ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT **

 It was perhaps the greatest of all antiwar novels and in 1930 it became the greatest of all antiwar films and until this day that American film version, directed by Lewis Milestone, remains largely unsurpassed. In 1979 there was a television version directed by Delbert Mann which was given a cinema release in some countries and now Germany itself has tackled "All Quiet on the Western Front" in this epic version directed by Edward Berger..

It's all there; the multitudinous corpses, the dead animals, the mud in the trenches, the gas. What isn't there is Remarque's novel. For some reason Berger and fellow writers Lesley Paterson and Ian Stokell have chosen to veer away from the original though he does keep a few key incidents. As war films go, however, this one is certainly grimly realistic even if there is still something vaguely 'Hollywood' about it, brilliantly photographed but perhaps a little over-egged in the art direction department. The battle scenes may be among the finest ever filmed, (they are certainly among the most horrific), but maybe they are just 'too much'; never has the old adage 'War is Hell' been more appropriate. Berger has conjured up a hell on earth and on a huge scale. He makes his point and then he makes it again and again.

The film's hero is young Paul Baumer, (very well played by Felix Kammerer), who goes from idealistic schoolboy to battle-scared veteran almost overnight. He's joined in his living nightmare by 'Kat', (Albrecht Schuch, also very good), an older veteran but closer in age to be more of an older brother than a father figure as was Louis Wolheim to Lew Ayres in the original.

It very seldom leaves the battlefield except for those scenes with the high command and with Daniel Bruhl as the diplomat charged with trying to negotiate a ceasefire. A certain cynicism is the order of the day here that leaves a somewhat sour aftertaste. Is it as good as Milestone's version? No, but then less is more and sometimes the horrors left to our imagination are greater than all the blood and guts contemporary cinema can serve up. On a technical level it is very well done and I don't see it going away empty-handed at the Oscars but neither do I see it going down in history as one of the great (anti)war films.

THE OUTFIT ***

 In this cleverly title picture Mark Rylance is the bespoke tailor in 1950's Chicago who finds himself caught in the middle of a gang war. "The Outfit" of the title could refer to the kind of outfit who kill people or to the kind that Rylance makes in his workshop. The action never leaves said workshop yet director Graham Moore never lets the tension flag.

Rylance, as ever, is superb and there's excellent supporting work from Zoey Deutch as the receptionist in over her head and from Dylan O'Brien, Johnny Flynn and a delightfully over-the-top Simon Russell Beale as various goodfellas. There's also a very nice streak of black humour running through the film and while this may be a 'small' picture it is, in its own way, close to perfect.

PINOCCHIO *

A very different take on "Pinocchio" which, despite the inevitable cuteness, (those awful kid's voices, some terrible songs), is also much darker than expected. Producer, co-director and co-writer Guillermo Del Toro has chosen to set it in fascist Italy, (Mussolini himself is a character), and death, real and imaginary, is never far from the surface. It certainly looks amazing and is something of a technical marvel but both children and their parents will surely miss the fairytale magic that made the Disney version unique.

This might well have seemed like a good idea but that mixture of cuteness and ghoulishness never really gels and its all-star cast struggle to bring it to life, (Ewan McGregor makes for a very annoying cricket). I'm also not sure young kids will get it nor am I sure adults will appreciate Del Toro's messing with familiar material. Indeed it's something of a mess if, at times, a brilliant one.

WHITE NOISE ****

Noah Baumbach's most ambitious film to date is this comedy adapted from Don DeLillo's supposedly unfilmable novel. "White Noise" is in some parts Spielbergian sci-fi and Godardian fantasy with even a dash of Altman thrown in for good measure and you may have trouble finding the Baumbach we all know and love in this heady brew...or perhaps not. Baumbach was always at his best lampooning a certain kind of American lifestyle and this really is a brilliant satire.

Baumbach finds fun in all sorts of places; a disaster movie scenario, a send-up of academia, consumerism and the pharmaceutical industry and once again makes great use of Adam Driver's hang-dog persona and Greta Gerwig's vacant kookiness. He also casts Don Cheadle beautifully against type.

He and Driver are professors in the 'College on the Hill', Cheadle specialising in celebrity studies and Driver in Hitler studies, (apparently Driver's so charasmatic in his work that no-one can mention Hitler's name without a nod in Driver's direction). It may also be Baumbach's most accessible movie to date despite its unlikely source, very funny in a New Yorker kind of way and even serious enough to touch a nerve now and then. It may not be quite in the class of "Marriage Story" but it does confirm Baumbach as one of the best directors in America today.

CRIMES OF THE FUTURE *

 Many have tried but few do 'body-horror' quite like David Cronenberg so I suppose fans should welcome "Crimes of the Future" as a return to the kind of movies that turned us on, or indeed turned us off, Cronenberg in the first place. This is a sci-fi movie grounded in some kind of reality. Yes, there are 'monsters' but the monsters are us, recognizably human, but transmogrified into something beyond what we are now.

You see, humans are growing new organs and the most famous of these is Saul Tenser, (Viggo Mortensen, looking rather disinterested in what's going on). Saul has his new organs removed by his glamorous assistant Caprice, (Lea Seydoux), in a public display, captured mostly on people's mobile phones, which they call 'performance art'. Once upon a time this would qualify as a 'freak-show' but in this age of political correctness there are no longer any 'freaks'; vive la difference!.

You might say with this movie Cronenberg is challenging us to look at the human body differently and defying us to put words like 'freak' or 'deformed' out of our minds entirely or more cynically you could say he was exploiting his characters, feeding on our desire for the bizarre. Is "Crimes of the Future" any less of a horror film than "Shivers" or indeed "Freaks" or even "Nosferatu"?

It seems we love, not only to be frightened, but to be disturbed and it seems once again Cronenberg is out to disturb us. Unfortunately it also seems he may be out to bore us; there are no 'frights' in this horror film which moves at a funereal pace, an exploitation picture that is pretentious enough to think we should take it seriously and it is likely its limited appeal will be only to diehard Cronenberg fans. I doubt if anyone else will consider it one of his better pictures

THE BANSHEES OF INISHERIN ****

 A legend in the theatre, Martin McDonagh's film career has been patchy at best; close to sublime with "In Brughes" and "Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri" and almost irredeemably bad with "Seven Psychopaths". At least until now, since McDonagh's new film isn't just the best thing he's done on screen but very possibly the best thing he's ever done.

On the surface, "The Banshees of Inisherin" is a very simple affair with a plot that could have been written on the back of an envelope. The setting is the ficticious island of Inisherin off the mainland of Ireland. The year is 1922 and the Irish Civil War is raging. Padraic, (Colin Farrell) and Colm, (Brendan Gleeson) are seemingly best friends until one day Colm tells Padraic he no longer wants to be his friend, that he finds him 'boring', and so what begins as a dark comedy worthy of Beckett or indeed the McDonagh who gave us "The Beauty Queen of Leenane" turns slowly but inexorably into a tragedy worthy of Ibsen and dealing with such themes as loneliness, depression, masculinity and friendship and with an ending as sad as any I've seen in the cinema, (though others may see it differently).

Of course, it all could just as easily have fallen on its slightly absurdist face. Here is a scenario that could have gone any which way; McDonagh is hardly known for his subtlety and yet he never puts a foot wrong. By the time we get to the last act you could hear a pin drop in a packed cinema.

It's also magnificently acted both by Farrell and Gleeson in career-best performaces, both underplaying to the extent that they totally disappear inside their characters and there is a third magnificent performance from Barry Keoghan, (please, just give him the Best Supporting Actor Oscar now), as Dominic, ostensibly the village idiot he may just be the most intelligent person on the island and that is his tragedy; such intelligence can't be contained especially when it goes unrecognized. A masterpiece.

JOHNNY NOBODY *

 There's a terrific idea at the heart of this Irish-set thriller, particularly if you're a Catholic. A drunken Irish-American atheist stands outside a Roman Catholic Church in a small Irish village and defies God to strike him dead when out of nowhere a stranger appears and does just that in front of the local priest and the whole village. Since the killer doesn't appear to have a past or an identity, he becomes known as "Johnny Nobody", hence the film's title.

So far so good; unfortunately we get the denouement about two-thirds of the way through and it's not a very good one. From here on things get progressively more far-fetched, like a cross between a poor man's "The 39 Steps" and "Witness for the Prosecution".

Actor Nigel Patrick both directs and plays the sceptical priest, Aldo Ray is the killer and a really rather good William Bendix, the victim. Others in the cast include a miscast Yvonne Mitchell, Cyril Cusack and Niall Macginnis as well as the usual stock company of Irish players. On its level it's entertaining matinee fare but it could have been so much better.

CONVICTED **

 "Convicted" is based on the play 'Criminal Code', previoulsy filmed by Howard Hawks in 1931 and as remakes go this one is very good indeed. Glenn Ford is the guy serving up to 10 years in prison for killing someone in a barroom brawl. Broderick Crawford is the D. A. who sent him down but believed the sentence to have been too harsh and who then finds himself the warden of the prison Ford ended up in.

It's a good story and, like the earlier version, is well cast. Both Ford and Crawford are excellent and a very fine supporting cast includes Millard Mitchell, Will Geer, Dorothy Malone, Frank Faylen, Ed Begley and Carl Benton Reid as a sadistic guard. The director was Henry Levin, normally associated with much lighter fare than this, but this is one of his finest films. It's largely disappeared but this tough, intelligent picture is certainly worth seeking out.

THE HAPPY ENDING no stars

 You could say writer/director Richard Brooks fashioned "The Happy Ending" as a vehicle for his then wife Jean Simmons and this finest and most undervalued of actresses was rewarded with an Oscar nomination for her performance. She plays the unhappy wife of John Forsythe, (shot in soft-focus, the early part of the film explores their 'youthful' courtship though they do make for very unlikely 'kids'), who finally leaves him in order to 'find herself'. Unfortunately the film itself is something of a slog despite being a reasonably well-acted example of 'the women's picture', (even Forsythe isn't bad), with good work from co-stars Shirley Jones, Lloyd Bridges and Bobby Darin, billed here for some reason as Robert Darin.

The problem is the dime-store novel plotting and dialogue straight out of the worst kind of television soap as Brooks explores the rotteness at the heart of American marriage. Apparently it was something of a hit at the time though it's now largely and mercifully forgotten though its theme-song, 'What Are You Doing the Rest of Your Life', has become something of a classic.

AMSTERDAM no stars

 I must admit I've never even heard of the real-life plot that forms the basis of the story that's told to us in David O. Russell's new film "Amsterdam" but I think it needed something more than the daft comedy-thriller Russell serves up, (I use the term 'comedy-thriller' cautiously as there is definitely a dearth of comedy on show). It's actually pretty terrible for about three-quarters of its lengthy two and a quarter hour running time, picking up in the last half hour when 'the plot' is finally revealed but by then it's much too little too late and a really rather good cast is totally trashed by the director.

It begins in 1933, flashes back briefly to 1918/19 before returning to the early thirties when fascism was on the rise in Europe and in America too if this film is to be believed. Christian Bale and John David Washington are the battle-scarred pals from the trenches who find themselves caught up in the murder of their former commander and his daughter and who go off to clear their names like a couple of amateur sleuths out of an Agatha Christie spoof.

Bale's terrific, (when isn't he), proving that even with substandard material he can still light up the screen like few others. Washington can't really compete nor indeed can anyone else though Michael Shannon is very good in much too small a role and Robert DeNiro just about salvages his reputation in the last part of the picture. It certainly looks great if a little over-designed but this is one David O Russell movie I won't be returning to anytime soon.

THE FORGIVEN ***

 For a film that deals with such lofty subjects as crime and punishment, forgiveness or perhaps the lack of it John Michael McDonagh's "The Forgiven" is a lot less profound and certainly not as deep as it might have been or probably thinks it is. On the other hand, it's beautifully filmed, very well directed and with superb performances from its first-rate cast. It also deals with a subject not usually tackled in the cinema; the clash of cultures in contemporary society, in this case between Western hedonists and the Muslim faith.

A drunken driver, (Ralph Fiennes), travelling with his wife, (Jessica Chastain), to a house party in Morocco hits a young Muslim boy and kills him. It's a horrible accident but the man doesn't initially appear to have any remorse and continues onto the party, bringing the body with him. The local police are informed, they agree it was an accident and the boy's father is traced. However, when he comes to collect the body he insists Fiennes return with him for the burial, which he does, leaving Chastain and their dissolute friends to continue with the party.

You might even describe this picture as darkly comic. There are very few people on the screen with whom you can empathise, (the few you can empathise with are Muslims). The twist, when it comes, is that Fiennes is the most moral character in the picture, his greatest 'sin' is simply that he's an alcoholic and the film does leave a sour aftertaste but Fiennes, Chastain, Christopher Abbot as one of the guests and Ismael Kanater as the dead boy's father are so good it's impossible to take your eyes from the screen and there is a cold brilliance to the film. I doubt if it will draw crowds but it's definitely intelligent and certainly it's worth seeing.

THE 355 no stars

 This female kick-ass action flic features three Oscar-winning actresses so we should be looking at a class act, right?  Well, not quite; "The 355" is thoroughly formulaic and a waste of the talents involved which isn't to say it doesn't have its entertaining moments but it's just one of many such genre pictures and it's far from the best.

The McGuffin is some kind of computer drive that if the bad guys get it, (bad guys? who are they?), will do sufficent damage to make World War Three seem like a walk in the park. You know the sort of thing I mean; it's been the staple diet of 'espionage' films since the beginning of the movies and casting the likes of Jessica Chastain, Penelope Cruz, Lupita Nyong'o, Diane Kruger, Edgar Ramirez and Sebastian Stan isn't going to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear and this sow's ear has a very daft and impenetrable plot.

The action scenes are okay, the locations are certainly attractive and the cast do their best with very sub-standard material. There isn't even a decent villain; give me the super silliness of the wildly over-the-top but hugely enjoyable "The Gray Man" any day.

I CAME BY **

 Excellent, queasy chiller from Babak Anvari. The moral of the story seems to be if you're a graffiti artist, don't go breaking into people's homes as you never know what you'll find or what might happen to you. George MacKay is the graffiti artist who breaks into judge Hugh Bonneville's home and gets more than he bargains for. The material isn't particularly new but the handling of it is first-rate and Bonneville makes for a very unnerving villain. Good work, too, from MacKay, Kelly Macdonald as his mother and Percelle Ascott as his best friend. It even manages to pull a couple of unexpected rabbits out of the hat which makes it a genre picture worth seeking out.