THE MEMBER OF THE WEDDING **

Julie Harris created the role of Frankie, the 12 year old tomboy who can't come to terms with her older brother's marriage, in the Broadway production of Carson McCullers' "The Member of the Wedding" and she's magnificent recreating the role in Fred Zinnemann's film version. It was her screen debut and she was nominated for the Oscar. She was also 26 at the time and makes for a very convincing 12 year old; it was a tour-de-force. Zinnemann also wisely cast Ethel Waters as the black housekeeper Berenice and 10 year old Brandon De Wilde as Frankie's young friend John Henry, also both from the original Broadway production. They, too, are superb.


The piece itself is slighter than its reputation might suggest and Zinnemann does nothing to open it up. Edward and Edna Anhalt did the adaptation and their script retains a good deal of McCullers' poetry. Fundamentally, though, this is an actor's piece and it's the three principals who carry it. It isn't much of a film but at least it preserves three great theatrical performances and that's enough.

TRIAL AND ERROR **

Minor and small scale this screen version of John Mortimer's "The Dock Brief" may have been but it's frequently very funny and boasts two outstanding performances from a BAFTA nominated Richard Attenborough as the mundane, mild-mannered and mostly morose husband accused of murdering his wife, (a rumbustious Beryl Reid), and Peter Sellers as his mediocre if well-meaning barrister. It was perhaps a strange little movie for these two stars to have made at the time and it wasn't really a success but it's likeable in its stagey way and there is a very nice supporting performance from David Lodge as a somewhat over-enthusiastic lodger.

RAINY DOG ***

This strange movie about a Japanese hitman stranded in Taiwan and saddled with a young son he didn't know he had would probably sit comfortably on a double-bill with Cassavetes' "Gloria" though this is a lot more enigmatic. It was the second film in what became known as Takashi Miike's Shinjuku Triad Trilogy and it has a slightly mystical quality you may not associate with the director. Personally there were times I found it hard to get a handle on the plot and if you are looking for a typical Miike picture you will probably be disappointed. The title, "Rainy Dog" is certainly apt since it rains here more than in almost any movie I can think of. As the mostly silent, philosophical killer Sho Aikawa is excellent and his performance should remind you of Alain Delon in Melville's "Le Samourai", (this movie is almost in the same class). It is certainly sufficiently unusual to command attention and is far from the usual run-of-the-mill Yakuza flic.

GANGSTER SQUAD **

The first thing that hits you about "Gangster Squad" is just how terrific it looks. This probably isn't how Los Angeles looked in 1949 but this is how LA looked in the pages of Life Magazine; "Gangster Squad" is done up to the nines and is dressed to kill. It's said to be inspired by real events and it's a kind of LA version of "The Untouchables"with an LA gangster named Mickey Cohen standing in for Al Capone. Cohen is a deliriously over-the-top Sean Penn. The Elliot Ness figure is Josh Brolin but as usual it's Ryan Gosling who steals the movie as an insolent, hot-headed young cop. It's certainly not very original and the violence is often so excessive as to be positively cartoonish. The critics didn't like it and the public didn't rush to it either but it's very enjoyable and, like I said, it looks amazing, (the DoP is Dion Beebe; the principal designer, Maher Ahmad).

WE ARE WHAT WE ARE *

Far from a direct remake of the Mexican original this American version of "We Are What We Are" keeps the original premiss and not much else. The first version felt more like a commentary on the social conditions prevailing in Mexico at the time rather than an outright horror film but one that worked in both contexts. This is closer to "Texas Chainsaw..." territory and as a genre piece it remains gruesomely effective but if it lacks the original's sense of social outrage it certainly generates its own sense of dread and probably gives Michael Parks the best line he's ever had.
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FIRE OVER ENGLAND **

 Directed by the American William K. Howard and produced by Erich Pommer this was England taking on Hollywood at their own game; an expensive all-star swashbuckling period piece with just enough propaganda to make it relevant to a country that, within two years, would be at war. It's a gorgeous looking picture, beautifully designed and superbly photographed by none other than James Wong Howe, making great use of both blacks and whites in the overall palette, (and how it was overlooked in both these categories at the Oscars I find it hard to believe).

Future real-life spouses Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh are the young lovers though neither gets star billing. That's reserved for Flora Robson as Elizabeth I and very good she is, as well as Leslie Banks as Robert Dudley. Raymond Massey is Philip of Spain and James Mason has a small role as a spy and there's a nice performance from Morton Selten as Lord Burleigh. It was, of course, a huge hit yet it isn't much seen these days which is a pity, for while it does err on the dull side on occasions, (a tighter script might have helped), overall it is very enjoyable.

AMERICAN GANGSTER ***

This real-life crime movie isn't the kind of film you might readily associate with Ridley Scott moving, quite effortlessly it seems to me, into Scorsese territory with the story of Frank Lucas, a New York drug king and his involvement with some very corrupt cops. A terrific Denzel Washington is Lucas, (why no Oscar nomination for something approaching a career-best performance), and Russell Crowe is very good as the honest cop out to nail him. This is a prestige production and no mistake with an outstanding cast that also includes Josh Brolin, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Cuba Gooding Jr, John Hawkes and Ruby Dee, Oscar-nominated as Lucas' mother. Steve Zaillian did the excellent script from an article by Mark Jacobson and Harris Savides was responsible for the superb cinematography. Scorsese would probably have adopted a more kinetic approach but Scott doesn't disappoint, (he rarely does). No classic perhaps, but so much better than what I expected and what it might have been. Hugely entertaining.

ANNA KARENINA **

Much abridged and much altered Hollywood version of Tolstoy's novel, this would be of little consequence were it not for the fact that Garbo is playing "Anna Karenina" and she is close to magnificent. She completely transcends material you would never guess is taken from the book often called the greatest novel ever written. Vronsky is Fredric March; he isn't terrible but he's hardly someone a woman like Garbo's Anna would leave home and family for while Basil Rathbone is a superbly petulant Karenin. Perhaps the film's sweetest surprise is Maureen O'Sullivan's Kitty; it's a lovely performance and may be the best thing she ever did even if her part has been cut to nothing. Production values are, of course, splendid in the high gloss fashion of MGM. Director Clarence Brown was no Cukor but he kept things galloping along for all of the film's 90 or so minutes.

MY OLD LADY no stars

The problem with "My Old Lady" is that it suffers from an excess of good taste and a severe dearth of a good plot. Kevin Kline is the down-on-his-luck American who inherits a Paris apartment together with its 92 year old tenant Maggie Smith and her daughter, Kristin Scott Thomas and he has them until Smith dies. Not only that but he must continue to pay Smith 2,400 euros a month. As written and directed by Israel Horovitz from Horovitz's original play, nothing of any consequence happens. The three principal performances are fine but the material is gossamer thin. It's the kind of idea that might have seemed good at the time but which came to nothing. It might have made for a decent 30 minute short but stretched out to feature length it's almost unendurable. Paris looks nice though but even Paris can't save it.

THE GUNMAN no stars

Despite a terrific cast, (Sean Penn, Javier Bardem, Idris Elba, Ray Winstone, Mark Rylance), this lack-lustre thriller never really builds up a head of steam nor is it ever really credible. Penn is the former assassin who, eight years after his last kill, finds himself the target for a change. It begins in the Congo before moving to London, Barcelona and Gibraltar and it's certainly handsomely shot though to make up for the deficiencies in the script director Pierre Morel lays on the tourist shtick a little too heavily and a film needs more than just pretty pictures to sustain our interest. Nobody is really at their best though Rylance, in much too small a part, works wonders with the material he's been given. Watchable, nothing more.

CAST A DARK SHADOW **

It's a load of old tosh but its also a lot of fun with a grand cast pulling out all the stops. Dirk Bogarde is the psychopathic killer who does away with rich wife Mona Washbourne, making her death look like an accident but when he finds she's made a will leaving all her money to her sister in Jamaica he marries Margaret Lockwood for her money only to find she's not quite so easy to get rid off. They, as well as Kay Walsh as a rich newcomer to the district and Kathleen Harrison as a slightly dotty maid, are all at the top of their game and Lewis Gilbert directs as if he actually wanted us to take all of this seriously. It may stick very much to its one-room set, betraying its theatrical origins, but thanks to Gilbert and cinematographer Jack Asher it remains resolutely cinematic.

LEGEND OF THE LOST **

Considering that for most of this film there are only three characters on screen and two of them are very badly played by John Wayne and Rossano Brazzi, (the third is a sultry looking Sophia Loren and she's very good in an underwritten role), Henry Hathaway's "Legend of the Lost" is a surprisingly entertaining piece of nonsense, complete with lost treasure and some gorgeously photographed desert locations courtesy of Jack Cardiff. There isn't much else yet Hathaway manages to keep us watching, maybe with a promise that something is going to happen even if in the end, it hardly ever does. It's success probably had a lot to do with the Westener's love of deserts and exotic locations, (maybe there's a touch of the T. E. Lawrence in all of us). It's hardly the best of Hathaway but there's no denying it's very enjoyable.

MRS MINIVER *

There's no denying that this tub-thumping piece of jingoism is reasonably entertaining for what it is and that it's very well made, (you expect nothing less from Wyler), and pleasingly acted, (Garson and Wright won Oscars and Pidgeon, Whitty and Henry Travers were all nominated though it was really Whitty who should have won), but it's so patronisingly middle-class it is almost offensive. It's supposed to be about a 'typical' middle-class British family at the beginning of and during the early years of the Second World War but this is Hollywood's idea of England and the Minivers are about as close to real-life as the inhabitants of "Downton Abbey" or even Neverland, (the 'typical' Minivers are so middle-class they have their own servants), and at well over two hours all this sweetness and light, with a little sentimental tragedy thrown in, is enough to melt your teeth. Amazingly it won six Oscars including Best Picture, was a huge hit and is much loved by many, though not by me.