THE DREAMED PATH

In the cinema of Angela Schanelec you cannot take your eyes off the screen for a second for fear of missing a vital piece of information. Schanelec doesn't make films that follow a logistical narrative path but rather she drip-feeds us a narrative that we must make sense of. There is sometimes a formal structure but often it's as if we have joined the characters in the middle of a conventional film rather than at the beginning and we leave them before the end as though her characters will live on after the film is over...or not; if a character's life is to come to an end it will happen off-screen. Either way, we the audience, will not be around to see what happens next. Of course, what happens 'in-between' wll most likely bore an audience seeking excitement or even something straightforward but if you are prepared to give yourself over to her style of film-making you may find yourself entranced.

Families are often at the heart of her films; particularly the dynamics between parents and children. Her latest film, "The Dreamed Path" begins with a couple meeting and seemingly striking up a relationship of sorts before swiftly moving on to embrace the boy's relationship with his ill mother and surly, blind father. The characters speak metronomically as if not quite in the same world that the rest of us inhabit or, as the title suggests, in a dream while 'stories' that appear to be developing lead nowhere. This is difficult, even challenging, cinema, in which even the passing of time is subverted as past and present intermingle and characters find themselves in places they ought not to be in, again as in a dream, (for once any synopsis handed out with the film is very welcome).

In the past I sometimes felt as if I were intruding on the privacy of Schanelec's characters but in "The Dreamed Path" they seem so cut off from reality that really isn't a consideration. It also may mean that this is her least accessible work and her least involving film. That said, it is also so much better than almost anything else you are likely to see this year; it simply shouldn't be missed.

THE LOST CITY OF Z

Far from a conventional 'jungle adventure' James Gray's outstanding "The Lost City of Z" has more in common with the films of Werner Herzog than "The Mission". Bases on real events it's the story of explorer Percival Fawcett's search for the lost city of the title deep in the Bolivian jungle. It is a long, slow film more concerned with the psychology of its characters than their actions and it's very well played by Charlie Hunnam, (a revelation), Robert Pattinson and, in a major supporting turn, Angus MacFadyen. It's also stunningly shot by the great Darius Khondji and superbly written and directed by Gray, moving away here from the gritty confines of the American city where we usually find him. It wasn't really a commercial success but then in this day of action superheroes did anyone really think it would be. This is an art movie posing as an adventure epic and doing it very well indeed.

THE NOTHING FACTORY

A true epic on the most unlikely of subjects - industrial relations or at least the rights of workers. There is definitely a touch of Miguel Gomes and his "Arabian Nights" trilogy about Pedro Pinho's glorious film about a group of factory workers doing what they can to save their factory and their jobs and if you think this is going to dry, dull and at three hours much too long, forget it. With his huge cast, almost all non-professionals, Pinho explores every aspect of their lives as well as opening up his film to look at, not just the state of the Portuguese economy but what he sees as the death of capitalism, using a number of cinematic styles so when the moment comes when the workers burst into a song and dance routine, it doesn't feel out of place. This is a funny, moving and really rather over-whelming film as good as anything you will see this year.

WHEN A WOMAN ASCENDS THE STAIRS

"The stairs in question are those of a bar in the red-light district of Tokyo and the woman who ascends them is Mama-San, the bar's chief hostess, but the stairs may just as well be those of a brothel for the girls who work these bars are basically prostitutes, (even in Japan in 1960 you could never be that explicit). Of all Japanese directors Mikio Naruse was the one most concerned with the plight of women in contemporary society and he brought to his tales of women fallen on hard times an almost Sirkian sensibility though even Sirk's melodramas stayed clear of the brothel. This may also be the most 'westernized' of all Naruse's films. We could be in the New Orleans of "Walk on the wild side" and even the credits of this film have a touch of the Saul Bass about them. (If only Dmytryk's film could have been this good). There is a naturalism to Naruse's film that American melodramas lack and it's this naturalism that lifts it out of being mere melodrama and into the realms of tragedy. Fundamentally, Mama-San is a woman who hates the life she has chosen but feels powerless to move on and Hideko Takamine, (from "Floating Clouds"), is superb in the role. Yet here is an actress and a director whose work never really traveled beyond Japan and even today Naruse trails in popular opinion well behind the likes of Ozu and Mizoguchi. Hopefully the release of this film in a DVD box set together with "Floating Clouds" and "Late Chrysanthemums" will rectify."

THE SENSE OF AN ENDING

Something rare in British cinema these days; a highly intelligent, highly literate film based on a highly intelligent and literate book by Julian Barnes, (it won the Man Booker Prize).  It's one of those films in which people think everything out before acting on their feelings, sometimes shelving their feelings altogether in favour of a purely intellectual approach.  It's mostly told in flashbacks by Jim Broadbent's cynical old curmudgeon to his ex-wife Harriet Walter as he recounts the events of his past and his relationships with a potentially unstable girl, her family and his best friend.

Dramatically not a great deal happens and yet, as they say, all human life is here but it is so well written, acted and directed you cling to every word and it's a real pleasure to hear such good dialogue delivered as beautifully as it is here.  Broadbent hasn't been this good in years and Walters is wonderful as his ex-wife while Charlotte Rampling, in what is really just a cameo, is her usual outstanding self as the older version of Broadbent's first love. The younger players are also very fine; Billy Howle as the young Broadbent, Joe Alwyn as the friend, Downton's Michelle Dockery as a heavily pregnant daughter. It's also very touching and very funny; something of a real treat in fact.

YOU WERE NEVER REALLY HERE

I've seen Lynne Ramsay's "You Were Never Really Here" compared to both "Taxi Driver" and "Oldboy" though stylistically it doesn't resemble either of them which is par for the course with Ramsay. If the plot isn't all that far removed from that of "Taxi Driver" that's about as far as it goes as Joaquin Phoenix's traumatised veteran goes in search of a senator's daughter who appears to have been kidnapped by a gang of paedophiles. However, Ramsay doesn't make it easy for us. The film is incredibly visual but is virtually wordless with the narrative being split by flashbacks to Phoenix's past, particularly to a violent childhood, apparently at the hands of his father. 

It is an extremely violent picture though mercifully most of the violence happens off-screen. Needless to say, Phoenix is terrific and won the best actor award last year at Cannes as did Ramsay's screenplay, adapted from a book by Jonathan Ames. It wasn't a commercial success and consequently was ignored by Oscar. It was also Ramsay's first film in six years and was only her fourth feature in 18 years. Let's hope we don't have to wait so long for another film from this remarkable woman.

THE KILLING OF A SACRED DEER

The cinema of Yorgos Lanthimos is an acquired taste; luckily it's a taste that many cineastes have embraced wholeheartedly. He is clearly one of the great directors working today, utterly idiosyncratic and inhabiting his own very specific world. In other words, he doesn't make films that are easy to watch or 'realistic'; if his characters seem realistic they too inhabit worlds of their own.

He came to prominence with "Dogtooth", about a man who keeps his family locked within the comforts of a palatially modern Greek house. "The Lobster", his first film in English, was a dark fairytale that won him the Jury prize at Cannes and an Oscar nomination and now we have his masterpiece, "The Killing of a Sacred Deer" which combines elements of a genuinely disturbing horror film, a very black comedy and even Greek tragedy to awesome effect.

From the get-go it's virtually impossible to get a handle on which way the film is likely to go. His use of architecture, sweeping tracking shots and discordant music is sure to throw us off balance as is the metronomic dialogue and almost robotic acting. This time we are in, not a fairytale, but a fully fledged nightmare as surgeon Colin Farrel's ambiguous friendship with a surly 16 year old boy, (a terrific Barry Keoghan), goes not in the direction we anticipate but down a much darker and dangerous road altogether. Farrell's excellent though ultimately the film belongs to Nicole Kidman as his hard-nosed wife and to Keoghan as his nemesis. This is cinema at its most visceral and one of the best films of the year.