THE MAN IN THE GLASS BOOTH *

Robert Shaw's play "The Man in the Glass Booth" might have seemed an odd choice for the American Film Theatre series popular at the time as it wasn't that well known and it certainly was no classic. On the other hand, it offered a great part for its leading actor and Maximilian Schell's performance here is a tour-de-force. Is he the rich, Jewish survivor of the Holocaust or is he, in fact, a Nazi war criminal? That's the question posed by Shaw's play and now this less than exciting film version directed by the less than exciting Arthur Hiller. If it's worth seeing it's for Schell who was nominated for the Oscar for this performance. Needless to say, the original is seldom, if ever, revived.

HOUSE no stars

It's very easy to see why "House" has become something of a cult movie for this Japanese horror-comedy is the just the right, or more probably, the wrong side of bonkers. Director Nobuhiko Obayashi shoots it like a demented home-movie; a slapstick fairy-
tale about a group of schoolgirls spending their summer vacation in a haunted house but this is a haunted house movie unlike any other, one that uses animation, silent film techniques and even Japan's role in WW2 to advance what little story it has. It's a surreal fantasy in which technique is everything and it's definitely a young person's movie; watching it I kept thinking of the Monkee's TV show or a psychedelic mishmash of Hansel and Gretel and Little Red Riding Hood directed by William Castle on acid. It's also an acquired taste, one that's passed me by.

SO LONG, MY SON ****

From China, a masterpiece. "So Long, My Son" is an epic account of two families dealing with the trials and tribulations of life in China from the 1980's to the present and is the kind of confident, heartfelt drama many Western filmmakers can only dream about. This is a family saga worthy of Ozu but perhaps even more grounded and down-to-earth, superbly acted by everyone, (leads Jingchun Wang and Mei Yong won Best Actor and Actress at Berlin and deservedly so), superbly shot on a large canvas by Hyun Seok Kim and brilliantly directed by Xiaoshuai Wang. It may not be the easiest film to follow; Wang doesn't tell his tale in a linear fashion as we move back and forth in time as memories are triggered but then who said cinema has to be easy to follow.

Of course, this isn't just a family drama but a comment on Chinese society and is consequently an intimate epic and a beautifully realised political saga at the same time. The 'One Family, One Child' policy is at its core and it is this need for family and for human contact in general that dictates the film's structure. Wang alternates between long shots and close-ups to emphasise the distance between the characters just as the use of colour and music, and naturally make-up, delineate the passage of time. The film begins with a death and death is never far from its surface and yet it's never sentimental but at times almost unbearably moving. Like I say, a masterpiece and one of the finest films of recent years.

PACIFIC HEIGHTS **

A home invasion movie from a time before the term was even fashionable, "Pacific Heights" is a classic 'tenant from hell' picture. John Schlesinger filmed it in San Francisco in 1990 and it's about what happens when new landlords and romantic partners Matthew Modine and Melanie Griffith 'rent' an apartment in their house to Michael Keaton. I say 'rent' though Mr Keaton doesn't actually pay them any money; he just moves in like a cuckoo in the nest and takes over with the intention, it seems, of getting the rightful owners out and that thing, a certain Mr Bumble called 'a ass', the law, would appear to be on his side.

This is a slow build of a movie, leading inexorably to a violent climax, signalled early on by Keaton who is obviously a psychopath while Modine is an obvious worm who just has to turn, (though it is Griffith who has the balls in this relationship). It was written by Daniel Pyne, who apparently got the idea from having a tenant of his own he couldn't get rid off. It's certainly a nightmare scenario, even without the psycho element. It may not be a great Schlesinger movie; there's nothing very distinctive about it, but it turns the screws nicely and will make you think twice about renting out that spare room.

EXTRACTION **

"Extraction" is a big, mostly dumb and very violent action flic that has the common sense not to try to be anything else and is actually a surprisingly good example of its kind, providing, of course, that this is the kind of thing you like. The plot is simple; the action relentless. A Mumbai drug-lord's son is kidnapped and it's up to mercenary Chris Hemsworth to get him back. Neither he nor the film hang around. As I've said, it's both violent and relentless; a non-stop catalogue of killings and mutilations, choreographed to bloody perfection by first-time director Sam Hargrave. Of course, there isn't a frame that's actually believable. This is a live-action video game, based on a graphic novel, brilliantly photographed by Newton Thomas Sigel in and around Dhaka and with enough good guys and bad guys killing each other relentlessly to keep it on the boil for two hours. Brains may be largely in short supply but there's certainly no shortage of brawn.

APRES MAI no stars

The problem with autobiographical cinema is that it can be very self-indulgent or just downright dull depending on the life being portrayed. Olivier Assayas made "Apres Mai" in 2012, looking back to his student days in the Paris of 1971. To give the film its English title it was a time when there was "Something in the Air", revolution mostly. It was a time when France, indeed the world, was changing. Assayas himself went on to have a very successful and productive career in cinema but you would never guess it from this film in which he is a callow youth , (played by newcomer Clement Metayer), going through the motions most of us went through at the time without realising we only made a difference if we were part of a much larger picture. Autobiographical cinema is better when it makes that larger picture the centre of attention. Of course, maybe I'm just an old cynic who now finds that period of student revolution not so much 'something in the air' as something in the past. Fundamentally this is a film for Assayas acolytes and old hippies who want to relive their youth, very well done for what it is, but ultimately adding little to the Assayas canon.

BLOWING WILD no stars

Gary Cooper and Barbara Stanwyck must really have been down on their uppers when they agreed to do "Blowing Wild", a profoundly third-rate tale of oil prospectors in South America. Cooper and Ward Bond are partners trying to strike it rich. Anthony Quinn is an old pal who's already made it and Stanwyck is Quinn's wife who once had a fling with Coop and wants to start over. Actually, both Stanwyck and Quinn are very good and there's a nice supporting turn from Ruth Roman as the girl Cooper falls for.

There's enough talent on display for this to have been a much better film than it is but in the end it's only a very pale imitation of the likes of "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre" and "The Wages of Fear" and about a dozen other better pictures from Hollywood's Golden Age. Of course, director Hugo Fregonese didn't have much imagination to start with or maybe it fails because Philip Yordan's screenplay was well below his usual standard. Either way, the best I can say for it is that it just might tolerably pass a wet afternoon.

THE HEIRESSES ***

"The Heiresses" was a big hit on the festival circuit, winning both the Silver Bear and the Best Actress Award at Berlin. It hails from Paraguay and, although written and directed by a man, Marcello Martinessi, has an almost exclusively female cast, few of whom, despite their ages, have worked in film before and deals with the fractious but loving relationship between two women in a domestic partnership for over thirty years but now feeling the pinch and the pain of getting old, not to mention separation, when one of them goes to prison for fraud.

Martinessi's film is a beautifully observed character study and is superbly played by Ana Brun, (winner of that Berlin acting award), and Margarita Irun as the women in question. Neither of them are necessarily sympathetic but Martinessi treats them with a great deal of compassion and their pain is palpable. These are women who, out of necessity perhaps, still employ a maid, even if paying for groceries is a problem, living an enclosed and sheltered life with very little interaction with the outside world. It is a film full of routine and yet it is never dull. Indeed, it is something of a privilege to spend time with these heiresses as they make the trivialities of everyday life seem exciting. Quite wonderful in its own quiet way.

HARLOW no stars

Dreadful even if "Harlow" herself is reasonably well-played by Carroll Baker who was really a better actress than she was ever given credit for. It's the kind of biopic that Hollywood does often and badly, milking every cliche in the book and forgetting to mention most of the facts. Indeed, this might as well be fiction as it never mentions any of her real films or most of the real-life people she worked with, providing fictionalised Hollywood stereotypes instead.

This is just another tawdry rags-to-riches story that completely wastes the talents of the likes of Martin Balsam, Angela Lansbury, Raf Vallone and Peter Lawford. Only Red Buttons comes out of it with something like his dignity intact and was actually nominated for a Golden Globe. The terrible script was by John Michael Hayes from Irving Shulman and Arthur Landau's trashy bestseller while Gordon Douglas, (never a name to fill you with awe), directs as if in a trance. Amazingly, in the same year this came out there was another biopic with Carol Lynley as Harlow. It was marginally more factual but just as awful.

AND SOON THE DARKNESS **

One of the better British 'chillers' of its period, "And Soon the Darkness" has a very simple premiss, nicely handled by one of the better jobbing directors of the time, Robert Fuest. Two young nurses go on a cycling holiday in France; they have a row, separate and one goes missing. Since she's played by Michele Dotrice, (Frank Spencer's Betty), as something of a stroppy bitch you might actually feel it wouldn't be too much of a loss if the local psychopath did get her. Her companion is perky, sensible Pamela Franklin and Sandor Eles is the tall, dark, handsome and possible deadly stranger. Fuest makes excellent use of wide open spaces to create tension with everyone Franklin meets a potential suspect. Fuest may not do much that's particularly new but what he does he does very well, adhering to the old adage that less is more. Hardly a classic but definitely a cut above.

THAT'S MY MAN *

This late Frank Borzage movie is almost impossible to categorize. It begins as a kind of 'meet-cute-romantic-comedy' before turning into something more serious but there's a difference, the difference here being a horse. Yes, the man in the title of "That's My Man" is a racehorse we first meet in a taxi-cab one wet Christmas week in LA. His owner is Don Ameche who is so good he makes the mostly cringe-worthy dialogue in these opening scenes sound feasible or is it Borzage, one of the cinema's great romantic directors, who turns potential slop into visual poetry? Regardless, it works. Indeed, these opening scenes are really quite splendid but then it all goes very conventionally downhill. The material is just too off-the-wall and it takes a considerable suspension of disbelief to accept a lot of what is happening. Individual shots and moments do stand out but this is certainly not one of Borzage's better films but then again, no Borzage film is completely negligible and fans of this great director will want to see this. Others may just find it too lachrymose by far.

TERESA no stars

John Ericson may have had Marlon Brando's looks but none of his talent so his debut performance as a young soldier returning from WW2 with an Italian bride proved not to be the launch-pad for superstardom that it might have been and "Teresa" remains one of the least, and certainly one of the least known, of Fred Zinnemann's films. If it isn't exactly a bad movie it's certainly an unexciting one. The inexperience of both leads shows, (Pier Angeli is Teresa, the young bride), and it's left to the supporting cast, (Patricia Collinge as the clinging mother, Peggy Ann Garner as the sister, Ralph Meeker and Bill Mauldin as soldiers), to try to carry the film. Had it been shorter, tighter and concentrated more on life in post-war New York it might have worked but Zinnemann gives us a very long introductory section in war-torn Italy. These scenes are fine in themselves but they belong in a different picture. For Zinnemann completists only.

THE TRUTH ****

Hirokazu Koreeda, possibly Japan's greatest living director, has moved abroad, to France actually, where he has made a film as good as anything he did back in his homeland. Like "Autumn Sonata", "La Verite" is another mother/daughter saga but without Bergman's sourness, not that Koreeda shirks the vitriol when he has to. Fabienne, an ageing French actress, played magnificently by that ageing French actress, Catherine Deneuve, can be a Bette Davis-style bitch and her daughter, a script writer living in America and played superbly by the equally legendary Juliette Binoche, isn't too happy that her mother has written her memoirs without first consulting her. And then, of course, there's the new movie Fabienne is making, a sci-fi film about mother/daughter relationships in which she plays the oldest version of her character.

Koreeda has great fun picking apart the ego of this French Margo Channing yet treating the film-making process with the affection he so obviously feels for it. In this respect he's closer to Truffaut than Wilder but then again this isn't so much a picture about the cinema as it is about relationships, the family dynamic and simply growing old and while the characters in the film can sometimes be cruel there doesn't appear to be a mean bone in Koreeda's body. A truly lovely picture.