LAST YEAR AT MARIENBAD

 To some people it's one of the enduring masterpieces of world cinema, to others one of the most boring films ever made and to some it's simply a one-joke send-up of the kind of pretentious art movies that had still to be invented and yet even today, almost seventy years after it was made "Last Year at Marienbad" is still unique; there is, quite simply, nothing like it.

Resnais already had a reputation. In the mid-fifties he made the documentary "Night and Fog", still one of the greatest films on the Holocaust and two years before "...Marienbad" he gave us the almost equally challenging and not dissimilar "Hiroshima Mon Amour" while in the meantime Antonioni had turned the path narrative cinema might take on its head with "L'Avventura" but this was something else entirely, a feature-length avant-garde movie shot in Cinemascope and clearly meant to be seen by a large international audience and the critics embraced it with a fervor, (it won the Golden Lion at Venice).

If you want to talk about its plot you could say it's about a man and a woman who meet at a fancy baroque hotel where he tells her they had met the year before, possibly at Marienbad, while she keeps denying this ever happened. They and another man, possibly the woman's husband, are the only characters/people in the picture, (there are other 'guests' but they simply move through the film like zombies or statues brought to momentary life), and nothing happens in the picture that could be taken for reality or at least 'reality' as we know it or even as cinema usually portrays it.

From the beginning it's best to think of the whole thing as a dream but whose dream, the woman's, the man's? And to this day it remains one of the few films to capture a dream scenario with complete success, (perhaps only David Lynch has come close in the intervening years).

So what makes it great, what makes it so much more that just that bubble-busting lampoon of art-movies? Certainly not the flimsy idea behind its 'plot' but rather the treatment of that initial idea both by the writer, Alain Robbe-Grillet and by Resnais. The screenplay takes the simple idea of a relationship that may or may not be 'real' and twists it every which way, repeating moments but repeating them with variations both in the language used and in the way in which the situations are set up while Resnais follows suit with some of the most extraordinary images ever captured on widescreen. None of it may make sense yet there isn't a frame of this film you would want to miss or throw away while Giorgio Albertazzi, Delphine Seyrig and Sacha Pitoeff bring the characters who are not even named to life in ways that transcend the film's dream scenario. So by now I think you know which camp I am in; a masterpiece and no mistake.

WUTHERING HEIGHTS

 Emerald Fennell's "Wuthering Heights" bears no resemblance to Emily Bronte's "Wuthering Heights"; in fact, it bears no resemblance to anything outside of Fennell's fevered imagination. This is a true 'Marmite Movie', one you will either love or hate but one which, for most of the time anyway, I loved. Fennell gives us a "Wuthering Heights" as alien as something out of "Avatar", a feast for the eyes and the senses and about as 'real' as the Emerald (sic) City. This is Bronte's plot transferred to some distant universe and I wouldn't have been surprised if a spacecraft had landed at some point.

Purists, of course, will hate it but Fennell knows a young(ish) audience, particularly one who hasn't read the book or seen any of the other screen versions, will lap it up. Visually it's stunning, (DoP is Linus Sandgren), and Jacob Elordi makes for a terrifically brooding Heathcliff who is certainly a man with issues. With this and last year's "Frankenstein" under his belt he is fast becoming one of the best actors of his generation.

There is also excellent work from Martin Clunes as a drunken Mr. Earnshaw, Hong Chau as an unfamiliar Nelly and, best of all, a superbly masochistic Alison Oliver as Isabella. As for Margot Robbie's Cathy, this jury is still out. At first she comes across as a petulant woman-child very much of the 21st century but she gradually grows into the part though never enough to move me. In fact, in hindsight, I've never been moved by this tale of thwarted passion perhaps because the lovers have never seemed sufficiently 'real' to touch me. That said, there is so much here to admire and it certainly marks Fennell out as among the boldest directors working today so ignore the nay-sayers and seek it out for yourselves. You might be as pleasantly surprised as I was.

HUSBANDS

 John Cassavetes and pals Ben Gazzara and Peter Falk play three husbands forced to re-evaluate their relationship and their lives after the death of one of their closest friends in Cassavetes' film "Husbands", the follow-up to his early masterpiece "Faces". As you might expect from Cassavetes the result is extraordinary cinema but a far from likeable movie mainly because the characters are far from likeable, (at times they are downright repulsive with some scenes I found deeply disturbing), while much of what they do is just plain boring to anyone other than themselves.

This is a home-movie on a grand scale and I kept asking myself are the people on the screen playing a role or just being themselves. I know some people rate this film very highly and there is no question that Victor J. Kemper's up close and personal cinematography and Cassavetes' editing (uncredited) are remarkable and if the people in this movie really are 'acting' then it's great acting but in the end I think I would rather take arsenic than be asked to sit through it again.

PEAKY BLINDERS; THE IMMORTAL MAN

 It may take a turgid 40 minutes or so to get going but once it does kick in "Peaky Blinders; the Immortal Man" really lives up to its promise and gives Tommy Shelby the send-off he so richly deserves. Yes, this is the big screen version of Steven Knight's television series with Cillian Murphy still alive and just about kicking but now he's coping with nasty Nazis and Fifth Columnists and wondering whether or not he will ever get his son, (a superb Barry Keoghan), to see things his way.

As I said, it takes awhile to get going as Tommy mopes over the death of brother Arthur and decides to stay away and write his memoirs but circumstances drag him back into the fray as they inevitably do in movies of this kind and after a literally explosive encounter with some squaddies in the Garrison pub he's out for vengeance and a possible reconcilliation with Keoghan. It looks great and as well as Murphy and Keoghan there's Stephen Graham, Ned Dennehy and Tim Roth as the most hissable of villains, a predictably moving ending, (at least for fans) and it even leaves the way open for a revival of the series

THE LIVES OF A BENGAL LANCER

 More 'brown-face', pro-British, anti-Indian shenanigans around the Khyber Pass but Henry Hathaway's action flic "The Lives of a Bengal Lancer" is also beautifully acted and directed and has been unjustly forgotten over the decades. Gary Cooper, Franchot Tone and Richard Cromwell are the young officers fighting off the pesky Afridi tribesmen and C. Aubrey Smith and Sir Guy Standing, (as he was billed), are their older commanders.

It's basically just another western set on the Northwest Frontier and, however politically incorrect it might seem today, must be judged on the time in which it was made. What distinguishes this from similar movies of the period is the interplay between its central characters, (Cromwell is the green-around-the-gills son of Standing's commanding officer etc), the way Hathaway handles the 'domestic' scenes and from some very fine work from the cast, (even Cromwell is good in this one). Indeed this is something of a classic and it deserves to be better known.

JULIA

 Today the films of Fred Zinnemann are seen as 'safe'. Staid almost, afraid to take chances even when the material itself can be seen as dangerous. Despite twice winning the Oscar as Best Director Zinnemann has now fallen out of critical favor, thought as more a director of tasteful, well-made entertainments rather than of anything more worthy of note.

He made "Julia" late in his career, in 1977, and it is in its way a kind of biopic, (of the writer Lillian Hellman), as well as a fairly suspenseful thriller set in the Europe of the Nazis and the rise of Fascism and it's a beautiful piece of work, made with all the skill of a great director. It was a considerable success at the time, winning three Oscars and the BAFTA for Best Film.

Based on a story by Hellman it tells of how in the 1930's she smuggled money into Germany, at great risk to herself, in order to help the anti-fascist movement. As Hellman, Jane Fonda is superb, capturing both her vanity and her vulnerability while both Vanessa Redgrave as her friend Julia, the woman who supplies the money and who is fighting on the ground in Germany and Jason Robards as the writer Dashiell Hammett won Oscars for their work.

Of course, there has been an ongoing debate as to how much of the film, if any, is fact and how much is fiction and this may be one of the reasons why it has fallen out of favor, that and the decline in Zinnemann's reputation and yet it is a sterling piece of work, one of the director's best, in fact and the kind of intelligent entertainment we often don't see in the cinema these days.

F1

 Perhaps about the best thing you can say about "F1" is that it's something of a guilty pleasure and like a lot of guilty pleasures it's undeniably entertaining. What it isn't is one of the ten best pictures of the year (Oscar, take note). It's another highly cliched and formulaic movie about an old-timer, (Brad Pitt, he's over sixty now), and a young hotshot. (Damson Idris, showing real promise), teaming  up together to win, in this case to win in Formula One. Cue in a lot of fairly exciting racing sequences which should keep the motor-racing aficionados happy and some off-track romantic shenanigans with Ireland's Kerry Condon and naturally it's edited to within an inch of its life. Highly professional, this is the kind of movie on which no expense was spared save that of the script but like a lot of junk food, once in awhile, it can prove to be pretty tasty.

GRAND TOUR

 Miguel Gomes' has always remained amongst the most challenging of film-makers so you might say "Grand Tour" is something of a walk in the park though, being Gomes, this is a very exotic park indeed. The Grand Tour of the title is Edward's though as he moves further away from his pursuing fiancee Molly it's less of a grand tour as it is a feverish escape which Gomes treats in his usual elliptical manner.

Shot once again in gorgeous monochrome with color inserts and making no concessions to realism, (it may be set in 1917 but Gomes' is a world of mobile phones, motorcars and skyscrapers), this is cinema at its purest and, once you settle into its beautifully languid mood, at its most engaging.

As ever Gomes' actors, (Goncalo Waddington as Edward, Crista Alfaiate as Molly), are merely his puppets, a recurring motif throughout the film, but he remains a master puppeteer. Considering the cinematic tricks he employs to keep Edward and Molly at a distance, not just from each other but from us, we not only get to know them but we come to care about them deeply. This movie is heady, intoxicating and beautiful in ways cinema so rarely is; it is, in fact, a masterpiece.

UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE

 Like a series of 'New Yorker' cartoons brought to life or a strip from 'Mad' magazine. Matthew Rankin's "Universal Language" has been compared to both Roy Andersson and Guy Maddin but is perhaps closer to a Marx Brothers comedy, (referenced in the opening scene), or even one of Woody Allen's 'early funny films', (also referenced in the opening scene), at least in the beginning before turning, if not quite serious, at least melancholy about the midway mark.

Visually it's amazing with the sight gags as sharp as the verbal ones and there's even a thread of a plot running through it linked by a character played by none other than Rankin himself keeping a remarkably straight face as well he might as almost imperceptibly he drains the film of the laugh-out-loud humor of the early scenes. In some quarters it's already being hailed as a masterpiece but maybe its just a little too 'obscure' for most tastes.

IF I HAD LEGS, I'D KICK YOU

 'Therapist on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown' or perhaps right in the middle of one might have been a better title for "If I Had Legs, I'd Kick You" as therapist Linda tries to cope with an ailing daughter, an absent husband and a great big hole in her ceiling. Described, at least by the folks who give out the Golden Globes, as a comedy this is indeed a darkly funny but deeply disturbing picture of a mental breakdown seen from the perspective of the woman having the breakdown.

In this role, Rose Byrne, (never off the screen), is terrific, terrifyingly so in fact. Writer/Director Mary Bronstein has given her the part of a lifetime and Byrne grabs it with both hands and then shakes it to death but while Byrne may never be off the screen it's far from being a one-woman show. 

On her road to unraveling we also get to know her own therapist, (a beautifully cast Conan O'Brien), her very unstable patient, (a superb Danielle Macdonald), the drug dealer next door, (rapper A$AP Rocky) and her daughter's doctor, (Bronstein herself). All are beautifully played and provide much needed relief from Byrne's very obvious pain, not than I would have wanted to miss a minute of it.

The movie itself is far from an easy watch. Bronstein films Byrne's fractured life in a fractured style, for example we never see the child's face until the end, we just hear her demanding voice and is that hole in the ceiling a portal to the Twilight Zone? It might as well be for all that Bronstein shows us. Yes, this is a strange movie but also a brilliant one and I found it a pleasure welcoming Bronstein back into the cinematic fold. Others haven't been so forgiving; go expecting a comedy and you are bound to be bitterly disappointed.

THE ICE TOWER

 The movie "The Ice Tower" is as cold as its setting or indeed any of its characters. Lucile Hadzihalilovic's painfully slow tale of obsession is the kind of European art-movie that gives art-movies a bad name.  Jeanne, (Clara Pacini), is the young girl who runs away from home and stumbles on the set of a film version of "The Snow Queen", (a book that, coincidentally, she happens to be hooked on). Adopting someone else's identity she gets a job as an extra on the film and then develops something of a crush on the actress playing The Snow Queen, (Marion Cotillard at her most glacial), a crush the actress reciprocates in her strange and demanding way.

This, however, is no "All About Eve" and Jeanne dosen't have the wherewith all to be much of a schemer. Rather she's a young girl in love with an ideal and a diva incapable of returning her love and, as the song says, 'unrequited love's a bore'. About the midway point it would seem that Jeanne's fantasies and the film she's appearing in become intertwined just as we kind of guessed they might, (films like "The Ice Tower" are very easy to read), but by then I had given up the ghost. Others, however, have found it to be the veritable bee's knees and "The Ice Tower" has been figuring in many end-of-year best film lists. All I can say is, for those who like this sort of thing this is the sort of thing they like.