEO IS BLEEDING *

 This tale of a corrupt cop whose past catches up with him is certainly stylishly made but is so confusingly plotted and so hard to take seriously that it's difficult to work up too much enthusiasm for it. Hungarian-born British director Peter Medak made "Romeo is Bleeding" in the US and it was a fairly typical neo-noir of its period. Gary Oldman is excellent as the dirty cop but his character remains utterly unbelievable while Lena Olin as a Russian hit-woman is straight out of a cartoon so it's left to Roy Schneider as the Mr. Big character to give the film a tiny touch of class. Otherwise it's watchable in its dumb fashion but it still feels like something David Lynch or Tarantino might have passed on.

HAMNET **

 There's one great moment in "Hamnet" and it occurs at the very end, (I won't say anymore on that score for those who have yet to see it), but it's a long slog getting there. Of course, even if you haven't seen the film most people will know that "Hamnet" is the story of how Shakespeare's young son Hamnet died of the plague and how Will and his wife, here called Agnes, coped with their grief and it's based on a highly praised novel by Maggie O'Farrell who co-wrote the screenplay with director Chloe Zhao.

I haven't read the novel but perhaps my expectations were unduly high having loved Zhao's early work and being very much part of the Buckley/Mescal fan-base and neither of them really disappoints here. Indeed the four central performances, (Buckley, Mescal, Emily Watson and the remarkable young Jacobi Jupe as Hamnet), are excellent so I suppose the fault has to lie with Zhao.

This is a movie about grief and nothing else; everything is directed towards Hamnet's death and how his parents deal with it, Agnes by withdrawing into herself and Shakespeare, we are lead to believe, by writing 'Hamlet' and if you are going to channel everything into grief then it must be primal if it's to devastate you or even move you but Zhao gives us grief smothered in a blanket of good taste and all the restraint of never allowing your primal scream to upset the neighbours.

This is grief that finds its climax at a performance of 'Hamlet' at the Globe Theatre to a packed house with Agnes standing right at the front. It might have worked were it not for the fact that Zhao casts Jupe's older brother Noah as the young actor playing Hamlet and he simply isn't up to the challenge while, at least what we assume is this initial performance of the play, Shakespeare casts himself as the ghost of Hamlet's father so he can weep and embrace his dead son, (Hamlet/Hamnet; getit-gotit-good?).

This performance of the play takes up about the last twenty minutes or so of the film and just when I thought it was all over Zhao pulls off one final magnificent coup with a great final single shot that, if it didn't quite jerk my tears, at least ended the film of something of a cinematic high. Still, Buckley, Mescal and young Jacobi deserve better than this noble weepie.

HEDDA no stars

 If Henrik Ibsen's masterpiece "Hedda Gabler" didn't exist there is a remote chance that I might have enjoyed Nia DaCosta's film "Hedda" which updates the play, changes the setting and the sex of one of the main characters, messes with the plot and makes Hedda bisexual but since Ibsen's masterpiece does exist there is no getting away from the fact that DaCosta's film is a travesty of the original.

It certainly looks fabulous and Tessa Thompson is a suitably sardonic Hedda while Imogen Poots works wonders with the part of Thea. Nina Hoss, on the other hand, in the Ejlert Lovborg role, ('he's' now Eileen), feels totally lost and the overall effect of the film is akin to drawing a mustache on the Mona Lisa. Of course, anyone not familiar with Ibsen's play might enjoy what is basically a high society bitchfest. Everyone else should give it a wide berth.

THE WOMAN IN CABIN 10 no stars

 "The Woman in Cabin 10" unfolds like an Agatha Christie story, the one Agatha chucked in the bin after deciding it wasn't fit for publication.The setting is a super yacht on its way to the fjords, owned by billionaire Anna and her slimy husband Guy Pearce with the usual assorted invited guests on board including investigative journalist Keira Knightley. It's Keira who stumbles on the woman in cabin 10 and is convinced she's been chucked overboard while everyone else including the crew try to convince her it's all in her mind.

A decent, if underused, cast that also includes Hannah Waddingham, David Morrissey, Art Malik, David Ajala and Gugu Mbatha-Raw just about keep us watching but the plot is paper thin. The real star of the picture is the yacht itself, just the thing for that luxury holiday you know you'll probably never be able to afford. Keira, meanwhile, goes about her investigating with the vigor of a sexy Miss Marple finding clues and meeting obstacles, including the obligatory attempt on her life, at every turn. Since the whole cast act suspiciously there's a little fun to be had in guessing whodunit, at least until about thirty minutes from the end when the killer is revealed leaving Keira with not much else to do but fight for her life and us to wonder why such talented people agreed to appear in this rubbish in the first place.

THE MASTERMIND ****

 Kelly Reichardt's most accessible film is also her finest by some distance. Set in 1970 "The Mastermind" has both the look and the sound, (a superb jazz-tinged score from Rob Mazurek), of the films of that period, ("Five Easy Pieces" comes to mind), as gormless would-be thief J.B. Mooney, (another terrific Josh O'Connor performance), plans and executes a heist of four paintings from his local Museum of Art.

Unfortunately planning and what to do next don't really figure in J.B.'s universe and, this being a Kelly Reichardt film, the heist itself fades into the background as we get to know J.B., a thirty something man who's clearly in arrested development and again, being a Reichardt film, it takes its time reaching what may seem like an anti-climax and yet I found it a joy from start to finish, unlike other Reichardt films which I found interminable.

As has so often been the case recently O'Connor carries it; his shaggy dog amiability makes him excellent company even if he does have loser tattooed on his forehead and the film is full of lovely cameos from the likes of Hope Davis and Bill Camp, (his parents), and John Magaro and Gaby Hoffmann, (the counter-culture couple he briefly hangs out with after going on the run), and as O'Connor and the film amble from place to place it perfectly evokes those seventies road movies that brightened our cinema-going back in the day. Not much happens and it's certainly not a suspense film but in its sad/funny way it's a real charmer. More like this please, Kelly.

JAY KELLY *

 "Jay Kelly", (the movie), is, for the most part, beautifully acted but highly sentimental in that 'wear-your-heart-on-your-sleeve' kind of way that redemptive Hollywood crowd-pleasers so often are and it's really quite a difficult movie to like. Has Noah Baumbach sold his soul for a mess of George Clooney's pottage? Why, I kept asking myself, did Baumbach make such a lifeless picture and why is Clooney playing such an egotistical asshole who goes on a redemptive journey to Italy to bond with his daughter? Surely Clooney the actor is nothing like Jay Kelly, (the man), so is this finally nothing but his Oscar-bait role? It might have been had Baumbach given him something to chew on but his screenplay here, (co-written with actor Emily Mortimer), is his most insipid to date.

What keeps the movie chugging along, (barely), is a superb supporting cast headed by a world-weary Adam Sandler and a more than usually subdued Laura Dern and if Jim Broadbent, Emily Mortimer, Stacy Keach, Patrick Wilson and, best of all, Billy Cruddup contribute nothing more than glorified cameos they are, at least, superb cameos and deserving of a lot more than the treacle that has been poured over them. Another 'movie about the movies' but one of least of them; something of a mess, in fact, from start to finish.