THE BIG COUNTRY

William Wyler made "The Big Country" in 1958 and it's a magnificent film, one of his very best, and yet it's seldom sited among lists of great westerns, perhaps because it's closer in spirit to those gargantuan family sagas like "Giant" which in turn lead to such television series as "Dallas".

He shot it in Technirama and much is made of the scenery and the fact that it's 'a big country' but it's far from being a conventional cowboy picture; it doesn't really feel like a western, (Indians are conspicuous by their absence). It's also superbly played but then in a Wyler picture that was very much a given; no less than thirteen actors won Oscars under his direction, a record unbroken to this day.

Gregory Peck, too old for the part but excellent nevertheless, is the greenhorn who comes west to marry the daughter, (Carroll Baker in one of her best performances), of big-shot rancher Charles Bickford, (again an actor at the top of his form), and runs into the middle of a range war between Bickford and Burl Ives' Hennessy clan, (Ives walks off with the picture and was rewarded with an Oscar). Others involved in the shenanigans include Jean Simmons as the local school-marm and owner of the Big Muddy, the land and river at the centre of all the trouble, (the name Big Muddy has already passed into the lexicon of western movie myth), and Charlton Heston, quietly outstanding as Bickford's loyal foreman. The breathtaking cinematography of that 'big country', (it was actually filmed mostly in California), is by Franz Planer and the justly famous score is by Jerome Moross.

LA COLLECTIONNEUSE

Two tired cliches are that sex destroys friendships and that men and women can never really be friends and no-one chronicled these two sayings better than Eric Rohmer who made it his life's work to explore the psychological battles that we call courtship. In doing so he became, perhaps, the cinema's greatest director of women. Let's forget for a moment that he divided his films into series, (Six Moral Tales, for example, of which "La Collectionneuse" is one), and concentrate on the film at hand.

"La Collectionneuse" is very simple and very straightforward. Two male friends spend a summer sharing a villa in the south of France. There is another occupant, a slightly younger woman who sleeps around and it is she the men christen the collector since she 'collects' men wherever she goes. They, of course, consider themselves moral but they are also intellectuals and perhaps womanisers, too. They want to collect the girl; they want the girl to collect them.

Like all of Rohmer's best work this is a film of talk rather than action. Rohmer doesn't film love scenes or sex scenes; once his male and female characters enter the bedroom he loses interest. It's the chase and not the catch he cares about and whether men and women really can be friends as well as lovers. He takes his subjects seriously but he also likes to have fun at their expense and like so many of his films "La Collectionneuse" will have you chuckling if not exactly laughing out loud.


In his later films it was usually the women who took the lead but here it is Adrien, (a superb Patrick Bauchau), who acts as our narrator, guiding us through the moral maze but then all three players are excellent. This may be a minor Rohmer film but minor only in the way a short story is considered minor when compared to a novel. Personally I think "La Collectionneuse" is a Rohmer crying out for your collection

LOVE AND FRIENDSHIP

Whit Stillman is hardly the most prolific of film-makers. Since his debut, "Metropolitan", in 1990, he has only directed 5 feature films, all of which he has also written, but they represent as fine a body of work as any in contemporary American cinema. His movies may not be particularly 'cinematic'; they are talkative comedies but they are also fiercely intelligent and often very funny in a way that so many films aren't these days. When people talk of Stillman they may be thinking of Jane Austen, so perhaps it was only to be expected that Stillman would finally get around to tackling an Austen story.

"Love and Friendship", Stillman's thoroughly delightful new film, is based on Austen's little known novella "Lady Susan" and it may be the best screen version of Austen thus far. It's deeply acerbic in a way Austen seldom is and it's also laugh-out-loud funny. Kate Beckinsale is Lady Susan, recently widowed, mother of a daughter of marriageable age and financially dependent on the kindness of strangers.

When the film opens she has arrived at the country seat of her sister-in-law, Catherine DeCourcy Vernon, in search of shelter and perhaps a new husband. Her reputation of being something of a man-eater has preceded her and yet she has no trouble in winning the heart of Catherine's younger brother, Reginald. What follows is a typically brilliant and very Austen-like tale of romantic intrigues and misunderstandings, broader perhaps than either "Pride and Prejudice" or "Sense and Sensibility" yet totally in keeping with Stillman's view of the world, past and present.

It would be invidious of me to choose one member of a wonderful ensemble over another for special praise since every performance is close to sublime. Still, it was gratifying to see Chloe Sevigny, in the best part she's had in some time, as Lady Susan's American friend and confidante, always living in fear in being shipped back to Connecticut by her older husband, played by Stephen Fry.
The closest Stillman comes to making his film cinematic is in his use of 'natural' lighting in several of the interior shots; otherwise this movie, like everything else Stillman has done, is totally dependent on his brilliant cast, the sharpness of his writing and the wit and compassion of his direction to make its mark. I doubt if I will see anything more entertaining this year.

THE WEDDING NIGHT

One of King Vidor's very best films yet one of his least known, "The Wedding Night" is a film of immense charm. You could call it a romantic comedy but that devalues it and gives a totally wrong impression of what it's like. It's certainly romantic and yes, there is comedy in many of the situations but the triangle, or quadrangle, that makes up the core of the film and the relationship that develops between the two central characters is quite different from what we might have expected from a Hollywood film of the period.

Gary Cooper is the novelist with writer's block who falls for his Polish neighbour in Connecticut, (Anna Sten), while his wife is in New York. So far so conventional but she is betrothed to fellow Pole Ralph Bellamy and Coop's wife still loves him. Vidor handles both the scenes within the Polish community and the move from comedy to tragedy beautifully and he draws first-rate performances from his entire cast, particularly from Bellamy as the Polish suitor and the wonderful, and underrated, Helen Vinson as Cooper's wife. The Academy overlooked the film but Vidor took home the Best Director prize at the Venice Film Festival. Venice got it right.

ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN

"Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein" may well be the title but it could just as easily have been Dracula or The Wolf Man since they're all here. This was the movie that David Thomson chose as the opening film in his mighty tome "Have You Seen ..." on the grounds that he need something sufficiently off-the-wall to grab his reader's attention and he couldn't have picked a better opener since this is one of the great comedies. Abbott and Costello were never in the same class as Laurel and Hardy but with the right material they could be inspired and this is a lot less knowing but just as funny as anything in "Young Frankenstein". Lugosi reprised the role of Dracula and seemed to be having a great time and Lon Chaney Jr was once again The Wolf Man. The Monster was Glenn Strange and Charles T Barton was the director to whom we owe our undying thanks.

THE RIGHT STUFF

Tom Wolfe's book "The Right Stuff" was, first and foremost, a great piece of journalism that had the ability to make the reader interested in stuff, right or otherwise, that he or she might otherwise have found forbidding, (in this case the space race). It seemed inevitable that it would be filmed while, at the same time, not really being the kind of book that might work on screen yet Philip Kaufman's film is a triumph. Kaufman is canny enough not to sentimentalise the material while still giving his heroes and heroines their dues, (the wives are as much a part of the picture as their husband/fliers), and he has assembled a stunning cast. Dennis Quaid, Sam Shepard, Scott Glenn, Ed Harris, (a terrific John Glenn), Fred Ward, Pamela Reed, Mary Jo Deschanel, Barbara Hershey and Veronica Cartwright are all outstanding and there are nice turns from Kim Stanley as the woman who runs the small bar where the men drink and from Donald Moffat as LBJ. Technically brilliant, the film won four Oscars, (Best Sound, Best Sound Effects Editing, Best Editing and Best Original Score). It should also have won Best Picture. It's also very funny and finally very moving, which is just as it should be.

EL

"El" is still one of Luis Bunuel's greatest films. It is a story of obsession and jealousy and how obsession can lead to madness, (or is obsession itself a form of madness?), and it's relentless. It begins on Holy Thursday at mass when Don Francisco spies a young woman in the church. He follows her outside and though she's engaged to a friend of his, he pursues her and marries her and on their wedding night she discovers just how jealous he can be. Ultimately this jealousy has terrible consequences.

Of course, Don Francisco happens to be a pillar of society and the church and this is another devastating attack on Catholicism and on hypocrisy by its director. It is in many ways a horror film and is all the more disturbing for being so grounded in the everyday. As the mad Don Francisco, Arturo De Cordova is superb; it is, without doubt, the greatest role of his career while the beautiful Delia Garces perfectly captures the spirit of the terrified wife. Amazingly, it is one of the least revived of all Bunuel's films despite being up there with "Nazarin" and "Viridiana". A masterpiece that would make a great double bill with Hitchcock's "Vertigo", (it's the most self-consciously Hitchcockian of all of Bunuel's films).

ROAD HOUSE

Obscenely enjoyable. "Road House" is one of the campest and certainly one of the most homoerotic of all American movies. It was nominated for 5 Razzies but in the intervening years it's become something of a cult classic. It's certainly a great action movie with some of the best fight scenes in all of cinema and it's built around the cult of body worship and mostly male body worship which isn't to say that the broads aren't broad where broads should be broad but fundamentally this is all about the guys, who have been mostly picked for their looks and their physiques. The hunkiest guy of all is, of course, Patrick Swayze as Dalton, the hottest 'cooler' in the county. His job is to clean up the Double Deuce, the road house of the title and the roughest joint around. Then, of course, he's got Mr Big to contend with as well, (Ben Gazzara, having a whale of a time). The director was the aptly named Rowdy Herrington who took to the material like a duck to water and the terrific, rowdy re is courtesy of the Jeff Healey Band.

RUTHLESS

Edgar G Ulmer's "Ruthless" is one of the greatest of all B-Movies; aficionados love it, others may have found it has slipped them by. It's a kind of Poverty Row "Citizen Kane"
with Zachary Scott excellent as the Kane character whose rise is told in flashback. Among those he steps on on his way up are Diana Lynn, (excellent in a dual role), Louis Hayward, Sydney Greenstreet, (magnificent), Martha Vickers and Lucille Bremer.

It's a remarkably intelligent film, one of the best American movies to deal with money and its pursuit, (and for a B-Movie it also handles the relationships between its characters with extraordinary finesse), and it's beautifully directed by Ulmer who may have been the greatest American director never to make it into the big time. It also looks like it cost a lot more than it obviously did and it has stood the test of time a lot better than many major studio pictures dealing with similar subjects. Seek this one out.

FRANK

I've said it before and I'm happy to say it again; Lenny Abrahamson is one of world cinema's most prodigious and least known talents. His first two films "Adam and Paul" and "Garage" are small masterpieces of human interaction and observation. His third film, "What Richard Did", while very fine, is less engaging despite being, or perhaps because of being, based on a real incident. His new film "Frank" is not based on fact but is, rather, 'inspired' by real people. I'm not quite sure if the events, however, are inspired by real events.

The clue lies in the names. Frank, the lead singer in the band with the unpronounceable name of Soronprfbs, wears a giant, paper-mache head which he never takes off. His character is inspired by that of Chris Sievey who created a similar character whom he called Frank Sidebottom. The film itself is based on an article written by Jon Ronson, who co-wrote the script with Peter Straughan, and Jon is the name of the film's other central character who joins the band as a keyboard player and whose machinations lead to a moment of temporary internet fame and quite a lot of heartbreak. Again, I'm not sure if the 'Jon' in the film and the Jon who wrote it are meant to be exactly the same person but it's telling that Ronson, too, was a member of Sidebottom's band.

After what I consider the momentary blip of "What Richard Did", "Frank" sees Abrahamson return to the same tragic-comic bleakness of his first two films and although Abrahamson doesn't actually write his own material he brings to it something of the sensibility of Samuel Beckett but in images rather than in words. In the hands of anyone else "Frank" might just have been another eccentric comedy but Abrahamson makes it much darker. One character commits suicide and all of them are emotionally damaged in some way, even Jon.

Some people have criticised the film's ending as sentimental, as going against what came before but I didn't think it sentimental at all. Rather I found it redemptive and very moving, much more so than the bleak endings of "Adam and Paul" and "Garage" and like all of Abrahamson's films "Frank" is beautifully acted. Domhnall Gleeson is superb as Jon, an innocent abroad who learns to grow up and grown up fast by his close proximity to the damaged souls around him. As the vituperative Clara, another band member, Maggie Gyllenhaal is brazenly unsympathetic yet very real. But ultimately this is Michael Fassbender's movie; as Frank, his face hidden for the most part in his giant head, he's like a child in an adult's body or like some unreal, animated character brought to life but as the film progresses we realise that Frank is very real indeed and is no child but a man with his own set of problems which only he can sort out and this is probably the best thing Fassbender has done to date. As for Abrahamson, until now he hasn't made much of a mark outside his native Ireland but perhaps this brilliant film with its 'name' cast will alter that. It won't be to everyone's taste and is unlikely to appeal to a mass audience but discerning viewers will find much here to savour.


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QUEEN OF EARTH

Alex Ross Perry takes his cue from both Altman's "3 Women" and the films of Ingmar Bergman for this tale of two women in isolation, both geographically and emotionally. "Queen of Earth" finds Catherine, (Elisabeth Moss), and Virginia, (Katherine Waterston), holed up together at a lakeside house after an event in Catherine's life leaves her bereft. Perry shoots it largely in close-up so there's no respite; this is as up close and personal as it gets and both Moss and Waterston are magnificent.

Naturally, it's a very claustrophobic little picture, airless and suffocating despite the sunlight and its deceptive warmth and it's clear from the first close-up of Moss' tear-stained face that stability isn't really her forte and as the film progresses, jumping back and forth in time, it soon becomes clear you wouldn't want to spend time with either of these women.

It's also brilliantly written by Perry in that literary style we've become accustomed to. Indeed, this is one of those films you might actually want to read and it's clear it's not aimed at what we might call 'a general audience', (even more than "Listen Up, Philip" this is 'New Yorker Art-House'), and even at a compact 90 minutes it's a fairly gruelling experience, like being a fly on the wall at someone's psychoanalysis. Consequently, it is both disturbing and a masterclass in acting and the best psychological horror movie I have seen in a very long time.

EVE

Very strange. "Eve" was probably the closest Losey ever came to making an outright 'art' movie and it was probably not at all what the Hakim brothers, who produced, wanted from him. It's based on a James Hadley Chase novel but it's been stripped down to the basics. Jeanne Moreau is Eve but she's probably closer to the serpent. Her Adam is Stanley Baker's novelist whom she destroys and its Eden is a chilly, grey Venice, magnificently photographed in monochrome by Gianni Di Venanzo. It's a stunningly high-toned movie, rich and decadent like it's very unpleasant characters and it's virtually plotless. Moreau and Baker are both superb, considering they have been given very little to work with; it's just one loveless encounter after another. In some respects it's very like "The Servant". There we had Cleo Laine on the soundtrack; here we have Billie Holliday.

RIFIFI

Jules Dassin's "Rififi"is the greatest of all heist movies and one of the greatest of all gangster films. It's beyond tough; this one is positively brutal in places and no movie has ever dealt with honour and dishonour among thieves quite as expertly. By now everyone will know this is the one with the thirty minute robbery sequence performed, if not strictly in silence, then without dialogue and with the umbrella lowered through the ceiling to catch any falling rubble and this robbery is magnificent. But there is so much more to the movie; the build-up and the aftermath are equally memorable and it's got one of the great endings in all cinema. Superbly played by everyone, including Dassin himself, credited here as 'Perlo Vita', as the lecherous little safe-cracker, it's got some of the best hard-bitten dialogue ever composed while Dassin's brilliant use of Paris locations must surely have been an influence on British New Wave directors like Tony Richardson and Karel Reisz. A masterpiece.

THE WAY HE LOOKS

"The Way He Looks" is a charming coming-of-age teenage romance from Brazil but one with a difference since this isn't a case of boy meets girl, (if it had I'm sure it would have been unendurably mawkish), but of boy meets boy, given an added edge by making one of the protagonists blind, (it's an issue and it isn't; isn't in the sense that it's treated with humour rather than sentimentality

The blind boy is Leonardo, (an excellent Ghilherme Lobo), sleepwalking away his days with his best female friend Giovana, (Tess Amorim). All this changes when new boy Gabriel, (Fabio Audi), arrives and becomes the object of everyone's affections. There are the usual ups and downs and misunderstandings before ... well, let's just say it's great to see a gay movie that is sweet without being saccharine and one with a high feel-good factor. Well worth seeing.

THE MATCH FACTORY GIRL

To say that nobody makes movies like so-and-so tells us nothing about the kind of film we are watching yet one has only to say the name Aki Kaurismaki and you know that no-one else makes movies quite like him and you know exactly what you are going to get. Kaurismaki's movies are mostly short, funny in a black, very sad sort of way and to say they are minimalist is ... well, something of an understatement to say the least. He is one of the great directors, though the very simplicity of his work might make people think otherwise.

"The Match Factory Girl" is one of his very best films. Dialogue is kept to a minimum, (before any of the characters actually speak we hear a news report and a song). Indeed, there are times when you feel this could just as easily have worked as a silent film as Kaurismaki clearly knows that you don't need words to convey what is happening or to explain the emotions that are on display.

The Match Factory girl of the title is Iris, (a superb Kati Outinen), who dreams of escaping her dead-end job in the local match factory and ends up pregnant after a one-night stand. This unplanned for event is the catalyst that prompts her to take some kind of action that will radically alter her situation in a way you are not likely to expect.

There isn't really much to it. It clocks in at an economical 66 minutes and it is like the perfect short story. Perhaps we wouldn't want to, or don't really need to, spend any more time with Iris than we have to, (she's not an attractive character in any way). It only takes the short running time of this picture to tell us all we need to know about her and as the film progresses our initial apathy turns into a kind of grudging admiration. Small, yes; minimal, most definitely and really rather wonderful.

THE SHINING HOUR

Joan Crawford is the New York dancer who marries into a sophisticated Wisconsin farming family and through no fault of her own causes a fair bit of trouble. Her bitter sister-in-law, (Fay Bainter, always a good bitch), resents her while her brother-in-law, (Robert Young), finds himself falling in love with her. Only Young's too-good-to-be-true wife accepts her on her own terms.

"The Shining Hour" is a little-seen and little-known Frank Borzage picture with a strong script and a host of fine performances. I've always thought Crawford was at her best around this time, fresh and natural and not at all stiff and Sullavan was her usual tremulous self and no-one could do tremulous quite the way Sullavan could. As the brothers both Young and Melvyn Douglas, (the one Crawford marries), are excellent. Of course, what really raises this film out of simple melodrama is Borzage's astute direction, finding both comedy and tragedy in the material, making this something of an underrated and lost gem.

7 WOMEN

John Ford's last great western, as well as his last film, wasn't a western at all but is set in (an artificial looking) China in 1935 near its border with Mongolia and is about a mission fort populated mostly by the SEVEN WOMEN of the title as well as a few token men including Eddie Albert's wannabe preacher and menaced by plague and Mike Mazurki's warlord. It's a cross between those 'yellow peril' movies of the thirties and Ford's cavalry pictures, (minus the cavalry, of course, and the Indians), and while it was largely dismissed at the time is now seen as one of Ford's late masterpieces. It has a very fine script by John McCormick and Janet Green and is beautifully acted by everyone while Ford's handling of the tensions that exist in a tight-knit community of women, (particularly a tight-knit community of women who are likely to be raped and murdered at any moment), is exemplary.

THE TALK OF THE TOWN

A farcial, grown-up rom-com, very typical of its period, the early forties, and what might be called a prestige production. Cary Grant is the escaped convict and suspected arsonist, Ronald Colman is the stuffy law professor who comes to his aid and Jean Arthur, the girl who is the object of both their affections. George Stevens was the director at a time when a George Stevens movie was a sure sign of quality and he draws terrific performances from all three leads. He also succeeds in subverting the semi-serious plot to great comic effect, making this one of the most enjoyable pictures of 1942, (it was nominated for seven Oscars). Not seen much these days but it cries out for a good revival.

THE MUSIC ROOM

Satyajit Ray made "The Music Room" in 1958, a few years after "Pather Panchali" and before completing the rest of the Apu Trilogy and like them, it too is a masterpiece. It's about the sin of pride and how it destroys the supercilious old landlord Biswambhar Roy, (a magnificent performance from Chhabi Biswas), whose idea of 'keeping up with the Jones'' is to squander all he has on musical evenings that will outdo those of his nearest neighbour. It's also about the transformative affect of music, of which there is much and all of it wonderful. Although you might say it destroys him Biswambhar is also redeemed by opening up his music room for one last great concert.  This is also one of the cinema's greatest studies of obsession and of loneliness. If "Pather Panchali" were not enough this confirmed Ray's stature as one of world cinema's greatest directors and it is a film that remains as powerful today as it did when it first appeared. Treasure it.

THE SISTERS BROTHERS

"The Sisters Brothers" is a revisionist western directed by a Frenchman but it feels like a classic; the idiom may be 'modern' but it's a film that will fit in any list of great westerns thanks to a terrific script, a terrific cast and the direction of that Frenchman, Jacques Audiard and I haven't even mentioned the superb cinematography of Benoit Debie.

The brothers of the title are a couple of paid killers and their story runs parallel with that of Jake Gyllenhaal's more urbane killer as they all journey west in pursuit of a gold prospector who allegedly stole from the man who is paying them to hunt said prospector down. It's the kind of western Anthony Mann or even Budd Boetticher might have made but given a nice post-modernist twist by our knowledge of the western as a genre and of how cinema itself has developed since the western first appeared. The plot may be actually quite thin but is still sufficiently different from most westerns and Audiard does get terrific performances from his cast.

The title roles are played by Joaquin Phoenix as the laconic, laid back brother and John C. Reilly as his more thoughtful and seemingly slower sibling and both actors do some of the best work of their careers in these roles while Gyllenhaal underplays beautifully the other hunter who befriends his prey, a superb Riz Ahmed. Here we have a quartet of great performances that far outweigh a lot of what is winning Oscars these days.

The pace of the picture may be slow, as slow at times as the brothers hunt for their quarry, but it captures beautifully a sense of the past that many contemporary westerns have denied us. These towns and their inhabitants look very much like the real thing and the landscapes reek of authenticity even though the whole film was shot in Europe. Should we ask more of a genre that has been around as long as cinema itself? The pleasures you get from watching a movie like "The Sisters Brothers" may be manifold but mostly they are the pleasures you get from watching a film you know is head and shoulders above most of what else is out there. See this.

SOMETHING WILD

"Something Wild"is probably Jonathan Demme's best film. It does what a really good film should do; it takes us on a trip to a far-out and dangerous destination and it gives us a buzz all the while. It starts out like a screwball comedy, (and it has all the attributes of a great screwball comedy before moving midway into much darker thriller territory and it makes that move brilliantly). Nothing in this great picture is predictable; it's a true original and it's got three classic performances. Melanie Griffith is Audrey who just might be 'Lulu', (when we first meet her she's got a Louise Brooks hairdo), Jeff Daniels is Charlie, the sap she picks up and drags into her nightmare, (and Daniels is magnificent), and Ray Liotta is Ray, Audrey's psychopathic husband. It's also got one of the great rock scores of any movie, courtesy of John Cale, Laurie Anderson and David Byrne amongst others. Indeed the whole movie is a blast.

ODDS AGAINST TOMORROW

Robert Wise may have won his Oscars for those elephantine musicals about street gangs and singing nuns but everyone knows he did his best work in a number of terse black and white noirish thrillers and dramas that reminded you he once edited "Citizen Kane" and "The Magnificent Ambersons". He made "Odds Against Tomorrow" in 1959 and it's a classic heist movie as well as one of the more forthright films of its period to deal with racism which, in this case, is the principal cause of thieves falling out. The 'bad guys', in that they are forced to steal for a living, are Harry Belafonte, Robert Ryan and Ed Begley and it's Begley's idea that they should rob a small-town bank. The problem is that Belafonte is an African-American and Ryan is a racist and we know it can only end in tears. Others in a good cast include Shelley Winters and Gloria Grahame, (both given too little to do), and if you pay attention you might spot Zohra Lampert and Cicely Tyson amongst others. Joseph C Brun did the superlative cinematography and the blacklisted Abraham Polonsky worked on the screenplay.