THE WOMAN IN THE WINDOW **

 Sometimes it's nice to see a director normally given over to highfalutin literary-based works slumming it which is precisely what Joe Wright is doing here. "The Woman in the Window" is another literary adaptation, (it's from an A. J. Finn novel), but it's a far less po-faced one than Wright usually gives us. In fact, as adapted by Tracy Letts, this is just a slice of grand guignol and it's great fun, referencing Hitchcock, (most obviously "Rear Window"), and film noir in general.

Amy Adams is the agoraphobic former child psychologist who spends her time spying on her new neighbours who all seem to be as loopy as she is and, of course, if you've seen "Rear Window", and who hasn't, you know what happens next; right, murder most foul though it's at this point that things start to diverge from Hitchcock's masterpiece. Did Amy really see a murder or is she as mad as a hatter?

Since we've seen variations on these themes countless times before, this is where the guessing games begin and if the punchline is a little less effective than it might have been you can always chalk it down to that old saying 'there's nothing new under the sun'. Adams, of course, is terrific and is ably backed up by those fine actors Gary Oldman and Julianne Moore, (but don't expect too much from Jennifer Jason Leigh who seems to have been denied permission to speak in this movie). It's trash or at best, pulp fiction; a junk-food movie from a man who, in the past, fancied himself something of a Michelin Star chef and I really enjoyed it.

DAUGHTER OF THE NILE ****

 Another early Hsiao-Hsien Hou film that reveals his great capacity for tenderness and for getting deep inside the family psyche, in this case a family living on the margins. Lin is the "Daughter of the Nile" of the title, a fantasy character in a graphic novel she's reading. In reality she's the oldest sister in a family of petty criminals, struggling with her education as well as her background and almost everything is seen through her eyes.

The plot hardly matters; this is an observation of life in a very westernized Taipei in the eighties; we could be almost anywhere in America or in any UK city where people steal for a living and call it work and even back in the eighties it was clear that Hsiao-Hsien was a master filmmaker and a great director of actors. The performances here are beautifully naturalistic with Lin Yang outstanding in the lead. It's a little rough around the edges, perhaps and maybe a little too indebted to Ozu's style of filmmaking but it remains an essential work in the director's canon nevertheless and shouldn't be missed.

SONGS MY BROTHERS TAUGHT ME ***

 Of course by now everyone reading this should know that Chloe Zhao is only the second woman to win the Oscar as Best Director and that her film "Nomadland" also won Best Picture. What many people may not know is that "Nomadland" was only Zhao's third feature film, the others being the very moving and blissfully beautiful ""The Rider" and this, "Songs My Brothers Taught Me" and that together they make an extraordinary trilogy of films about the American hinterland. "Nomadland" had a major star at its centre but for the most part was populated by real people playing variations of themselves and while this is fiction and scripted, "Songs My Brothers Taught Me" could be a documentary with Zhao again using non-professional actors in major roles. Visually the obvious influence is Malick but Zhao's films are uniquely her own and if you watch these films back to back they are unmistakeably Zhao's. This did reasonably well on the festival circuit but was obviously never aimed at the mass market. If you haven't seen it, seek it out. Like "The Rider" and "Nomadland" it's a gem.

THE TIN STAR ***

 Anthony Mann made this superlative western after completing the last of the Jimmy Stewart westerns, ("The Man from Laramie"), and before he made the Gary Cooper starring "Man of the West" and somehow it got lost along the way despite having been nominated for a BAFTA Best Film award.  Instead of either Stewart or Cooper, Mann cast Henry Fonda as the laconic, decent bounty hunter who take a greenhorn young sheriff, (a beautifully cast Anthony Perkins), under his wing.

It's a very simple, traditional piece, shot in black and white by Loyal Griggs and dealing very much in black and white issues.  It is a movie with straightforward heroes and villains, (Neville Brand is principal among the bad guys), a strong heroine, (Betsy Palmer), and even a sweet, likeable kid, (Michael Ray).  If it lacks the psychological undercurrents of other Mann westerns it more than makes up for it in good old-fashioned action and suspense and of all his westerns this may be the most underrated.

MOTHERLESS BROOKLYN **

 You know that "Motherless Brooklyn" is going to be a different kind of crime movie from the brilliant opening sequence which introduces us to its narrating anti-hero, a Private Eye with Tourette's Syndrome, played by the film's director, Edward Norton. The sequence is superbly set up but it doesn't explain anything and the bad guys in the scene are shot in shadow and in ends with a killing; yes, we know this movie is going to be 'different'. The period is the late fifties, perfectly captured in Beth Mickle's design and beautifully shot by the great Dick Pope which gives the film the noirish look Norton is after and it's very well cast with Norton himself terrific as the Tourette's inflicted shamus. So far so good.

Unfortunately the plot, (corruption in high places), is old hat and as a director Norton is more interested in flash than form; even his use of a hard-boiled narration is a cliche. This is a film eager to be liked but wanting to be original at the same time and failing at it. It's certainly not dismissible; Norton, when he's good, as he is here, is always worth watching and it is certainly a beautiful looking picture. It's just that with a better script, (which Norton also wrote from Jonathan Letham's novel), it could have been so much better and at almost two and a half hours, it's way too long.

STRANGER IN THE HOUSE no stars

 Georges Simenon's 1940 novel "A Stranger in the House", rechristened "Cop-Out" for the American market and transferred to Swinging Southampton, (yes, Southampton), in the sixties was the only film to be directed by the writer and producer Pierre Rouve. It's really quite atrocious despite a cast headed by James Mason, Geraldine Chaplin and, again for the American market, Bobby Darin. Mason is the drunken former barrister who comes out of retirement to defend daughter Chaplin's boyfriend, (newcomer Paul Bertoya who, despite his good-looks, quickly disappeared from the scene), on a charge of murdering Darin. For some reason, Rouve took the 'arty' approach rather than the conventional one and the film's all the worse for it, working neither as a drama nor a thriller. It's badly acted, (even by Mason), badly directed and the denouement, delivered Poirot-style at a twenty-first birthday party, is jaw-droppingly awful. Often thought of as a 'lost' movie, this one would have been better staying lost.

MY OCTOPUS TEACHER ***

 If "My Octopus Teacher" does win the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature as predicted, (it's already won the BAFTA), I don't think I'll be complaining even if I think "Collective" the better film and the more worthy winner but that's only because "Collective" tells the more important story and is the more radical film. "My Octopus Teacher" is fairly radical, too, and as documentary filmmaking goes it's a beautiful job of work with some of the finest 'natural' cinematography I've ever seen, ("Blue Planet" eat your heart out).

It even has a plot of sorts and two leading players. One is Craig Foster, an explorer and cinematographer whose daily dives to a kelp forest in the seas off South Africa leads him to the films second character, a female octopus that Foster becomes very attached to and who, it would appear, becomes very attached to him, literally at times. Octopuses, it turns out, are highly intelligent creatures and Foster's octopus seems more intelligent than most, an 'alien' creature that can recognize an individual human being and want to be with that human, albeit in her own natural environment.

Of course, the octopus is also a wild animal in a wild, natural environment and much as he might want to Foster knows he can do nothing to change that; as we say, he has to let nature take its course while at the same time allowing himself to be 'taught' by the octopus, taught not just to care about the octopus itself but creatures in general and, strange as it may seem, interacting with this creature brought Foster closer to his own son. Superbly photographed and edited, its only fault lies in Foster's rather deadpan narration. He may be a nice guy but is somewhat dull in his delivery; luckily his camera speaks volumes.

NIJINSKY no stars

 Before becoming a film director with the musical remake of "Goodbye, Mr Chips", Herbert Ross had been both a dancer and a choreographer so if anyone was going to make a big screen biopic of ' the greatest ballet dancer who ever lived', aka Vaslav Nijinsky, who better then than Ross who already had his biggest screen success with "The Turning Point", a movie about two ageing, bitching ballet queens but while "The Turning Point" had proved popular with both critics and the public was that not down to leading ladies Anne Bancroft and Shirley MacLaine? "Nijinsky", however, was a different kettle of fish entirely. The bitching ballet queens here were of the male variety and would audiences really buy a picture about a long dead male ballet dancer that many people might not have even heard of? But then, who can say what movies succeed and what fail. "Nijinsky" could potentially be an 'Amadeus' or a 'Heaven's Gate'.

In the end it was neither but a pretty, decorous scroll through Nijinsky's greatest hits with enough of his private life thrown in to keep the punters happy, (nothing like a little bit of scandal, be it gay or straight, to liven up an otherwise dull ballet picture). As Nijinsky, dancer George de la Pena is easy on the eye and certainly light on his feet, whenever Ross permits us to see his feet, but he wasn't much of an actor. As Diaghilev, Alan Bates is unusually stuffy while a supporting cast of mostly British thespians, (Alan Badel, Colin Blakely, Ronald Pickup, Jeremy Irons and Janet Suzman) do exactly what's expected of them while the talented Leslie Brown is utterly wasted as the dancer's missus. The film itself trundles along like the war horse it is and while it's never dull neither is it in any way memorable.

THE HOUSE ON TELEGRAPH HILL **

 This contemporaneous Gothic thriller is courtesy of Robert Wise who knew a thing or two about this kind of yarn, (he did make "Curse of the Cat People" and "The Body Snatcher", not to mention "The Haunting"). This also has a nice Hitchcockian flair with a touch of the 'Rebecca's' about it as well as "Suspicion". Valentina Cortese is the concentration camp survivor who steals a dead friend's identity so she can come to America only to find when she gets there that her friend's young son has inherited a fortune. Of course, she is only posing as his mother and in no time at all is married to the boy's guardian, (Richard Basehart). There's also a sexy Mrs. Danvers character, played by Fay Baker, who's being looking after the boy, so you know things aren't going to end well for somebody.

Overtaken in many people's affections by several of Wise's later films this is still an excellent and underrated suspense movie. Of course, you don't have to be Agatha Christie to figure out which way the plot's heading, particularly when a handsome former soldier from Valentina's past enters the picture so originality isn't the film's strong suit but Wise keeps it ticking along very nicely while the titular "House on Telegraph Hill" is both attractive and sinister in equal measure.

THE EGYPTIAN *

 A look at the talent involved both in front of as well as behind the camera might lead you to think "The Egyptian" has the makings of 'The Greatest Epic Ever Made' but while most of the epic tropes are here in abundance this early Cinemascope movie flopped both commercially and critically. Edmund Purdom, (never an actor to begin with), is the Egyptian of the title, a physician in ancient Egypt and while Purdom isn't up to the task he's surrounded by those who are; Jean Simmons, Peter Ustinov, Gene Tierney not to mention old Samson himself, Victor Mature as well as Michael Wilding and newcomer Bella Darvi who steals the film and won a Golden Globe doing so.

On the plus side Leon Shamroy's cinematography ensures it looks the part while Philip Dunne and Casey Robinson's screenplay veers between being overly literate and totally banal. The director was Michael Curtiz and if he doesn't bring an auteur's hand to bear on the material at least he takes it seriously. Perhaps, too seriously? After a couple of hours of not much happening palace intrigue gets the better of everyone and it races to a not very satisfactory climax but while it's certainly not 'the greatest epic ever made' maybe it's not quite the turkey many people claim it to be either.

LOS CONDUCTOS *

 "Los Conductos" is not an easy watch and for the first fifteen minutes or so of this reasonably short film, (seventy minutes in total), you may be as much in the dark as the apparent protagonist literally is, particularly as he is the only character on screen, events, such as they are, happen in almost total darkness and there's no dialogue. A gun has been fired and he appears to be handling drugs so is this going to be a thriller? That doesn't seem likely, even after our protagonist begins his 'noirish' narration.

Shot in the Academy ratio on Kodak 16mm film, Camilo Restrepo's film begins like a political thriller but without the politics or the thrills, not quite avant-garde and not quite experimental but certainly not designed for mass consumption and bold enough to at least hold your attention as you try to figure out exactly what's happening. Restrepo's first feature is certainly original and it will be interesting to see where he goes from here. As it has already garnered prizes at the Berlin and Mar Del Plata festivals I don't think he has anything to worry about.

ON CHESIL BEACH *

 There's talent on display in abundance, (director Dominic Cooke, Ian McEwan adapting his own novel and a cast headed by the superb Saoirse Ronan, the excellent and up-and-coming Billy Howle, Emily Watson, Anne--Marie Duff, Samuel West etc.), so why is "On Chesil Beach" so dull? Could it be the source material itself was dull, (I haven't read the novel), but certainly this tale, set over the course of a young couple's wedding night with flashbacks to how they met, their courtship and so on, never really comes to life.

The time is 1962, before 'the sexual revolution', but McEwan's young couple, (Ronan and Howle), behave as if the birds and the bees were simply that and sex was an unutterable four-letter word, or perhaps just a three letter word that other people used but never them, despite Howle's brain-damaged mother, (Duff, excellent), taking her clothes off at every opportunity. There's no denying that this is a civilised and intelligent picture that builds up to one very beautifully written, directed and acted scene on the beach of the title, but otherwise I just couldn't really see the point of it. A major disappointment.

COLLECTIVE ****

 This magnificent documentary, (a nominee for Best Documentary Feature and Best International Feature at this year's Oscars), is about as devastating as documentary films can get. In 2015 a fire destroyed the Bucharest club Colectiv; 27 people died at the scene and a further 37 died later in hospital, not from their burns but from infections picked up in the hospital. The reason? The disinfectants used in the hospital were diluted, sometimes up to ten times. Alexander Nanau's film sets out to explore the corruption endemic in the Romanian health system, (and the Government as a whole), by following the story, firstly as taken up by a team of journalists, and latterly by the newly appointed Health Minister who tried to reform the system, the existing Social Democratic Party having been forced to resign after a public outcry.

"Collective" is a film about investigative journalism that itself becomes a great piece of investigative journalism and it's a truly frightening expose of institutional corruption. As Nanau's camera moves between the journalists and the young Minister, he takes time to focus on one of the victims who, without bitterness, attempts to salvage her life in ways that might seem unimaginable. Otherwise he simply records events as they unfold. The heroes of the film clearly are Catalin Tolontan, the journalist who initiates the investigation, (and he was a sports writer) and Vlad Voiculescu, the Health Minister who goes up against the system from within. These are men who not only put their careers at risk but their lives; at one point it is suggested a leading figure may have been murdered to ensure his silence.

During the course of the film we learn that Romania had the worst record for hospital deaths in Europe and that almost certainly was down to the corrupt system in operation but watching this deeply disturbing film you might ask yourself could this happen elsewhere in supposedly civilised Europe. As one doctor in the film says, 'we are no longer human beings. We only think about money' and as the old saying goes, you couldn't make this up. "Collective" is the one essential film of the last twelve months.