THE LATE GEORGE APLEY **

 In 1947 "The Late George Apley" would definitely have been what was called a prestige production. It began life as a novel by John P, Marquand before being adapted for the stage by Marquand and George S. Kaufman so it seemed inevitable that it would be filmed. Primarily it's a vehicle for the actor playing Apley, the stuffy, rich and hugely snobbish Bostonian who is finally brought out of himself and down to earth by his children and the people they choose to fall in love with and in Ronald Colman they did indeed find the perfect Apley, not that he has to do a great deal of acting, (that's left largely to the supporting cast). Colman just has to swan about, speaking in those beautifully dulcet tones and he does it beautifully. It's also a comedy; gentle, sweet-natured and genuinely funny. The director was Jospeh L. Mankiewicz and while it may not be among his best work it is very likeable if also very old-fashioned.

MASS ***

 "Mass", in the title of Fran Kranz's excellent debut film, stands for mass murder but it could also mean the Catholic Mass, which is a sacrament, since one of the subjects of this film is forgiveness. Two sets of parents meet in the basement of a church; they are the parents of boys involved in a school shooting, those of the killer and those of one of the victims. What is the real purpose of their meeting? Closure, forgiveness, to vent anger, to divest themselves of pain, to try to understand? Kranz's film covers all of these and is blessed with an extraordinary cast of four. Reed Birney and Ann Dowd are the parents of the killer and Jason Isaacs and Martha Plimpton are the parents of the victim.

It is a theatrical concept and yes, it does feel like a filmed play with well rehearsed arguments but the cast raise onto a different level; painfully we feel like eavesdroppers on their grief and that is Kranz's achievement. Apart from a few shots at the beginning and end we never leave the one room and the cast mostly sit around a table and they talk. This is hardly a film to pack them in on a Saturday night but it is still one fo the best films of the year and certainly it has the best ensemble cast.

DON'T BOTHER TO KNOCK **

 At just 76 minutes this B-Movie thriller, directed by British director Roy Ward Baker in the U.S., is just the right length and features an early dramatic performance from a 25 year old Marilyn Monroe. OK, we're not talking Oscars here but Miss Monroe certainly gives a credible performance as a psychotic babysitter. The action takes place over the course of one evening in the single setting of a New York hotel where Marilyn is babysitting the daughter of Jim Backus and Lurene Tuttle. She attracts the attention of pilot Richard Widmark who is in the throes of a breakup with girlfriend Anne Bancroft who works as a singer in the hotel but it's not too long before Marilyn's behaviour starts to worry Richard.

"Don't Bother to Knock" may not be much of a movie but it has built up something of a cult reputation mainly due to to Monroe's performance and as a thriller it does deliver the goods like a decent episode of 'The Alfred Hitchcock Hour' and Widmark is excellent as usual. There's also a fine performance from Elisha Cook Jr. as Monroe's uncle who also happens to be the hotel's elevator operator. It's certainly no classic but it does what it says on the tin.

DEERSKIN ***

 Georges, (a superb Jean Dujardin), drives into the mountains to buy himself a 'new' second-hand jacket having tried to flush the one he was wearing down a service-station toilet. The jacket is 100% "Deerskin", which is the title of Quentin Dupieux's new film, and it comes with an almost new digital video camera. Dupieux is the man who gave us "Rubber", about a killer tyre, so you know that this, too, is going to be off-the-wall to say the least and off-the-wall it certainly is.

Could it, in fact, be a movie about a killer jacket or about a man having a really bad mental breakdown or just another movie about making a movie from yet another movie brat? Let's say it's about all three and did I mention it's also a comedy and a very black one? It's also a considerable step up from "Rubber" though it would make a nice companion piece and as horror-comedies go, for this is indeed a horror-comedy, it's certainly an original. I can't wait to see what Dupieux does next.

NOBODY ***

 Bob Odenkirk might not seem like your typical action hero but after "Nobody" I think all that might change. Odenkirk's Hutch does appear to be something of a nobody, an ordinary working class guy who can hardly tell one day from the next since they are all the same, that is until one night his home is broken into and his family threatened. No, he doesn't go all 'John Wick' suddenly, (in fact, he does nothing), but the incident awakens something in him and before you can say Keanu or Bronson, Hutch's past has crept up on him and all hell looks like it will break loose, (it does).

Ilya Naishuller's hugely entertaining action-thriller came and went without getting anything like the attention it deserved. It's deeply silly and very violent yet it's also highly original in its cartoonish kind of way with movie references scattered here and there and it's very stylishly directed by Naishuller; you might even call it a 'post-modern' John Wick movie. Everything that a movie like this should have it has but Naishuller keeps his tongue firmly in his cheek and a lot of the time it's laugh out loud funny. Great fun, maybe even a classic, though I'm worried in case the inevitable follow-up doesn't make the grade.

LICORICE PIZZA ****

 Who would have guessed it; Paul Thomas Anderson has made the best romantic comedy in years but then, this being a Paul Thomas Anderson film, where's the surprise. Perhaps it's in the setting, (LA in the seventies, a world of film, television and waterbeds), if not in the treatment which is as idiosyncratic as ever. Firstly, take the ages of the young lovers; he's 15 and she's 25 and it's an on-again-off-again romance that's never really a romance but a friendship as sweet as any in the movies. This is Anderson's most accessible film as well as the funniest but again, this being a Paul Thomas Anderson film, it's not without its dark side but that move in and out of darkness is flawlessly done.

Of course, how much of this is autobiographical I haven't the faintest idea. Let's just say it's about a boy coming of age in California in the 1970's where Anderson himself was born in 1970, too young to be the film's hero but old enough to remember the movie brats of whom Anderson is perhaps the youngest and possibly the most talented but unlike Tarantino, Anderson doesn't people his film with 'real-life' cameos, (witht the exception of Jon Peters, one-time 'Mr. Barbra Streisand'), but some nicely disguised portraits like Jack Holden, (think William, with a dash of Steven McQueen; a terrific Sean Penn) and Lucy Doollittle, (think 'Ricardo',circa "Yours, Mine and Ours").

But then all of this is just window dressing, if brilliant window dressing, to the movie's main love story that is carried along by two truly wonderful performances from Cooper Hoffman, (son of Philip Semour with both the looks and talent of his dad), and newcomer Alana Haim. They are unknown now but their futures are assured; these are two of the best performances of 2021 though Bradley Cooper does his best to upstage them as Peters.

Yes, Anderson may fill his film with crowd-pleasing cameos, (Harriet Sansom Harris is another gem), but he saves the best moments for Hoffman and Haim; a silent phone call that speaks volumes, an initial meeting in high school grounds that is one of the sweetest getting-to-know-you moments in movies, running towards each other during various stages of their relationship as if fate really had decreed that these two people should be together.

In its way, this is Anderson's love letter to the movies, the ones we pay our money to see in the multiplexes, but it's equally Anderson having the time of his life and passing it on. "Licorice Pizza" is easily the sweetest movie of the year and almost certainly the best.

THE FUGITIVE no stars

 Not John Ford's finest hour. "The Fugitive" was his 1947 adaptation of Graham Greene's "The Power and the Glory" and like "The Informer" it suffers from a heavy dose of Expressionism and worse, 'religiosity'; this is enough to turn the best Catholic to paganism. Filmed in Mexico and, presumably, set there, though the opening narration informs us it's a 'nameless state'. It's about a place where religion is banned and where priests must hide out and become fugitives.

Henry Fonda is 'the fugitive' of the title, a priest trying to keep one step ahead of the law, represented here by Pedro Armendariz. No-one is given a name but simply a title, 'a figitive', 'an Indian woman' (that's Dolores del Rio), 'a Lieutenant of Police' and so on. Symbolism is the order of the day and Fonda's priest is decidedly Christ-like, (we also have a Judas, a Magdalene, a Barabbas etc.), and for a country where religion is banned on pain of death the peasants seem to embrace it and to burst into song at every opportunity. The superb black and white cinematography of Gabriel Figueroa is the only plus.

VOYAGE OF TIME **

  Not short enough to be a short and not long enough to be a feature, Terrence Malick's "Voyage of Time", (subtitled, 'The IMAX Experience' to give you an idea what kind of screen you should see it on), is like an extended sequence from "The Tree of Life" or outtakes from "2001; A Space Odyssey" and is visually superb as we might expect from Malick but it's hardly informative and even at 46 minutes is just as likely to bore as to enthrall.

Brad Pitt is the narrator who asks us do we ever wonder where we came from when we look at the stars or when did dust become life. Malick doesn't tell us and you will almost certainly get more information from a David Attenborough documentary than from this. That said, it looks amazing in ways that even Attenborough can't match and to Malick's credit he does ponder 'big' questions as if the asking itself is enough to satisfy the lack of an answer and anyone remotely interested in the visual power of cinema won't want to miss it and yes, see it on the biggest screen possible. There's also a 90 minute version, narrated by Cate Blanchet, and still awaiting a release.

VIVARIUM no stars

 If you're wondering what it takes to get a movie made just look at the number of executive producers and production companies behind "Vivarium". Fundamentally, it's an Irish film but with input from Belgium and Denmark as well. The setting, of course, is everywhere and nowhere since "Vivarium" is a horror-cum-sci-fi picture and its appalling Yonder, where every house and every street is identical, could be anywhere or nowhere. Stepford, perhaps?

Gemma and Tom are the young couple in search of their first home and Martin is the deeply weird, almost not quite human, estate agent who shows them around 'Number 9'. The thing is they don't like the house, the area or Martin but when they try to leave they find they can't. Lorcan Finnegan's movie is a fantasy that's grounded in a kind of reality thanks only to the lived-in performances of Imogen Poots and Jesse Eisenberg as the young couple trapped in a nightmare from which there is no escape and things get even weirder, if that's possible, when a baby turns up on the doorstep of the house they thought they had just burned down and grows up into a strapping, screaming broth of a boy almost overnight.

The problem with "Vivarium" is that there is enough material here for maybe a decent episode of "The Twilight Zone" that's now been stretched to over ninety minutes and despite Poots and Eisenberg's best efforts it gets boring very quickly and it didn't take me long to figure out why it took so many people to get this misbegotten project off the ground. Let's just say "Vivarium" is a hard-sell. On the plus side Senan Jennings is very good as the child from hell before he grows up to be Eanna Hardwicke.

tick, tick...BOOM! *

 Jonathan Larson, in case you don't know, was the guy who wrote that mega and award-winning hit "Rent" but who was already dead from a brain aneurysm before the opening night. You might call it a tragic success story since Larson never lived long enough to know how much he was appreciated though if Lin-Manuel Miranda's film "tick, tick...BOOM!" is anything to go by Larson always knew just how good he was. He may never have been a 'success' during his lifetime but he was clearly gifted, (Sondheim was a fan), and not lacking in self-confidence.

The movie itself is based on Larson's less well known musical autobiography, a kind of one-man show complete with backing singers and band and Miranda opens it out very nicely so we aren't stuck watching a guy performing in a theatre and as rock-cum-broadway showtunes musicals go, it isn't half bad.

Larson, himself, is played by Andrew Garfield, a remarkably talented actor who can now add a fine singing voice to his CV. Unfortunately, he is also extremely annoying. If this was what Larson was really like let's say I find his brand of chutzpah very grating and Garfield lays it on with a trowel. Yes, it's nice his story is finally being told but I just wish I could have liked him more.

BEING THE RICARDOS ***

 The Ricardos, in case you don't know, were Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball, probably the hottest married couple in America in the '50's and certainly the hottest married couple on television and Aaron Sorkin's excellent new film, "Being the Ricardos" is about one week in their lives, a week that began when Walter Winchell announced that Ball was a member of the Communist Party, (and this was during the blacklist), so Sorkin's film isn't a comedy, (though it is often funny), but another political picture from one of America's prime specialists in political pictures.

It's also a memory piece as a few of Lucy and Desi's collaborators in the present look back, not just at the week in question, but further back into the lives of the couple. We see their meeting and follow Ball's career; some of these flashbacks work and some don't. There is, of course, the potential for mawkishness but Sorkin is much too acerbic and canny a writer for that and, as he showed in "The Trial of the Chicago Seven", he's a fine director of actors. Nicole Kidman, in particular, is outstanding as Ball, sometimes bearing an uncanny resemblance to the Lucy I remember from television and while Javier Bardem may not look much like Arnaz he turns in yet another fine performance though it is Nina Arianda as Vivian Vance who almost walks off with the picture.

The period detail, too, is perfectly realised and there are brilliant recreations of some of the television shows that made Desi and Lucy, (and the fictional Ricardos),that most beloved of couples. Unfortunately, while the film is clearly a labour of love for Sorkin is it enough to ensure its success at the box-office? It's certainly relevant; the scars that America suffered during Trump's presidency haven't really healed and much of what's happening in America and American show-biz today, bears a disturbing similarity to the age of McCarthyism. At least Ball and Arnaz challenged the conventions of the time and won and Sorkin's heartfelt film is a tribute to their tenacity. Sadly, what they couldn't heal was the minefield that was their marriage and they divorced shortly after the events displayed but this isn't a sad movie; on the contrary, this pertinent film has its own sense of uplift and is a credit to Sorkin, Kidman, Bardem and all concerned.

LA RELIGIEUSE ****

 I'm not quite sure how seriiously Diderot meant his text to be taken when he wrote his novel "La Religieuse"; it's certainly anti-clerical and it did provoke a scandal. Here was a tale of savagery and what was perceived as sexual perversity within the Catholic Church and amongst nuns no less and, of course, the story told in "La Religieuse" can shock us even now even if we are a little more sophisticated.

Jacques Rivete filmed Diderot's "La Religieuse", (English title, "The Nun"), in 1966 and it's a classic, certainly one of the key French films of the period. It's the story of a young 19th century French girl with no prospects of marriage put, like so many of her contemporaries, into a convent. However, Susanne, (a never better Anna Karina), is a rebel and her rebellion takes the form of a lawsuit against her convent so that she can renounce her vows and go back into the world. However, the nuns have other ideas and she is subjected to all the horrors they can inflict on her.

When she loses her case she is transferred to a, let's call it a more 'open prison', where the nuns gambol and frolic like gay versions of the sisters in "The Sound of Music" and where the Mother Superior takes a more than motherly interest in Susanne and where even the local priest takes a less than religious fancy to her. The contrast to her former convent is deliciously perverse; religion is scorned and debauchary championed and poor Susanne is torn between the devil and the deep.

Rivette, of coursem films all this in his typrically austere style drawing excellent performances from his largely female cast and certainly giving it 'the look' of a proper period piece. It's also one of his most accessible films though it was never likely to pack the local cinema on a Saturday night. This is art-house fare of the best kind; intelligent and gripping and its reputation is richly deserved.

FEAR STRIKES OUT **

 "Fear Strikes Out" was both a sports film and a film about mental illness, topics that were fashionable when the film was made. It was also director Robert Mulligan's first film and it gave Anthony Perkins his first starring role. It could just as easily have been called 'The Jim Piersall Story' as it deals with the early career of the Red Sox player who fought mental illness for a good part of his life and the film makes no qualms about laying the blame at the feet of his domineering father, played by Karl Malden.

Knowing nothing about the real Jim Piersall I can't say how accurately Perkins embodies the role. He does seem a somewhat awkward athlete but is often superb in his more psychotic moments. Perkins was always a somewhat unlikely star; tall, gangly, good-looking and at least bisexual. I'm sure the studios must have wondered what to do with him and it took Hitchcock to find the perfect part. Unfortunately, after "Psycho" he was basically Norman Bates for the rest of his career. Mulligan, fresh from television, handles the fairly obvious material with some skill and did at least secure a nomination from the Director's Guild. Minor, perhaps, but still worth seeing.