CALAMITY JANE

It's hardly the most politically-correct of movie musicals and, to be honest, it's not much of a movie but "Calamity Jane" is still one of the most enjoyable films of the fifties thanks in large part to Doris Day in what was certainly her most iconic role as well as a wonderful song score by Sammy Fain and Paul Francis Webster. not to mention Howard Keel, admittedly not given very much to do here, and the excellent and underrated Allyn Ann McLerie. What it lacks is innovation or indeed a plot but who needs plots and innovations when the songs and their delivery are this good. Ultimately, it may only be a guilty pleasure but it's a huge pleasure nevertheless.

BLACKHAT

Despite its relative failure at the box-office "Blackhat" is typical, and typically brilliant, Michael Mann. The theme is cyber-crime, the plot almost irrelevant. This is Mann at his sinewy, abstract best; another visual tour-de-force, (DoP Stuart Dryburgh), as hacker extraordinaire Chris Hemsworth and associates track a mysterious cyber-criminal from China to the US and back again. When the denouement comes it's actually a bit of let down until you realise it never mattered that much to begin with. What does matter is Mann's remarkable handling of the action and his brilliant build up of suspense; even when we know a bomb is about to go off under a car it still shocks us when it eventually happens. Unquestionably this is his best film since HEAT and like HEAT it has a terrific gun-battle midway through, (here we get two great gun-battles mid-movie), and a brilliantly choreographed shoot-out for the climax. Okay, so it doesn't have De Niro or Pacino but then this is hardly an actor's piece. It's a director's picture and it puts Mann, now 71 but working like a 30 year old, right back on top.

ONIBABA

"Onibaba" is one of the cinema's masterpieces of horror, perhaps because the horrors it depicts are appallingly real and because the director, Kaneto Shindo, has succeeded in making a film that is truly a work of art. It is set in 14th century Japan where two women, a mother and her daughter-in-law, kill wounded samurai, steal their armour and bury them in a deep hole in the middle of a sea of grass.

It's a visually stunning film, shot in widescreen and in black and white by the great cinematographer Kiyomi Kuroda and death permeates almost every scene, (either death or sex and here they are intrinsically linked). The women are monsters but only because war and the male-dominated society in which they are forced to survive has made them so. Shindo's extraordinary film is as much a critique of medieval Japan as it is an outright horror film. Praise, too, for Hikaru Hayashi's tremendous score, which like the best scores in the best horror films, adds considerably to the sense of dread.

JERSEY BOYS

When I saw "Jersey Boys" on stage I thought it would make a great film, a gift for Martin Scorsese; think "Goodfellas" as a musical minus the killings. Now it's finally, and somewhat inevitably, reached the screen but under the guidance of Clint Eastwood, who also knows a thing or two about this sort of milieu; think a New Jersey "Mystic River" as a musical minus the killings, and I can safely say he has done it proud. Of course, Scorsese and Eastwood are two very different kinds of director. Scorsese, now in his seventies, is still the fly-boy, a super kinetic director of in-your-face entertainments.

Eastwood, now in his eighties, has always been something of a classicist, a film-maker in the Howard Hawks mould whose films don't necessarily draw attention to themselves. I think this is why he is the most underrated of all the great American directors and it may be one reason why the critics have given "Jersey Boys" a rather lukewarm reception. Even I had my doubts that Eastwood still had it in him, that he could pull the rabbit out of the hat one more time. I needn't have worried, "Jersey Boys" is terrific; a full-blooded, thoroughly old fashioned biopic that totally transcends the term 'jukebox musical'.

It is, of course, the story of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, or rather The Four Seasons, the band that included Valli, and who rose to inclusion in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame despite their connections to the Mob. In some respects it's a gangster musical along the lines of "Love Me or Leave Me" but with a rock n'roll slant. It's not perfect; there is still a soap-opera feel to some of the more emotional moments but luckily these are dealt with reasonably quickly. For the most part it zips along buoyed by a handful of highly credible performances.

John Lloyd Young recreates his Tony award winning performance as Valli. He's great in the musical scenes but his lack of experience as a serious actor tells as the drama progresses, (for here was a band that didn't just have to worry about breaking up but maybe even staying alive). On the other hand, Vincent Piazza, Michael Lomenda and Erich Bergen are all excellent as fellow band members, (Piazza, in particular, is superb), and Christopher Walken, as always, raises the bar with what is basically a glorified cameo as an old-time Jersey gangster. And then there are those songs, which are still some of the best in the pop canon and which, thanks to this marvellous show, have now been given a new lease of life. Oh, what a night!

HIROSHIMA, MON AMOUR

She is a French actress in Hiroshima to make a film about peace. He is a Japanese architect. They meet in a cafe and have sex and they talk, about themselves and about the war but mostly about her experiences in the war. She tells him a story about loving a German soldier in Nevers and how that experience scarred her life. Alain Resnais' first feature film, "Hiroshima, Mon Amour" is one of the greatest debuts and one of the greatest love stories in all cinema. Choosing Hiroshima as the location for his love story, just over a decade after the dropping of the bomb, might seem tasteless to some but Resnais was the man who made "Night and Fog", his great documentary that showed the world the horrors of the concentration camps so there is no doubting his integrity. This is a film as much about memory and about guilt as it is about love. The players are the remarkable Emmanuelle Riva and Eiji Okada, (it's virtually a two-hander). The deeply felt script is by Marguerite Duras, Michio Takahashi and Sacha Vierny did the brilliant cinematography and the great score is by Georges Delerue and Giovanni Fusco. A masterpiece.

STAGE DOOR

Gregory LaCava's "Stage Door" has some of the best dialogue ever heard in an American movie. It was based on a play by Edna Ferber and George S. Kaufman and was brilliantly adapted, and altered, by Morris Ryskind and Anthony Veiller and delivered at breakneck speed by some of the best actresses ever put together in one film. It's set mostly in a boarding house for aspiring actresses, most prominent of whom are Katharine Hepburn and Ginger Rogers who spark off each other magnificently. Others cracking wise include Eve Arden, Lucille Ball, Gail Patrick, Ann Miller. (14 but you would never believe it), and Andrea Leeds who was Oscar-nominated for her performance while the always wonderful Adolphe Menjou is the big producer who can make or break anyone who steps into his office. It's move from comedy to melodrama also works beautifully, making this not just one of the best female orientated films of its period but one of the high-
points of thirties cinema.

KISMET

With music by Borodin, (by way of Robert Wright and George Forrest), a cast that includes Dolores Gray and direction from Minnelli how could it fail? Well, it couldn't and it didn't, even if KISMET is probably the least popular of the Minnelli/Freed musicals.There isn't much attempt to make it cinematic; this is a studio production and no mistake but it's very handsome, (Joseph Ruttenberg is once again the DoP), the songs are wonderful and others in the splendid cast include Howard Keel, the always underrated Ann Blyth, Monty Woolley and a handsome juvenile called Vic Damone. There isn't much in the way of plot but it's a treat, nevertheless; indeed it's one of the most enjoyable musicals ever made.

A LETTER TO THREE WIVES

Joseph L Mankiewicz is still the only writer/director to have won back to back Oscars in both categories, writing and directing. The second was for "All About Eve" in 1950 but in 1949 he won his first pair of Oscars for this classic comedy-drama. "A Letter to Three Wives"is one of the great movies of the 1940's, (it should also have won Best Picture). The letter is written by Addie Ross, (a superb unseen Celeste Holm providing the narration), and the three wives she writes the letter to are Jeanne Crain, Ann Sothern and Linda Darnell and their husbands are, respectively, Jeffrey Lynn, Kirk Douglas and Paul Douglas. The reason for Addie's letter is to inform the women that she's run off with one of their husbands but fails to mention which one. We, and each wife, spend the movie trying to figure out which husband isn't going to be there when the girls get home.

With writing this good and direction this subtle it isn't difficult for Crain, Sothern and Darnell to do their best acting while both Douglas boys are also pretty terrific as is Thelma Ritter, but then when isn't Ritter terrific. It's also a great small town movie, an almost perfect picture of how a certain class of American lived in the years just following the war. I've seen this film countless times and I have never tired of it. Unmissable.

DOC

This grim, realist western was produced and directed by Frank Perry in 1971 and recounted events that were already well-known to audiences about a certain 'Doc' Holliday, his friend Wyatt Earp and a particular gunfight at a particular corral but this one was down and dirty, (literally; Doc is scrubbing his woman, a certain Kate Elder, minutes into the movie), and telling it in a very different light. Of course, being the 'adult' version of the story doesn't mean it's any more 'truthful' than any of the others. In all these cases, I think it is best to stick to that old adage, 'Print the Legend'.

So how does "Doc" stand up against the others as cinema? The answer is actually pretty well. At his best, Perry was a fine director who was able to bring a keen intelligence to his material and in Stacy Keach, (Doc), Harris Yulin, (Earp), and Faye Dunaway, (Kate), he had three outstanding actors, while thanks to superb production design and the cinematography of Gerald Hirschfeld is also a terrific looking picture. However, it's let down somewhat by Pete Hamill's script which is so concerned with being 'different' that it actually ticks every cliche in the box. On the other hand, one of the films more interesting touches is to suggest that maybe Wyatt harbored feelings for Doc that were a little more than platonic. It may not be a 'great' western, then, but it's a fine piece of revisionism, so much so that its 'truthfulness' hardly matters at all.

BORDER

Tina isn't the kind of woman men might easily fall in love with. To say she's plain is an understatement; she has a masculine face and hands and is clearly unattractive but she has a gift or what some may call a curse. She can smell fear and guilt and is employed as a customs officer, literally sniffing out smugglers. One day she meets someone who looks just like her and to whom she develops a strange attraction, mutual spirits, it would seem, both mentally as well as physically.

"Border" is fundamentally a love story but it's a very strange and disturbing one. You can see elements of both "Eraserhead" and "The Elephant Man" so you might say it's a very Lynchian picture. Tina and her Vore are the lovers of a horror film; they are like the monsters in folklore who eat maggots and have an affinity with wild animals and while a good deal of the effectiveness of their performances is achieved through make-up both Eva Melander and Eero Milonoff are superb.

There's a subplot involving a child pornography ring where the monsters are physically attractive but morally repugnant and director Abi Abbasi contrasts their evil with the goodness of Tina. However, Vore has a secret side, making him a monster, too, in a saga that refuses to be pigeonholed. In an age when most movies, particularly 'horror' movies, are largely conventional or 'arty' for art's sake, it's refreshing to see something as original as this, a film that won't be pinned down to any specific genre. It was a worthy winner in the Un Certain Regard category at Cannes.

WHISKY GALORE

One of the great joys of British cinema, "Whisky Galore" heralded the emergence of a great new talent in its director, Alexander Mackendrick and it's still one of the highlights in the Ealing canon. It was based on Compton MacKenzie's comic novel about a Scottish island that has run dry of 'the water of life', aka whisky, who suddenly finds itself blessed when a ship whose sole cargo is whisky runs aground off the island.

MacKenzie actually based his story on a real incident and Mackendrick filmed it on the island of Barra so it certainly looks authentic. It's also got a killer cast of some of the finest character actors in the movies headed by Basil Radford, Joan Greenwood, Gordon Jackson, Jean Cadell, (superb as Jackson's dragon of a mother), James Robertson Justice and 'Mr. Memory' himself, Wylie Watson. It was a huge hit, both here and in America where it was rechristened "Tight Little Island". Clearly influenced by Powell and Pressburger's "I Know Where I'm Going" and, in turn, a great influence on Bill Forsyth's "Local Hero". The recent remake isn't in the same class.

THE GUNFIGHTER

A masterpiece and one of the greatest westerns ever made, "The Gunfighter" is also Henry King's best film. The plot is simplicity itself. Gregory Peck, (outstanding), is Jimmy Ringo, the fastest gun alive, heading to the small town to see, possibly for the last time, his wife and the son who doesn't know him. Like "High Noon", which came two years later, the action takes place, if not quite in real time, then basically over the course of one day as Peck waits to see if his wife will consent to talk to him while a young hot-head and a trio of gunmen contemplate taking him out.

Clocking in at 85 minutes there isn't an ounce of fat in this picture and certainly none of the dullness nor sentimentality usually associated with King. A superb script by William Bowers and William Sellars, from a story party written by Andre De Toth, ensures every scene has a ring of truth and in a brilliant supporting cast Karl Malden is outstanding as the bartender who knows that, live or die, Ringo's presence in his bar will elevate the place to legend status. Absolutely essential.

EVERYBODY WINS

Sometimes movies work for a whole variety of reasons. It might simply be because there is a great director at the helm but then even great directors make bummers now and then. Sometimes the story is just so damned good it hardly matters who the director is and sometimes a movie works because one or more of the cast carries it. "Everybody Wins" works because it's got a fine director working at the top of his form, (Karl Reisz), a terrific original screenplay by the playwright Arthur Miller and probably career-best performances from leads Nick Nolte and Debra Winger.

Nolte is the celebrity investigator hired by a flaky 'do-gooder' to prove the innocence of a teenage boy she knows on a charge of murder. From the outset, you know this isn't going to be a conventional 'thriller'. You know instantly that Winger's character of the supposed 'do-gooder' is, shall we say, a little on the strange side; that her come-on to Nolte is so quick she may even be a nymphomaniac and that Nolte's investigation is going off in directions that conventional thrillers don't. You also know that Arthur Miller doesn't do 'conventional'.

Of course, the talent on the screen didn't translate into a commercial success. Even the critics, with the exception of Pauline Kael, who loved the film, were stand-offish. Here was a crime movie that no-one could understand or know what to make of but in its off-the-wall way it was trail-blazingly original and I still think it's one of the truly great American films of its decade. If you don't know it, seek it out and give yourself over to its sublime strangeness.

CALIFORNIA DREAMIN'

The young Romanian director Cristian Nemescu was killed shortly after completing this tragicomedy set during the conflict in Bosnia. His death was a double tragedy; the loss of a young life, (he was only 27), to be sure and the loss of a potentially major talent in international cinema. However, despite it's setting "California Dreamin'" isn't so much a comedy of war but a biting satire on bourgeoisie attitudes in a country struggling to make itself heard. It may not be quite in the same class as some of Milos Forman's early Czech films, though on occasion it does come close, and there were times when I was reminded of Jiri Menzel's similarly set "Closely Observed Trains".

The plot revolves around a group of US soldiers, part of NATO, caught between a group of striking villagers and the corrupt station-master who refuses to let their train pass through his station and it is apparently based on fact. Nemescu manages to poke gentle fun at all sides; no-one finally emerges intact with both the Americans and the Romanians coming off equally badly and he does a wonderful job in evoking the boredom of village life. The performances throughout are superb with perhaps Ion Sapdaru as the mayor and Razvan Vasilescu as the station-master the standouts. Those icons of both American and Romanian culture, Elvis and Dracula, also make an appearance.

DEAR DIARY

"Dear Diary" is one of the delights of the Italian cinema, an adrenalin shot of pure pleasure from writer, director and star Nanni Moretti who uses his position as a film-maker to indulge himself in all the things he enjoys about Italy; his adopted city of Rome, the Italian islands, even taking a wryly humorous look at his treatment for cancer. Consequently the film is part documentary, part a lopsided fiction in which he sets up a series of scripted situations with himself as the star. It's a wholly original concept though it may remind you of some of Fellini's later films since they are all essentially love letters to Rome and to Italy. But "Dear Diary" goes further; it's also Moretti's love letter to cinema and he takes great delight in puncturing the pretensions of certain critics and the kind of low-brow films and television he abhors, ("Henry; Portrait of a Serial Killer", a film I love, gets singled out for special treatment), and who won't allow themselves to be moved when he visits the place where Pasolini was murdered. As for Moretti, himself, who wouldn't want to spend time with this charming man. A treat from start to finish.

TRAFIC

Jacques Tati's "Trafic" is an almost plotless series of visual gags, all of them inspired and the best of them among the finest in Tati's oeuvre, yet the film was not a critical success and remains hugely underrated. This time Hulot is taking a 'camping car' from Belgium to the Amsterdam Motor Show and naturally causes havoc wherever he goes, (the film has the most beautifully choreographed and balletic car-crash in the movies).

Tati was, of course, the greatest visual comic since Chaplin and Keaton but unlike the great silent comics he had the virtue of sound at his fingertips and perhaps no director used sound effects with the same degree of brilliance that Tati does here. Dialogue, while not necessarily kept to a minimum, is again mostly redundant. But then words were never what Tati was about; you can watch his films without the benefit of subtitles and still understand them. This may not be in the same class as "Les Vacances De M Hulot" but it's essential nevertheless.

LUCKY

The 91-year-old Harry Dean Stanton died shortly after making "Lucky". He may not have won the posthumous Oscar I was predicting for him but at least he went to his grave in the knowledge that he had gone out with a career-best performance. John Carroll Lynch's directorial debut doesn't pretend to be anything other than a picture of an old man living out his days independently in the present-day American West. It's beautifully made in the style of American movies of the seventies with their emphasis on character and landscape and as well as a terrific performance from Stanton, (he's never really off the screen), it's also beautifully written and acted by its remarkable supporting cast that includes director David Lynch and a still handsome 81-year-old James Darren. Of course, seeing the film now that Stanton's dead, and so soon after completing the film, is heartbreaking because it suddenly looks like autobiography, the last days, not just of Lucky but of one of the screen's great character actors. It would make a great double-bill with David Lynch's underrated masterpiece "The Straight Story" which also featured Stanton.

LES DIABOLIQUES

You would think that after seeing "Les Diaboliques" and knowing the twists and turns of the plot there would be nothing left but you'd be wrong. The fun of a second, or even a third, viewing is seeing just how cleverly Clouzot has assembled his jigsaw. Of course, if you're one of the few cineastes on the planet who has never seen it, (or the terrible Hollywood remake), and who knows nothing about it then you're in for a treat. If, on the other hand, you're seeing it again there is still much to enjoy; the brilliance of the plotting, the splendid performances, (Signoret has been rightly praised for her performance as the mistress but this is really Vera Clouzot's show; as the tortured wife she is simply magnificent), the tightness of the editing, Armand Thirard's superb cinematography. The American director Curtis Harrington paid it homage with his movie "Games", particularly in the casting of Signoret.

FOUR IN THE MORNING

"Four in the Morning" was one of the key British kitchen-sink movies of the sixties and yet today it is virtually unknown and very little seen. It was basically a 'small' picture, (I first saw it on the bottom half of a double-bill with Peter Watkins' "The War Game", telling two stories, both involving young women, and set in London, (whereas most kitchen-sink films were set in the 'grim' North), unfolding over the course of one night. There is a third story of sorts, a kind of documentary in which the body of a young woman is taken from the Thames. Could this be one of the woman we've met in the other stories?

The writer/director was Anthony Simmons who, despite living to the age of 93, had a very short career in cinema, (he moved onto television), and the women in question were Ann Lynn and a young Judi Dench who won a BAFTA as Most Promising Newcomer. It's a sad little film with no respite from the gloom and you wonder what audience Simmons had in mind, (when I first saw it there were only two of us in the cinema), and at times it's more in keeping with something made for television though personally I think it's more redolent of something Antonioni might have done, (there are moments when Ann Lynn is a dead ringer for Monica Vitti). Either way, it certainly didn't deserve its fate and it cries out to be seen.

AFTERGLOW

Julie Christie is terrifically good as the bored, ageing former B-movie star married to philandering handyman Nick Nolte, (also superb), in Alan Rudolph's little-seen but brilliant serio-comic movie "Afterglow". They are one unhappily married couple; the other unhappily married couple are Jonny Lee Miller and Lara Flynn Boyle and it's their apartment Nolte is hired to redesign and the movie is a slick, cynical, funny comedy of adultery.

Unfortunately neither Miller nor Boyle are really up to the demands of the script leaving Nolte and Christie to do all the work and there were times I wished the movie had ditched the younger couple altogether. To say that this is the best thing Christie has ever done is something of an understatement. She may have lost the Oscar but at least she won the New York Film Critics prize. Robert Altman produced the picture and the terrific score is by Mark Isham.

WESTERN UNION

Once upon a Sunday Times' poll Fritz Lang's "Western Union" was voted one of the ten best westerns ever made and yet of all of Lang's American films this is one of the least known and talked about. It's about the building of the trans-continental telegraph and it's taken from a book by that great teller of western tales, Zane Grey and one of its stars was that noblest of western heroes, Randolph Scott, (though here he's playing a reformed outlaw). It's a very unfussy film, simple and likeable; there's no psychological depth to it but the period detail is close to perfection, the many action scenes are beautifully handled and it has a great cast of character actors, (the heroine is that lovely and undervalued actress Virginia Gilmore). Today it's unlikely it would make that top 10 poll and it's probably closer to a job of work for Lang rather than one of his personal projects but it's very enjoyable and certainly doesn't deserve to be overlooked.

THE CIRCLE

The Circle" is a biopic unlike any other. It is the story of Ernst and Robi, two gay men who met in 1950's Zurich. Ernst was a teacher and Robi a cabaret artist who performed in drag. They became lovers and are still together today. In the film they are played by Matthias Hungerbuhler, (Ernst), and Sven Schelker, (Robi), but the real Ernst and Robi, now old men, also appear on camera, along with other real-life personalities from the period, talking about themselves and their lives together. They are wonderful people and are an inspiration to us all.

Of course, "The Circle" is a biopic of a different kind. The title refers both to the magazine they worked on as well as to the circle of gay men who had to live their lives in secret, not for fear of prosecution, (homosexuality was not illegal in Switzerland), but for fear of how they might be treated by the police and the State which was often just short of what it might have been under the Nazis, and once exposed they risked losing everything, not least their lives. At first the lack of laws prohibiting homosexuality meant that Zurich was something of a haven for gay men, not just from Switzerland, but also from Germany and other neighbouring countries, but when homosexuals began to be murdered by rent boys, and the courts worked it so that the killer would become the victim and vice versa, things began to change for the worse.


Stefan Haupt's film is a tribute to what was fundamentally a gay rights movement long before anyone coined the phrase, at times funny and often very sad, (not everyone's life had a happy ending), but ultimately hugely uplifting, and it is beautifully made. Indeed, as 'historical' gay films go this is one of the best and it shouldn't be missed.

THE LADYKILLERS

"The Ladykillers" isn't just the greatest of the Ealing comedies but one of the greatest of all comedies. Everything about this Alexander Mackendrick directed gem, from the inspired casting down to Jim Morahan's superb set design, is perfect. It's a black comedy on the theme of robbery and murder from the pen of the great William Rose and it features one of Alec Guinness' greatest comic performances, though it is Katie Johnson's Mrs Wilberforce who steals the film, (she won a BAFTA for her performance). The Coen Brothers remade the film, transferring the action to America's Deep South with Tom Hanks in the Guinness role. That version is funny enough but it is very small fry when compared with the original.

THE HUSTLER

Robert Rossen was never really a prolific director and for most of his career his ambitions seemed greater than his ability to deliver. In 1949 his film "All the King's Men" won him an Oscar for Best Picture though, tellingly, he lost the Best Director Oscar to Joseph L Mankiewicz for the far superior "A Letter to Three Wives". However, "All the King's Men" had on its side a certain seriousness as well as a political theme inspired by the career of Louisiana governor Huey Long. While Rossen's films before and after"All the King's Men" weren't necessarily 'bad' they lacked that vital spark which might have made them great. Then suddenly, as if out of nowhere, in 1961 he made "The Hustler", his penultimate film and the first of his two masterpieces, (the other, his final film, was "Lilith").

"The Hustler" was adapted by Rossen and co-writer Sidney Carroll from a book by Walter Tevis but it was an intensely cinematic work, magnificently shot in widescreen black and white by Eugen Schufftan and in which all the elements that make up a film, (music, editing, production design as well as cinematography, writing, direction and acting), were in perfect sync. It's a film about pool which can be the least interesting of sports to anyone not hooked on the World Snooker Championships and it's played out in a series of dingy apartments, hotel rooms and, mostly, pool rooms but it is extraordinary, exciting and powerful.

It's the story of 'Fast' Eddie Felson, (Paul Newman in a career-defining performance), and of the lengths he will go to beat Minnesota Fats, the greatest pool player in the country, (a superb Jackie Gleason, returning to movies after a successful career in television and on Broadway). His journey also takes in Sarah, a lonely drinker, (Piper Laurie, finally getting a part worthy of her talents), and the malevolent Bert Gordon, his manager and bank-roller, (George C Scott in the performance that should have won him his first Oscar).

It's a redemptive journey for Eddie and it's so beautifully delineated it's a journey and a film, once seen, won't be easily forgotten. Newman lost the Oscar to Maxamilian Schell in "Judgement at Nuremberg"but ironically was to finally win the Academy Award for reprising his role as Fast Eddie in Martin Scorsese's less successful follow-up "The Color of Money". That was a good movie but "The Hustler" is the real McCoy and one of the greatest of all American films.

FEDORA

"Fedora" was Billy Wilder's last masterpiece, a perfect companion piece to "Sunset Boulevard" down to the casting of William Holden as the male lead, (here he's a down-on-his-luck producer rather than a struggling writer), and it is shamefully undervalued as if the film's very artifice isn't worth taking seriously, (indeed someone described the film to me as being so camp all the female roles should be played by drag-queens, missing the point by a mile). While at times darkly funny and certainly cynical, it is also deeply moving in ways we simply don't expect from Wilder. This is a movie that betrays an old master's love of movies, no longer biting the hand that feeds him but longing for the good old days when movie stars had faces that the camera adored. The story may be largely far-fetched, full of clever in-jokes and allusions to "Sunset Boulevard" and other movies about the movies but it remains a deeply affectionate homage rather than a mere pastiche; a triumph of style embracing content.

Holden's uncertain acting may be the weakest thing in the picture, (it might have felt like a good idea at the time to cast the star of "Sunset Boulevard" but it doesn't really pay off), but to our surprise, the astonishing performances of both Marthe Keller and Hildegard Knef more than compensate; even Jose Ferrer is good here. And who, amongst movie lovers, won't be brought to tears by the scene in which Henry Fonda, playing himself, comes to deliver Fedora's honory Oscar? View this, not as some half-hearted tribute-cum-horror movie about fading movie queens and the legacy and legend of Garbo but as a very great director's love letter to the industry that nurtured him and to the magic of cinema in general. Surely now this is ripe for rediscovery.

THE ARRANGEMENT

Elia Kazan made "The Arrangement" in 1969 after having first published it as a novel. It's a difficult film but ultimately a rewarding one. It begins along the lines of a rather heavy-handed satire on consumerism before turning into a very late sixties psychodrama about a mid-life crisis which Kazan chooses to film in the fractured style of a European art-movie. The central character is Eddie Anderson, (not his real name; he changed it from the original Greek), and from flashbacks we are lead to believe he's the son of the boy from "America, America" who has now become Richard Boone. The film opens with Eddie's bizarre suicide attempt when he drives his sports car under the wheels of a truck and as it moves forward, to some kind of redemption. It also keeps skipping back to the events in Eddie's past that have lead up to that moment when he felt his life was no longer worth living.

Kirk Douglas plays Eddie superbly, in what is really a very difficult role. His long-suffering wife is an equally superb Deborah Kerr, mixing acidity and sweetness to an almost alarming degree as she tries to comprehend what it is that's driving her husband. In the role of Eddie's mistress Faye Dunaway is less successful simply because her character is too much of a contradiction; she seems to undergo a complete change of personality. However, there's fine work from Hume Cronyn as Eddie's slimy lawyer and Boone is splendid as the gruff, seemingly uncaring father.

The movie itself wasn't a success and critics were heavily divided, many feeling that Kazan had stepped outside of his comfort zone and had largely failed. However, the magazine 'Films and Filming', a bible of British film criticism at the time, selected it as the year's best film from any source. It was hardly that but it is still Kazan's last really good movie, an utterly essential part of one of the great canons of work in world cinema and it certainly shouldn't be missed if you get the chance to see it.

MAD MAX; FURY ROAD

Forget about all those Marvel movies and all the superhero films we've been getting over the last few decades, the best 'sci-fi' film I've seen in recent years is George Miller's masterpiece "Mad Max; Fury Road", a film that totally redefines the action genre, (and is probably the best 3D movie so far). No knowledge of the previous 'Mad Max' movies is necessary to enjoy this epic in which the new Max (Tom Hardy) takes something of a back seat to Charlize Theron;s magnificent Imperator Furiosa. Indeed this has been sited as something of a feminist actioner with women of all shapes, sizes and ages taking control. That's not to say that men are invisible; they, too, are a formidable bunch including a principle villain who would not look out of place in the Finnish hard rock band Lordi, (we never see him sans mask), and a sweet-natured boy warrior beautifully played by Nicholas Hoult. That the actors make any impression at all is also something of an achievement since the real stars of 'Fury Road' are the stunt men and John Seale whose cinematography is Oscar-worthy. And, of course, Miller who stages the multitudinous action sequences with a brio rare in movies these days, (it's hard to believe that Miller directed his first 'Mad Max' movie 36 years ago). With 'Fury Road' he has firmly established himself as THE major player in the game right now. An instant classic.

DESTRY RIDES AGAIN

A masterpiece. "Destry Rides Again" may be considered a 'comedy-western' and it's certainly the greatest in that particular genre, but it's also one of the ten best westerns ever made, with a serious streak running through it in tandem with the comedy and it has perhaps the greatest cast ever assembled for a western. James Stewart is the mild-mannered deputy, Destry, who cleans up the town of Bottleneck by very unorthodox means and Marlene Dietrich is the saloon singer who falls for him. It's unlikely that either player has ever been more likeable on screen and the superb supporting cast includes Brian Donlevy, (the baddie), Charles Winninger, (the town drunk who becomes sheriff), Mischa Auer, (the Cossack cowboy), Una Merkel, (she and Dietrich have the mother of all cat-fights), Billy Gilbert, (the bartender) and Samuel S HInds, (the duplicitous mayor). Add to that the biggest and rowdiest saloon of any western, some great Frederick Hollander/Frank Loesser songs and a classic climatic gunfight and you have a movie as good as any that came out of Hollywood in 1939, a year that many consider the greatest in Hollywood history. In their own respective ways both "Rio Bravo" and"Blazing Saddles" have paid it homage.

VENGEANCE IS MINE

The making of a murderer based on a real-life criminal, Shohei Imamura's "Vengeance is Mine" is an almost forensic account of the life of a con-man and multiple killer in Japan in the years between World War II and the sixties. Told in flashback and in non-linear fashion it is less of a thriller and more of a character study with Ken Ogata outstanding as the killer without a conscience but then everyone in this extraordinary film is superb. In some respects it may remind you of John McNaughton's "Henry; Portrait of a Serial Killer" but this is much more of an epic, a family saga closer to Dostoevsky. Today it is looked on as something of a cult movie rather than belonging to the mainstream. Seek it out.

KING OF KINGS

"King of Kings" was the most politicised of all the Biblical epics and it was also one of the best. Wags nick-named it 'I Was a Teenage Jesus' and it certainly isn't totally free of the piety that defeated so many of its ilk, but it's also surprisingly blood-thirsty and when it didn't give in to those pieties, it worked a treat. It had a surprisingly fine script from Philip Yordan, (the Sermon on the Mount is a tour-de-force), that fleshes out subsidiary characters like Barrabas, Pilate and even Mary, the mother of Jesus in ways other Biblical films ignored. If Jeffrey Hunter was too blond and blue-eyed as Jesus, Irish actress Siobhan McKenna was perfectly cast as Mary, Hurd Hatfield was a first-rate Pilate and there's fine work from the likes of Viveca Lindfors, Rita Gam and Ron Randell in the supporting cast. Splendidly photographed too as befits films of this kind, (director Nicholas Ray's use of colour and the widescreen is as fine as ever), yet critically undervalued and now often dismissed when reviewing Ray's oeuvre.

MURDER BY CONTRACT

A B-movie and something of a small classic comparable to Melville's "Le Samourai" which it may have influenced. Vince Edwards in his pre-Ben Casey days is the young man who actually wants to be a contract killer and the movie is about his somewhat clinical initiation into the job. Superbly written by Ben Simcoe, brilliantly photographed in black and white by Lucien Ballard and with a terrific yet simple score by Perry Botkin this movie comes close to perfection. It was directed by Irving Lerner who up to then hadn't really done anything of note, (perhaps he was just waiting for the right material). Edwards is superb as the almost overly confident killer who comes undone when he has to kill a woman. It's a very simple picture, in which almost all the killings are kept off-screen concentrating instead on the killer's psychology and how he goes about his work. Never a commercial success it has now build up a considerable cult following.

BRANDED TO KILL

Stunningly shot in widescreen black and white Seijun Suzuki's "Branded to Kill" starts out like something that could have been directed by Jean- Pierre Melville in the fifties or Godard in the sixties. These Japanese gangsters are somehow closer to Alain Delon and Eddie Constantine than they are to the Yakuza and the jazzy score could have come from the French New Wave.

The plot is suitably obscure and the action is at times preposterous but Suzuki is a major stylist and the film's violent imagery is something to behold while Satre could have written the dialogue. Unfortunately this weird and wonderful film virtually disappeared without trace but its cult status is very definitely assured.

L'AMORE

Long unavailable in its entirety Roberto Rossellini's "L'Amore" remains one of his very greatest films. It is, in fact, two films; the second part, "The Miracle" has been shown separately and ran into censorship problems both in Italy and abroad. Fundamentally, it is a vehicle for Anna Magnani who is quite magnificent. In the first part, Cocteau's monologue "The Human Voice", she is the only person on screen, a lone woman on the telephone to the lover who has left her for another woman. For a good deal of the time Rossellini keeps the camera on that wonderful face and she is heart-breaking.

In the second part she is the deluded peasant seduced, and made pregnant, by none other than Federico Fellini , (who co-wrote the script with Rossellini and Tullio Pinelli). Magnani believes her seducer to be St Jospeh and the baby she is carrying to be some sort of new Messiah, (it was this that so offended the powers that be). Again she is magnificent, (Rossellini dedicated the film 'to the art of Anna Magnani"), in a role totally different from the part she plays in "The Human Voice". It is easy to see how this second part could be released separately from the first, (they are very different in tone), and this small masterpiece is as great a 'short' film as the cinema has given us. Nevertheless, seeing both parts together is testament to the genius of both director and star. Essential.