THE LIGHTHOUSE

Shot in black and white and in an aspect ratio of 1.19:1, giving us an almost square screen like the early silent movies and with really only a cast of two, Robert Eggers' "The Lighthouse" might appear to be either highly innovative or hugely pretentious or maybe even both. The setting is a lighthouse on a small, craggy island off New England, circa the 1890's. The only characters are the two lighthouse keepers, one young, (Robert Pattinson), and the other something of an old sea-dog, (Willem Dafoe), who seem to take an instant dislike to each other. The only way they have to pass the time is to work and to let their imaginations run away with them.

Eggers' movie has been described as a horror film but like his earlier "The Witch", it's far from a conventional horror film. Its demons are those of the mind rather than the spectres of the supernatural and its physical horrors are much more disturbing than its metaphysical imaginings and in the end it's up to its two players to sustain it. Pattinson has probably never been better and Defoe is simply magnificent. His is the most difficult role; his crusty old dictator could so easily have been nothing more than a cliché but Defoe gives his character shadings not immediately apparent in the script, as indeed does Pattinson.

Unfortunately, despite a highly unsettling score by Mark Korven and Jarin Blaschke's stunning cinematography boredom does set in before the climax, which I suppose was only to be expected. Eggers simply can't provide enough incidents of terror or indeed anything else to make us fully care about its protagonists. That said, there is enough here to ensure at least cult status and a considerable future for its director.

FORD V FERRARI

The one thing that Hollywood is really good at is competition which you might find surprising since Hollywood is a far-arsed, monied town and you would think 'competing' wouldn't even enter into their vocabulary, (except, of course, during Awards Season), yet when Hollywood sets its mind to it and makes a film about competing, (think "Rocky", think "Aliens"), they are unbeatable. Their latest competitive movie is "Ford v Ferrari" and it's a contemporary classic in which every single piece fits perfectly into place just like the pieces of the classic cars on display. In this country it's called "Le Mans '66" so even if you didn't know it was about the car companies Ford and Ferrari you would still know what it's about and when it takes place.

Starting off with a superb screenplay from playwright Jez Butterworth, John-Henry Butterworth and Jason Keller. terrific performances from the likes of Christian Bale, Matt Damon, Jon Bernthal, Tracy Letts, Josh Lucas and Caitriona Balfe, brilliant editing, luminous photography all under the guiding hand of James Mangold this is a crowd-pleaser of the first magnitude and you don't even have to like cars to enjoy it, (though it helps). What you do have to like, however, is competing and who doesn't get an adrenalin rush from competing? It also helps if you like Christian Bale and Matt Damon. Bale's character may not be the most likable bloke in the world but this faultless actor is terrific in the role while Damon is fast becoming the go to actor of choice when it comes to playing craggy, steel-jawed heroes of a certain age, (surely his Oscar is just around the corner). The ending may be a tad predictable but the journey to it is one hell of a ride.

THE WHITE SHEIK

Fellini undoubtedly made better films but his solo debut, "The White Sheik", is still one of his most enjoyable, (he had already co-directed "Lights of Variety" with Alberto Lattuada, perhaps because he was poking fun at something he knew very well, show-business and play-acting for the camera, and for Fellini show-business was always fun. Even when he was at his most 'serious' he could never quite take life seriously. Performers were everywhere; even his prostitutes were performers of a kind and here, The White Sheik of the title, is as flamboyant a performer as ever graced a Fellini film.

He's played by Alberto Sordi as a broad, narcissistic buffoon but Fellini showers him with affection. He's his own hero though the film's hero is actually the stuffy little bureaucrat, (beautifully played by Leopoldo Trieste), who has come to Rome on his honeymoon and whose wife our White Sheik sets out to seduce but who emerges from her encounters dimmer than a fading light bulb and purer than the driven snow. Here is comedy both broad and satirical. Watch out, too, for Giulietta Masina as a little streetwalker named Cabiria. Fame, for Mrs. Fellini, was just around the corner.

SHOPLIFTERS

The ghosts of Dickens, De Sica and Ozu hover over every frame of Hirokazu Koreeda's magnificent film "Shoplifters". This cross between "Oliver Twist" and "Shoeshine" but filmed in the style of Ozu's "Ohayo" is about a family of thieves in contemporary Tokyo who find a little, five-year-old girl abandoned by her abusive parents, take her in, shower her with affection and teach her to steal. They may be amoral and they may be lawbreakers but sometimes we find goodness in the strangest of places and in the least likely of people. What's worse, the film asks; stealing food and clothes or 'rescuing' a child, a crime society and the world at large views as the greater theft.

If the style of the film is neo-realist, the concept is purely humanist and, for once, Koreeda comes across as a Japanese Ken Loach and, like Loach, he draws extraordinarily naturalistic performances from his entire cast, (Miyu Sasuki, the little girl playing Yuri, is absolutely perfect), and there are great moments here, as good as any in recent cinema. Life, you see, is not black and white but full of all the colours of the rainbow if you just know where to look. Koreeda knows exactly where to look and this triumphant, beautiful and moving film is proof of that.

THE YOUNG LIONS

Irwin Shaw's novel was one of those big door-stoppers that was guaranteed to be a bestseller. It had sex and war and a bucket-load of characters and it was destined for the big screen. Edward Dmytryk, who helmed the film version, may not have been an auteur but, at his best, he was a great entertainer who knew how to deliver the goods and this epic story of love and war has definitely stood the test of time, its episodic structure working perfectly as Marlon Brando's 'good Nazi' runs up against his superiors while American buddies Dean Martin and Montgomery Clift are drafted and shipped overseas where all their paths will invariably cross.

The performances throughout are excellent, though Clift, still recovering from his auto accident, looks very uncomfortable while Maximilian Schell's sadistic German officer almost steals the film from under Brando's nose. Their women are May Britt, looking stunning, Barbara Rush, Hope Lange, fresh from her success in "Peyton Place" and Liliane Montevecchi, prior to her stints on the Broadway stage while Edward Anhalt makes a fair fist of bringing the book in at under three hours and keeping it lucid. It may not be a great film but it's intelligent and much better than it had any right to be.

COMPULSION

Of course they had to 'tone it down', (it was still 1959), but this screen version of the Leopold-Loeb case, (with the names and some of the facts altered), wasn't just a first-class melodrama but also as honest as it was possible to be at the time regarding the sexual relationship existing between the killers. Nothing's overt but you didn't have be Sam Spade to figure things out.

The movie "Compulsion" was based on Meyer Levin's novel, the adaptation was by Richard Murphy, the highly intelligent direction was by the remarkably gifted Richard Fleischer, the superb wide-screen photography was by William C. Mellor and best of all, the killers were played by Dean Stockwell and Bradford Dillman. Orson Welles was their defence attorney, based on Clarence Darrow and all three were jointly awarded Best Actor at Cannes. A girl, played by Diane Varsi, was also thrown into the mix, perhaps to put audiences off the scent of what was really going on between Stockwell and Dillman but she doesn't interfere too much with the plot and there's a very nice supporting turn from Martin Milner as a young, hot-shot journalist.

It's not a great film and Welles' lengthy final monologue is certainly nowhere near as profound as it thinks it is but the film is both intelligent and very entertaining and was a very grown-up film to have come out of Hollywood at the time.