SANTA FE TRAIL no stars

"Santa Fe Trail" is one of the oddest westerns ever made. It pits John Brown's Abolitionists against the US Cavalry, paints Brown as the most black-hearted of villains, even if clearly he was on the side of 'right' and shows him as the real architect of the Civil War. Historical accuracy is banished to the sidelines as this epic of sorts covers a lot of territory, both literally and metaphorically. Michael Curtiz directed, though here that's not necessarily for the best, and again Errol Flynn and Olivia De Havilland are the romantic leads with Ronald Regan as a young George Custer, Raymond Massey as Brown and Van Heflin as a weakling and even at this early stage of his career Heflin is the best thing in the movie. The script is something of a stinker; the movie is half over before you get an inkling as to what it's actually about or what it's political point of view might be, (let's just say it's a distant cousin of "The Birth of a Nation" and leave it there). Curtiz just about handles the set-pieces with a degree of professionalism though there is some very misguided comedy. It's certainly no-one's finest hour.

UNCLE HOWARD ***

Howard Brookner isn't a name that many people know. He was a young film-maker in the 1980's who died of AIDS, aged 34. He made a highly acclaimed documentary about the writer William Burroughs and a mainstream movie, "Bloodhounds of Broadway" with Matt Dillon and Madonna but little else is known. Now his nephew Aaron Brookner has made a portrait of his uncle, "Uncle Howard", that reclaims him for posterity. Luckily for Aaron, Howard left a lot of film behind, of his work and of his life and moved in circles that included, not just Burroughs, Zappa and Warhol but film-makers like Jim Jarmusch and Tom DiCillo who were more than happy to talk about Howard. What emerges is a fascinating picture of a talented and beautiful man whose life ended much too soon. It's also a wonderful picture of a society, many of whose inhabitants are no longer with us. It's honest, enlightening and very moving and Aaron Brookner is to be commended for giving it to us.

THE AWAKENING OF THE ANTS ***

Not a lot happens in this film from Costa Rica about famly life and yet the detail is superb. Although scripted, acted and designed it could be a documentary about a young wife and mother's dissatisfaction with her life. Isa, (a lovely, naturalistic performance from Daniela Valenciano), has an attentive, loving if demanding husband and two young girls. She works as a seamstress and they get by reasonably well but her husband wants another child and she's afraid that if she gets pregnant again it will rob her of whatever little freedom she has left.

"The Awakening of the Ants" is a feminist take on domesticity beautifully directed by Antonella Sudasassi with as much affection as pique. She condemns no-one; there are no villains in the picture, just ordinary people dealing with what life throws at them on a daily basis and I am sure there are millions of us who could identify with Isa and her husband. It's a small film that deals with 'small' issues but it's also very appealing with characters you actually care about; something you can't say about too many films these days.

THE DEAD ZONE **

A Stephen King adaptation worthy of taking its place next to Kubrick's "The Shining", this one directed by the estimable David Cronenberg in a manner more straightforward than we were used to at the time. Christopher Walken, (excellent), is the young schoolteacher who awakens out of a five year coma only to discover he has the ability to see a person's future, (or their past), simply by grasping their hand; needless to say, the futures he sees aren't always rosy.

Although it's a tale of the supernatural, King and Cronenberg keep the suspense on a very basic level with a strong degree of moral ambiguity thrown in for good measure helped, not just by Walken's performance, but by a fine supporting cast that includes Brooke Adams, Tom Skerritt, Herbert Lom and a terrific Martin Sheen as the kind of politician who should never be allowed to run for public office. Perhaps because its horrors are subdued, (both by King and Cronenberg standards), the film isn't really seen much now but it remains a superior example of its kind and is worth seeing.

THE MIRACLE OF THE SARGASSO SEA ****

I can already see the American remake, directed perhaps by David Fincher, (though I would hope they leave well enough alone). "The Miracle of the Sargasso Sea" is a kind of police procedural set in Mesolongi, one of the lesser known parts of Greece and definitely off the tourist trail, that centres on the lives of two women, the female chief of police whose involvement in a terrorist raid in Athens ten years earlier has lead her here, and Rita, who does what menial jobs she can to get by. After a death in the town, their lives intersect.

This Greek movie works both as a dark thriller and as a troubling psychological picture of damaged lives. Both Elisabeth, the police chief, (Angeliki Papoulia), and Rita, (Youla Boudali), have reasons to be fearful and to hate their lives and anyone, on either side of the law, seems like the kind of person you would neither want to know or trust; there is something very unwholesome in Mesolongi. Syllas Tzoumerkas' picture makes the films of Yorgos Lanthimos feel like a walk in the park. This may be the first of his films I've seen but I certainly hope it won't be the last.

CALIFORNIA SPLIT ***

"California Split" is Robert Altman's most loose-limbed movie. It's a virtually plotless look at at a couple of gambling buddies, (Elliot Gould and George Segal, both superb), coasting from day to day, losing as much as they win, filmed with so much over-lapping dialogue  that conversations seem to disappear into the ether. It's also one of the great movies to explore friendships between men with one foot in the mainstream and the other in the experimental. Consequently, it wasn't really a success, either critically or commercially. Despite the drawing power of its leads people just didn't seem to know what to make of it. It's certainly a brilliant piece of film-making and its lack of structure makes it one of the most 'Altmanesque' of Altman films. It may not be in the very first tier but it still knocks spots of the best of almost anyone else

STOCKHOLM *

The events that took place in a Stockholm bank one day in 1973 were bizarre indeed and lead to the psychological condition known as 'Stockholm Syndrome' by which a captive becomes emotionally attached to their captor though I am sure, if you tried, you could trace this condition back to the cavemen. The events are described here as absurd and they are. I'm not sure how closely Robert Budreau's film "Stockholm" (aka "The Captor") sticks to the facts which are certainly stranger than fiction and anyway, "Dog Day Afternoon" covered very similair events to much greater effect so this feels like something of an after-thought, a kind of "Dog Day Afternoon" in miniature.

As the chief hostage taker Ethan Hawke chronically overacts though Noomi Rapace isn't at all bad as the hostage who falls for him in a very strange way but genuine laughs and real suspense are both conspicuously absent and it's just the very weirdness of what's happening that holds your interest, (and then, barely). I'm sure there's a really great movie to be made on this subject and maybe "Dog Day Afternoon" was it; this one is merely watchable.

SPENSER CONFIDENTIAL no stars

I wish Peter Berg didn't make such formulaic films because he's certainly a skilled filmmaker and he uses those skills to lift material we've seen a hundred times before. His latest movie, "Spenser Confidential" is another buddy-cop film...well, let's call it a buddy ex-cop and his boxing room-mate film. They're out to find the killers of a couple of cops, one a good cop and the other a corrupt one, in Boston. The ex-cop here is Mark Wahlberg and the room-mate is Winston Duke and the movie is below the standard we have come to expect from co-writer Brian Helgeland. It's not bad exactly but you get the impression that Wahlberg and everyone else are only there for the pay-checks. Next time round, maybe they might actually earn their money.

TWENTYNINE PALMS no stars

Bruno Dumont is famous for his sex scenes which are explicit if not altogether numerous. When they aren't having sex his characters usually mope and do very little. Some people mistake this for depth. "Twentynine Palms" is a road movie, filmed in America, mostly in English with a little French and no subtitles, in which a photographer and his lover drive across the desert to a place called Twentynine Palms, stopping every so often to have sex. You might say that if Antonioni could get away with it in "Zabriske Point" then why can't Dumont, the difference being, of course, that Antonioni was an artist with something to say about the state of America at the time while Dumont's concerns are much more insular, interested in nothing but his two characters and even then, not much interested in them.

It might have helped if the characters themselves were interesting but they are simply self-centered and dull while the landscapes, (endless roads, rocks, cacti and motels), are equally boring. It's really just another case of the old ennui and the sexual act doesn't get more interesting just because it's being performed on the top of some rocks, (though I suppose it does give an extra layer of meaning to the expression 'Getting your rocks off'). Also for some reason Mr Dumont chooses to end things very badly indeed for his dull couple, perking the film up a tad in the closing minutes

THE STRANGE VICE OF MRS. WARDH **

Originally denied a certificate in the UK Sergio Martino's Giallo "The Strange Vice of Mrs Wardh" is stylish, violent and sexy in equal measure, even in this dubbed version. It's the type of film that does exactly what it says on the tin and fans of the genre certainly won't be disappointed. Personally, I've never really seen the attraction of badly dubbed sexploitation pictures in which beautiful women get hacked to death in gloating close-up while either a discordantly jangly or quasi-religious score throbs away in the background.

Here a serial slasher is terrorising women in Vienna and terrorised ambassador's wife Julie Wardh, (the gorgeous Edwige Fenech), suspects it's her ex-lover Jean. Of course, Mrs Wardh has a strange vice in that she enjoys kinky, rough sex and what Giallo would be complete without a dollop or three of kinky, rough sex and several more dollops of explicit female nudity not to mention a whole barrel load of red-herrings. Just the kind of thing that might have played in the cinemas of Soho (or Derry's Palace Picturehouse), back in the day and very enjoyable it is too.

MACHINE GUN KELLY **

It opens splendidly with a heist carried out without dialogue but to a jaunty Gerald Fried score making me almost wish Roger Corman's "Machine Gun Kelly" were a silent film. It isn't, of course, but this Z-Movie, made in eight days, is a lot of fun. It's not a biopic of the title character; he's real enough but everyone else is basically an invention 'for dramatic purposes' and it has a lot of the punchy quality of the old Warner Brothers' gangster movies.

Charles Bronson is excellent as Kelly and Susan Cabot is suitably hard-boiled as his moll while the supporting cast includes the always watchable Connie Gilchrist and Morey Amsterdam, he of 'Dick Van Dyke Show' fame. No-one would ever conclude from this that Corman was a great director but give this to me anyday over certain European art movies that pass for masterpieces in some quarters.

EXECUTIVE SUITE **

An all-star cast, including a batch of Oscar winners, was the obvious draw for this movie set in the cut-throat world of big business. Without them, I doubt if would be half as entertaining as it is. The overly familiar plot has a certain Mr Bullard, President of a large corporation, dropping dead outside his office and the squabbles that ensue amongst those subordinates who want to step into his shoes. It's a very glossy soap opera, adapted by Ernest Lehman from Cameron Hawley's novel and directed by Robert Wise, so you know it's going to get a very professional job of work.

You also know it's going to be well acted and for the most part it is. There's William Holden, (the decent one), Fredric March, (the nasty one), Barbara Stanwyck, (the hysterical mistress), Walter Pidgeon, (the very decent one), Louis Calhern, (the skunk), Dean Jagger, (the lazy one), Paul Douglas, (the cheating one), as well as June Allyson, (the loyal wife), Shelley Winters, (the disloyal secretary) and Nina Foch, Oscar-nominated, as the loyal secretary. Unfortunately none of them can make the material sexy; stocks and shares and who runs what department are hardly likely to get your blood up. Still, it did get four Oscar nominations and it does have its followers and finally it just has about the right number of knives in the right number of backs to give it a much needed boost.

WINTER KILLS ***

"Winter Kills" was a satire, and often a very funny one, on the Kenndy assassination, based on a novel by Richard Condon who also wrote "The Manchurian Candidate" and despite an all-star cast, mostly in cameo parts including an uncredited and silent Elizabeth Taylor, it was a gigantic flop both with the public and the critics, (though Vincent Canby thought it was the best American film since "Citizen Kane"). It's certainly not that but of all the conspiracy thrillers and paranoia pictures of the seventies it's the most fun.

Jeff Bridges is excellent as the dim-witted brother of the assassinated President running around trying to find out who organized the hit and John Huston is superb as his father, the real power behind the throne. Nice work, too, from Anthony Perkins and, in the Jack Ruby role, Eli Wallach. I'm not quite sure what audience writer/director William Richert had in mind when he made this but in the intervening years it has built up quite a considerable cult reputation and it certainly shouldn't be missed.