GARDEN OF EVIL **

 Unusual and slightly above average western about three treasure-seekers in Mexico, (Gary Cooper, Richard Widmark and Cameron Mitchell). Who are hired by American woman Susan Hayward to rescue her husband who is trapped in a gold mine in Apache territory. Even if none of the actors are at their best here, director Henry Hathaway keeps things ticking along nicely and it's certainly a handsome looking picture, shot in Cinemascope by Milton Krasner and Jorge Stahl Jr. And with a good Bernard Herrmann score. Plot-wise it takes a little while to get going and if the title "Garden of Evil" hints at perhaps something a little more risque than what's delivered it's good matinee fare nevertheless and in the Hathaway canon is certainly undervalued.

UNCLE SILAS *

 As hoary old Victorian melodramas go "Uncle Silas" is as ripe as they come which isn't to say that it's a stinker. It's based on a Sheridan Le Fanu novel so you should have some idea of what to expect and it's been adapted for the screen by Ben Travers. Am eighteen year old Jean Simmons is the heiress who comes to live with her murderous uncle after her father's sudden death. Derrick De Marney camps it up as Uncle Silas and a totally over-the-top Katina Paxinou is Simmons' hard-drinking and scheming governess and they are the most entertaining things in the picture which is actually very handsomely designed and beautifully shot by Robert Krasker. A decent supporting cast that includes John Laurie and Esmond Knight hams it up just as you would expect them to and while anything resembling suspense is conspicuously absent the film is still good daft fun nevertheless.

WHERE'D YOU GO, BERNADETTE? ***

 Bernadette is the kind of woman you would cross the road to avoid and who would also cross the road to avoid meeting you and she's just the perfect character for Cate Blanchett to add to her portfolio of oddballs. She's also married to something of an oddball, (Billy Crudup), who's some kind of computer genius and between them they have managed to create a nice, normal teenage daughter, (newcomer Emma Nelson, superb), and they all live in a Seattle mansion that is literally falling apart. But Bernadette isn't just a sociopathic oddball; she is, or was, a great architect who dropped out and whose midlife crisis has lasted a couple of decades.

"Where'd you go, Bernadette" is a Richard Linklater comedy so you know we are in oddball territory to begin with. What you might not realise is that it's also very funny and naturally more than a little sad. It's like a walking, talking New Yorker cartoon brought to glorious life and not just by Blanchett, (no-one does crazy quite like her), Crudup and Nelson but by a terrific supporting cast headed by Kristen Wiig and with pitch-perfect turns from Judy Greer, Zoe Chao, Laurence Fishburne, David Paymer and Steve Zahn. I loved every crazy, off-the-wall and marvellously moving moment.

JERICHOW **

 Yet another variation on "The Postman Always Rings Twice". "Jerichow" is a Christian Petzold film so you know it's going to be a more esoteric, slightly off-the-wall thriller. Petzold is not a conventional director even if his plots tend to be. Thomas, (a taciturn Benno Furmann), a dishonourably discharged Afghanistan veteran, needs a job so after doing a favour for drunken businessman Hilmi Sozer, he ends up working for him and his beautiful, unhappy wife so you can imagine what happens next but, like "Transit", his very un-Casablanca like take on "Casablanca", this doesn't quite stick to the formula and perhaps you can tell that it won't from the unrelated opening scene.

Petzold doesn't really go for the big dramatic flourish so this tale of lust and murderous thoughts is surprisingly low-key but like the James M. Cain novel it's loosely based on, it all ends in tears. Indeed there are times when you wish Petzold would just opt for the more melodramatic course; as a thriller this is just a little short on suspense. The three leads are fine and there's a neat twist or two towards the end giving the film a more tragic dimension a more conventional ending would have lacked. Not Petzold's best film, then, but certainly worth seeing.

YOUTH WITHOUT YOUTH **

 Coppola's first film in ten years was this very strange and somewhat unwieldy adaptation of Mircea Eliade's novella about a professor who, after being struck by a bolt of lightening, regresses to a much younger self, (a kind of Benjamin Button in reverse), allowing him to go find his 'lost' love and continue his life studies, beginning during the rise of Nazism in Europe and moving into the atomic age. It's the kind of wordy, literary picture that the American cinema often tackled as if doing us a favour by bringing the great works of literature to the masses and which, in too many cases, were often just clunking bores but then this is Coppola, a man never afraid of experimentation or of taking a risk so "Youth Without Youth" is, if nothing else, a bold movie.

It was a failure, of course. Critics no longer raced to find a lost master making a grand comeback and audiences, the few that went to see it, found it bewildering and bewildering it is. Tim Roth, a great actor who has never really been given his dues, is the professor and he's perfectly cast here but Coppola's screenplay does him no favours while poor Bruno Ganz is straddled with the awkward role of the doctor who helps him while Coppola, who despite his best efforts, is still guilty of literaryitis, (this is wordy in the worst possible way). Who did he think would go to see it? On the plus side, like so much of Coppola's work, it looks terrific. Cinematographer Mihai Malaimare Jr. bathes the film in a gorgeous autumnal glow. Yes,  it may ultimately be a failure but it's an honourable one and is still worth seeking out.

FRIENDS WITH MONEY ***

 If this small gem of a movie feels at times like an extended episode of a really rather good television series, don't knock it. Good television these days is often so much better than many mainstream movies. Nicole Holofcener made "Friends with Money" in 2006 and the friends, as we have come to expect from Holofcener, are female though the title is a misnomer since not all the friends have money. They are Frances McDormand, Catherine Keener, Joan Cusack and Jennifer Aniston and Aniston is the poor one. She's also the single one; the others are married to Simon McBurney, Jason Isaacs and Greg Germann and like all good friends they not only interact but interfere in each other's lives.

As you might also expect from Holofcener, "Friends with Money" is often very funny, touching and whip-smart and all four women are superb with Aniston proving the real surprise. The men mostly trail behind them though Britain's McBurney is excellent as McDormand's husband that everyone just assumes is gay while Scott Caan makes for a terrific sleaze-ball of a personal trainer who will sleep with any woman that moves. Never destined for mainstream success, this may have slipped off the radar but it's a movie that cries out for rediscovery.

THIRST **

 If you know the original source novel it may take you awhile to recognize Zola's "Therese Raquin" in this tale of a vampiric priest, transposed to present day South Korea. The priest is Father Sang-hyun, (a superb Kang-ho Song), whose crisis of faith leads him to take part in a somewhat extreme medical experiment and since this is also a horror film, as well as an off-the-wall adaptation of a literary classic, naturally the experiment goes wrong and very soon the good father is lusting after blood and the nubile young wife, (Kim Ok-bin, also superb), of an old boyhood friend.

"Thirst" is a Chan-wook Park film so you know there will be a lot more sex and blood than religion and its horrors will be poetic as well as extreme. Park may be one of Asian cinema's foremost stylists but you mustn't take any of this too seriously. Since Dracula we've had all sorts of vampires, some exploring the myth with a high degree of seriousness, others poking fun; Park tries to combine the two with a reasonable degree of success. It's certainly stylish and it's certainly different and yes, it even manages to get Zola in there, too. Just don't expect too much of him.

MAGNUM FORCE **

 With a screenplay by John Milius and Michael Cimino, "Magnum Force" really out to be better than it is but then you realise the director is Ted Post so maybe we should be thankful it's as good as it is. Post was a jobbing director of limited talent so you might say he was really only as good as his material. "Magnum Force" was the second, in what turned out to be, the 'Dirty Harry' franchise and as follow-ups, (as opposed to sequels), go this is an enjoyably crude yarn.

This time round a group of rogue cops, (David Soul, Tim Matheson, Kip Niven and Robert Urich), are dispensing their own brand of justice, killing bad guys, (and anyone else who gets in their way), and it's up to Harry to stop them. Are you in any doubt that he would? It's a good plot and, to be fair, Post handles the action sequences with considerable aplomb. Unfortunately Clint walks through it as if on autopilot but then, as actor, he too was really just as good as his material.

ONE FROM THE HEART ****

 When Coppola made "Finian's Rainbow" quite early in his career he took the hokiest of old Broadway shows and revamped it for the hippies so why suppose his next musical would be any different? Knowing that the musical as a genre is pure fantasy from the very start, with "One From the Heart" he created a Las Vegas that didn't exist, (he built it in the studio), with a pair of star-crossed lovers who couldn't sing, or at least didn't sing, but rather than dub them he got Tom Waits to write an original song score and then sing it off-screen with he and Crystal Gale standing in the for leads, Frederic Forrest and Teri Garr.

This was a musical for cineastes and jazz aficionados. It cost a fortune and it lost a fortune and it bankrupted Coppola but it was obviously 'one from the heart', as filled with Coppolaesque passion as his 'Godfather' movies or "Apocalypse Now" and it looks ravishing, (Vittorio Storaro and Ronald V. Garcia did the cinematography and Dean Tavoularis and Angelo Graham designed it).

If Coppola's films can be divided into 'the big successes' and 'the smaller cult movies' then this is the cult movie to end them all. Is it a masterpiece? Perhaps, but I think it is let down just a little by Armyan Bernstein and Coppola's screenplay which is formulaic and banal. Of course, could this be part of the fantasy, Coppola's way of divorcing everything, including what's said, from the real world? Again, perhaps. It's certainly a movie you will either relate to totally or run a mile from but if you liked "The Umbrellas of Cherbourg" you'll love this.

DON'T LOOK BACK ****

 D. A. Pennebaker's "Don't Look Back" is one of the great documentaries. An intimate portrait of Bob Dylan's 1965 tour of the UK it's also one of the few films about 'celebrity' that feels both truthful and unforced. Pennebaker may have idolised Dylan but his film is never sycophantic yet is so deeply affectionate it almost hurts and Pennebaker's use of the close-up is extraordinary. This may have been his way of getting as close to Dylan's 'soul' as was possible since Bob's utterances are, perhaps, less profound that we might expect and it's left to the songs to speak for him.

Dylan, himself, comes across as a likeable, if not always modest, young man, (at one point he compares his singing voice to that of Caruso), easily approachable by fans and the obsequious journalists who seem to want to build him up and pull him down at the same time, clearly not understanding a word he says or sings. Subsequent Dylan films have explored in even greater detail his progress from unkempt youth to Nobel-Prize winning elder statesman but if you really love Dylan this film is the gift that keeps giving.

TEXAS LADY **

 21 years after winning her Oscar as a runaway heiress in "It Happened One Night", Claudette Colbert was the "Texas Lady" who, by rather roundabout means, inherits a newspaper in a small Texas town where she comes up against corrupt cattle barons Ray Collins and Walter Sande and their hired gun Gregory Walcott. If, on the surface, Tim Whelan's western seems like a slight affair, think again. Horace McCoy's screenplay crams more plot into the films 80 odd minutes than most films manage in 3 hours, (and remember he was the author of "They Shoot Horses, Don't They?") and while not always the most probable of plots, it's nevertheless very entertaining. Of course, Colbert herself was always one of the most likeable and watchable actresses ever to come out of Hollywood even if, as here, she's somewhat miscast and a good decade older than her love interest. Barry Sullivan. Minor perhaps but a curio that's worth seeking out.

MIDNIGHT LACE **

 What's not to love? Doris Day, in gowns by Irene, no less, being menaced in the London fog by a mysterious, unseen man threatening to kill her while a cast that includes Rex Harrison, John Gavin, Myrna Loy, Roddy McDowell, Natasha Parry and Herbert Marshall swan around wondering if she's actually being menaced or just imagining it and if she is being menaced which of these prime suspects is doing it? You see, Doris is rich and it seems everyone else isn't and would kill for her money.

"Midnight Lace" was a 1960 Ross Hunter production, directed by David Miller and based on a little known Janet Green play with the terrible title "Matilda Shouted Fire" but if it's a fairly creaky thriller it's also a hugely entertaining one. You know, of course, that Doris is going to be alright since that most urbane of police inspectors, John Williams, is on the case, (well, he did bring Ray Milland to justice), and you don't have to be Sherlock Holmes to figure out the villain long before the end. It may not be much of a film but it is a great guilty pleasure.

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.