THE GLORY GUYS

A number of people believe that if Sam Peckinpah had directed "The Glory Guys" it might have been a masterpiece. Instead we get a Peckinpah screenplay with the directing duties handed to the little known Arnold Laven and yet as it stands this is one of the finest of all Cavalry pictures even if not too many people have seen it. It's magnificently shot in widescreen by the great James Wong Howe though it's indifferently acted. None of the leads, (Tom Tryon, Harve Presnell, Senta Berger), have much charisma though it's always good to see James Caan, (with a dreadful Oirish accent) but there are sequences here as good as anything Ford or Peckinpah might have given us, be it a bar-room brawl, an Indian massacre or a beautifully sustained scene on a parade ground. Peckinpah was the original director but was replaced by Laven and by 1965 the Western was no longer as popular as it had been a decade or so earlier. This one is ripe for rediscovery.

SUCH GOOD FRIENDS

By the time Otto Preminger got around to making "Such Good Friends" his reputation had already begun to wane but while this is hardly one of his masterpieces it's still a brilliant and nicely nasty satire on consumerism, sex and all things medical. It was written by Elaine May under the pseudonym Esther Dale with help from David Shaber from Lois Gould novel and it's beautifully played by the likes of Dyan Cannon, James Coco, Ken Howard, Nina Foch and Laurence Luckinbill and while the jokes are often very funny in that New York Jewish kind of way they are often sour enough to leave a nasty aftertaste.

These are characters we wouldn't want to meet or spend time with so when one of them, (Luckinbill), goes into a coma after a very simple operation goes wrong, you hardly care. He's an art director on a New York magazine, an author of children's books and a real sleaze-ball and it's only after he goes into hospital that his wife, (Cannon), discovers just what a philandering sleaze-ball he actually is.

With a very large cast and overlapping dialogue this is more like an Altman film than a Preminger picture but I doubt if Altman would be this cynical. The humour, however, is all May's, totally off-the-wall and razor sharp. Of course, it wasn't a hit either commercially or critically and Preminger only made two more films, both failures. This gem certainly deserved a better fate and Cannon is really extraordinary.

THE BARRETTS OF WIMPOLE STREET

Sidney Franklin's first screen version of "The Barretts of Wimpole Street", (he remade it again in 1957), is a ridiculously entertaining period piece about the blossoming romance between the poets Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett, (Fredric March and Norma Shearer, both excellent in their very Hollywood way), and how finally Elizabeth and the rest of the Barrett clan, (there were nine of them), rebelled against their tyrannical father, (a superb Charles Laughton, at the time only three years older than Shearer).

It was a very typical prestige production of the period. Irving G. Thalberg was the producer and he obviously chose it as a vehicle for the missus, (he was married to Shearer at the time), but it's almost stolen by Maureen O'Sullivan, surprisingly good as one of the Barrett girls and Una O'Connor is a delight, gliding across the room as if on wheels. The source was a play by Rudolph Besier and it's the kind of thing that would have gone down a treat on the London and Broadway stage, the archetypical 'well-made-play'. Yes, it's decidedly old-fashioned and very talkative and unlikely to appeal to today's audiences but it's also very good, a little on the camp side certainly but a very fine example of just how good the studio system could be at its best.

LUCE

"Luce" is one of the best politically slanted thrillers of recent years. It takes potentially explosive material, (it's a movie about race but not in any conventional sense), and treats it with an intelligence rare in movies these days. Luce, (a magnificent Kelvin Harrison Jr.), is a high school student raised by an American couple, (Naomi Watts and Tim Roth, both excellent), after being rescued as a child from war-torn Eritrea. When he writes a controversial essay that advocates the use of political violence both his adoptive parents and his teacher, (Octavia Spencer, also magnificent), begin to wonder if Luce really is the boy they thought they knew.

It's a film that sets out its arguments lucidly, (no pun intended), building tension slowly by showing what is said and what is left unsaid can so easily destroy lives when left unchallenged or misinterpreted. Brilliantly written by J.C. Lee, adapting his own play, and the director Julius Onah, superbly directed by Onah and beautifully acted by the six main players this is a film of ideas, again a rarity in mainstream cinema today, that is both entertaining and thought-provoking, the kind of film you take out of the cinema with you and talk about for days.

THE TALL TARGET

One of the all-time great B-Movies and one of the all-time great train movies. "The Tall Target" was directed by Anthony Mann so you knew it was going to be special. It's a thriller about a plot to assassinate Lincoln on board a train with Dick Powell as the detective out to prevent it and there's a host of B-Movie players lined up as suspects. It could be "Murder on the Orient Express" in miniature. Indeed Agatha Christie would have been proud of the construction while Billingsgate Fish Market would be proud of the number of red herrings on view. The whole thing is simplicity itself and the cast alone, (Adolphe Menjou, Paula Raymond, Marshall Thompson, Florence Bates, Ruby Dee, Will Geer etc.), would carry any A-lister. If it were longer it might have run out of steam but at 78 minutes it's just about perfect. The superb black and white photography is by Paul Vogel.

THE LUNCHBOX

Foodie movies are nothing new. Some of the most admired art-house films of the last forty years or so have food at their centre both in a literal sense and as a metaphor but few, if any, are as mouth-wateringly tasteful as Ritesh Batra's "The Lunchbox", a gorgeous romantic comedy-drama that will have you salivating from its opening moments. This one hails from India, a country not only famous for its cuisine but for its cinema which is now finally getting the recognition it deserves here in the West.

A love story but not in the usual sense, (it reminded me a little of Sofia Coppola's "Lost in Translation"), it's about the relationship, (platonic, unconsummated), that develops between a lonely middle-aged man on the cusp of retirement, (a superb performance from the late Irrfan Khan), and a younger, unhappily married woman, (beautifully played by Nimrat Kaur), when, by accident, a lunchbox is delivered to the wrong address. (Props like this are often at the centre of romantic misunderstandings). This couple never meet but correspond with each other on a daily basis and, in their own way, fall in love.

The humour is gentle, the drama is virtually imperceptible; this is a film that could easily have come from Ozu or De Sica. It's a satire that not only uses food as a metaphor for feelings, romantic or otherwise, but also pokes gentle fun at India's pen-pushing office environment, (and there's a totally terrific scene-stealing performance from Nawazuddin Siddiqui as Khan's potential replacement), and even manages to get a dig in at the country's over-crowded railway system. I loved every frame of this movie which is about as perfect as motion-pictures can get.

USED CARS

Robert Zemeckis may have won an Oscar for "Forrest Gump" and directed "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" and "Back to the Future" but his best film by a mile was "Used Cars", a classic comedy that Preston Sturges might have made forty years earlier. It's set almost entirely between two car lots, one facing the other and both run by two brothers, one nice, (he runs the crappy down-at-heel used car lot), and one nasty, (who runs the slick joint across the road), and both played by the great Jack Warden. When the nice one dies his employees, lead by a magnificent Kurt Russell in a career-best performance, must try to convince his brother that he's still alive to prevent him from taking over the business.

It's a brightly coloured joy from start to finish with a razor sharp script from Zemeckis and producer Bob Gale and enough black humour and speeding vehicles to satisfy a contemporary audience. As well as Russell and Warden, there's a superb supporting cast,  (Gerrit Graham is outstanding), and a beautifully sustained plot. If Zemeckis had stuck with this kind of comedy instead of the elephantine and portentous stuff he ended up doing then his reputation might have been justified.

FIVE GRAVES TO CAIRO

This early Billy Wilder film may not be one of his several masterpieces but it's still a hell of a lot of fun. It's a war movie but one that's based on a play, (by Lajos Biro, no less), and which takes place for the most part in a North African hotel during WW2, with the events depicted only months in the recent past and featuring among its cast of characters none other than Field Marshall Rommel, (a wonderfully cast Erich von Stroheim). The film, of course, is "Five Graves to Cairo" and rather than being a conventional war film is one of the best comedy-thrillers of its period.

Franchot Tone is superb as the British soldier who's mistaken for a German agent by Rommel and his troops, Anne Baxter makes for a surprisingly good French maid and Akim Tamiroff is splendid as the hotel's Egyptian owner. It's talkative, yes but with a Charles Brackett/Billy Wilder screenplay the talk is, naturally, good and the whole thing has a delightful Hitchcockian flavour to it. An underrated movie that is well worth reviving.

THE ROARING TWENTIES

One of the great gangster movies but one that takes its time. We're almost half way through "The Roaring Twenties" before the real action starts but with Cagney in the lead and Bogie backing him up it's a classic nevertheless. They are former WWI army buddies who join forces during Prohibition but ultimately fall out. Priscilla Lane is the singer Cagney falls for but his attentions aren't reciprocated, Gladys George is the hard-boiled hostess who loves Cagney, (and gets to utter the film's immortal last line), and Frank McHugh is Cagney's best pal. Raoul Walsh was the director so you knew what to expect; he may have been a jobbing director but he was one of the best Hollywood ever produced. Supremely entertaining.

JIMMY THE GENT

In his wonderful book of movie lists, 'From Cyd Charisse

 to Psycho' Dale Thomajan picked "Jimmy the Gent" as The Best (Feature) Comedy under Seventy Minutes Long and this classic, one of the funniest films ever made, richly deserves that accolade. Okay, you might say there are not too many great feature comedies under seventy minutes long but this gem is as good as, and a whole lot better, than many comedies twice its length. It crams as much plot and as many gags, visual and verbal, into its sixty-seven minute running time as it's possible to get and gives James Cagney as the titular Jimmy one of his best early roles.

He's the fast-talking and not strictly honest proprietor of an heir-tracing business whose latest scheme isn't just to get one up on his rival, (a wonderful Alan Dinehart), but to win back the love of his life, (Bette Davis, no less). It was directed by Michael Curtiz and if "Casablanca", "Mildred Pierce" and "The Adventures of Robin Hood" aren't enough to convince you, throw this in and you can see why Curtiz was one of the all-time great directors. This moves at lightening speed, (well, at sixty-seven minutes it would have to), and remains one of cinema's great masterclasses in comic timing.

THE SEVEN-UPS

Many people look at "The Seven-Ups" and see only a "French Connection" wannabe, down to the casting of Roy Scheider in the leading role. The fact that it was directed by "The French Connection's" producer, Philip D'Antoni only adds to the impression that this was intended to be nothing more than a cash-in but if you by-pass it on these grounds you'd be missing an excellent and very exciting crime flic with a car chase that outdoes the one in "The French Connection" by a good few miles.

What it lacks is a strong and coherent script and, of course, Gene Hackman. Scheider simply isn't up to the job, phoning in his performance as if all he wanted was to pick up his pay-check but the set pieces are superbly handled, leading you to wonder why D'Antoni never directed again. Indeed, a film that was once written off now has its own cult following and while it may not be a classic of the genre it is so much better than its reputation suggests.

KANSAS CITY

A jazz movie, a political movie and a kidnapping drama, "Kansas City" is all of them, rolled into one and this little known Robert Altman movie is one of his most enjoyable pictures. As in his more ambitious epics "Nashville" and "Short Cuts" he juggles several plot strands perfectly, helped along by another first-rate cast headed by Jennifer Jason Leigh, Miranda Richardson, Michael Murphy and a never better Harry Belafonte, (he won the New York Film Critics' Best Supporting Actor prize for this). It's the kidnapping plot or plots, depending on how you look at it, that dominate as they weave in and out through the other stories, borne along by some truly terrific jazz. You might not describe it as a thriller and, despite being laugh-out-loud funny at times, the comedy is largely satirical as you might expect from Altman but it looks fabulous and it's as sharp as a pin and it remains one of Altman's most underrated films.

REPULSION

One of the cinema's greatest studies of madness with Catherine Deneuve as the girl unravelling over a long, hot week one summer when she's left alone in her London flat. Roman Polanski's "Repulsion" is a classic horror film but it's much more than that. With Deneuve virtually onscreen throughout, this is an unnervingly accurate picture of mental illness and of a psychopathic personality, (it was hailed as the best psycho movie since "Psycho"), as everything within Deneuve's radar conspires against her, driving her to nightmarish scenes in which she is raped, hands reach from the wall to grab her and eventually to murder.

Her victims are anyone unlucky enough to come calling. Polanski wrote the original screenplay with Gerard Brach and Gilbert Taylor did the brilliant black and white photography but this is Deneuve's show. Hers is an extraordinary performance that really signalled the birth of a great actress while the film, Polanski's first in English, also heralded the emergence of one of the finest directors of his generation.

NOTHING BUT THE BEST

The year before he won an Oscar for "Darling", Frederic Raphael adapted Stanley Ellin's short story "Nothing But the Best" for the screen. It was a kind of comic "Room at the Top" directed by that fine and underrated director Clive Donner and photographed by none other than Nicolas Roeg. Alan Bates is the social climbing Jimmy Brewster who does marry the boss' daughter, (Millicent Martin, very good), on his way up the ladder but still has to indulge in a spot of murder as well.

It's got a terrific supporting cast that includes Denholm Elliot at his Machiavellian best as Bates' tutor in the art of social mobility, Harry Andrews as his boss and, best of all, Pauline Delaney as an over-sexed landlady. It all adds up to a delightfully sharp satire yet hardly anyone has seen it. Seek it out because, apart from anything else, it's also one of the great London films.