THREE COLOURS WHITE

The middle part of Krzysztof Kieslowski's "Three Colours Trilogy" (White), is a comedy, (of sorts, and a cruel one), which may be why it's the least highly thought of but for anyone who knows and loves Kieslowski's work this, too, is a gem and shouldn't be missed. It's a love story, (again, of sorts), with a Chaplinesque hero, (a superb Zbigniew Zamachowski), divorced and treated very badly by his French wife, (a lovely Julie Delpy), plotting his revenge yet all the time still in love with her. It's got a tortuously convoluted plot that involves fraud and possible murder, leading to a stunningly unexpected and deeply moving climax. If the individual parts are not as profound as those in parts one and two of this trilogy, taken as a whole, the film still delivers a hammer blow and its closing shot will not be easily forgotten.

THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV

Not really the travesty it might have been. If Richard Brooks was good at anything it was for making accessible big, classic novels that a cinema-going audience might otherwise have overlooked and for at least treating them with a degree of respect. I'm not sure this version of Dostoevsky's novel "The Brothers Karamazov" will have anyone rushing to read the original but it's a robust entertainment nevertheless. It's a family drama about the relationship between four brothers and their father, (like a Russian "Dallas"), and which, like all good family dramas, is a love/hate relationship.

Yul Brynner is the headstrong, black sheep of the clan, (he's actually very good here), and his brothers are Richard Basehart, (the clever one), William Shatner, (the saintly one), and Albert Salmi, (excellent as the illegitimate one) while Lee J. Cobb hams it up as the hated father. As the woman who throws herself at Brynner only to be jilted and as the father's mistress that Brynner falls for both Claire Bloom and, in particular, Maria Schell are outstanding. Of course, the novel is something of a door-stopper and all Brooks can do is zip through it making sure he gets in all the salient points and no-one would ever call this one of the great literary adaptations. By the time we get to the courtroom climax it all gets a bit silly but it's a juicy entertainment all the same.

THE DIARY OF A CHAMBERMAID

France's most famous director, Jean Renoir, had to go to America to make his film of French author Octave Mirbeau's novel "The Diary of a Chambermaid". It was adapted for the screen by the actor Burgess Meredith, mainly as a vehicle for his then wife Paulette Goddard who plays the chambermaid Celestine who uses her wiles on the various men in the household where she is employed. It's a lovely performance in a film full of good performances. Others in the cast include Meredith himself, Hurd Hatfield, Reginald Owen and Judith Anderson but it's Francis Lederer as the malevolent manservant Joseph who walks off with the movie.

It's really a film of two halves. The early farcical elements seem overworked, (I know it's a film about eccentrics but such broad strokes hardly suit Renoir). However, the darkness that overwhelms the second half of the picture is magnificently handled by the director and is actually quite shocking. This is a very different film from the one Bunuel made in 1964 and perhaps all the better for it.

BEING THERE

People now look back at "Being There" as the "Forrest Gump" of its day but Hal Ashby's brilliant satire with a heart is everything "Forrest Gump" wasn't. For starters, in place of a mugging and obvious Tom Hanks we get a subtle and magnificent Peter Sellers in a career-best performance as the child-like Chance 'the gardener' who has lived all his life in the seclusion of his employer's home and who now finds himself abandoned in a chilly Washington D.C. after the old man's death. Injured after an automobile accident and with nothing to fall back on but aphorisms learned, or just picked up, from decades of watching television, he is 'rescued'  by Shirley MacLaine and her ancient husband Melvyn Douglas and is somehow mistaken for something of a seer by his new-found friends and even by the American President, (Jack Warden).

Adapted by Jerzy Kosinski from his own novel, "Being There" is Hal Ashby's masterpiece and remains one of the key American films of the seventies. Very funny and deeply insightful and bolstered by Sellers' extraordinary performance it went to places other American films with a political edge  simply didn't go to in those days and above all it treated Sellers' character with a great deal more than just compassion; both the film and Sellers gave Chance grace notes. In fact, it's much closer to the recent "Happy as Lazzaro", another masterpiece about a potential saint. See this at all costs.

MATEWAN

At his best John Sayles was one of the greatest political filmmakers to have come out of America and "Matewan" may be his masterpiece. It's about the efforts to create a Trade Union in the mining town of Matewan, West Virginia in the 1920's and it's one of the great left-wing American movies, beautifully written and directed by Sayles, magnificently photographed by Haskell Wexler and superbly acted by everyone including Sayles himself as a hellfire and damnation preacher.

Chris Cooper is the organizer, James Earl Jones, the leader of the African-American miners, (it's about a lot more than just worker's rights), and best of all, a very young Will Oldham, better known today as Bonnie Prince Billy amongst other names, as the young preacher who finds political succour in the Gospels. Of course, the difference between this and something like "Norma Rae" is that this lacks a triumphalist central character or a couple of big name stars like "The Molly Maguires" so it wasn't really a hit. Nevertheless, it knocks spots off the competition and shouldn't be missed.

CRASHOUT

This prison break movie wastes no time in getting down to business. "Crashout" is a B-Movie directed by Lewis R. Foster and it's just the kind of B-Movie the American cinema did beautifully in the fifties and it's got a terrific cast, (Arthur Kennedy, William Bendix, Luther Adler, Marshall Thompson, Gene Evans and William Tallman), all playing escaped convicts. Kennedy and Adler take the acting honours but they are all excellent and it's got a great plot involving stolen loot and dishonour amongst thieves. If it feels at times like an extended episode of a TV series, it's still a good one that scores points in every department. Maybe not an undiscovered gem but a pleasure nevertheless.

CALM WITH HORSES

There's nothing in "Calm with Horses" that we haven't seen before but seldom have we seen it done this well. It's an Irish gangster movie of sorts but it doesn't follow the rules of other gangster films or movies dealing with criminals or family feuds. Everything about it is different from its location on Ireland's West coast to its characters. Indeed, this is more a character study than a history of violence, (it's actually been renamed "The Shadow of Violence" for its US release).

Its central character is 'Arm', a dim-witted former boxer now acting as an enforcer for the Devers' family. He's a bit like Steinbeck's Lennie but with a mean streak and he's played, quite magnificently, by Cosmo Jarvis. The title, "Calm with Horses" refers to his love for the animals and their calming influence on him and it also refers to how horses are used therapeutically to calm down his autistic young son. However, things go badly wrong for Arm when one of the Devers' clan, (a terrific Barry Keoghan), orders him to kill the man who abused one of the girls in the family.

Working from a wonderfully intelligent script by Joe Murtagh, in turn adapted from a Colin Barrett short story, first-time feature director Nick Rowland never puts a foot wrong, drawing superlative performances from his largely unknown cast and dragging us into the film's central premiss like he's been doing this sort of thing for years. As I said, the material isn't new and Rowland isn't afraid to show off his influences, (mostly British gangster pictures, and we're not talking Guy Ritchie here, as well as the best of American independent cinema), but he brings to his material a freshness and a brilliance I can only marvel at. Without doubt, this is one of the best films of the year.

A ROYAL SCANDAL

Ernst Lubitsch produced it and put his name above the title but the directing duties this time went to Otto Preminger and while "A Royal Scandal" may lack 'the Lubitsch Touch' this screen version of Lajos Biro and Melchior Lengyel's play "Die Zarin" is often very funny and splendidly cast. Set in the court of Catherine the Great it's basically a vehicle for Tallulah Bankhead in one of her rare screen appearances. She makes for an imperious empress and dominates her every scene but a supporting cast that includes Charles Coburn, Anne Baxter, Ty Power lookalike William  Eythe, Sig Ruman, Mischa Auer and Vincent Price give excellent value. Indeed in their few scenes together Baxter more than holds her own against Bankhead and Eythe proves himself a versatile comic actor. It also shows Preminger could do comedy with a little help from his producer, of course.

THREE COLOURS: BLUE

You could say the cinema is littered with great trilogies, some 'intentional', others accidental. However, there is no doubt that Krysztof Kieslowski intended "Three Colours: Blue" to be the beginning of a trilogy linked by the final moments of the third film and together they make one of the greatest trilogies in all of cinema. The colours are those of the French flag though you don't actually have to know that or indeed what they stand for to appreciate this great movie. Certainly, the first and third parts are masterpieces in their own right and if the middle one, "White" isn't quite a masterpiece it is still a remarkable piece of work.

At the beginning of "Three Colours: Blue" a car accident claims the lives of a father and his five year old daughter. His wife, (a superb Juliette Binoche), survives but is seriously injured. The man was one of the world's most famous composers, (and Zbigniew Preisner's brilliant score will testify as to why), though there are rumours that his wife may have written some, (if not all), of his music and Kieslowski's film deals with grief, anger and redemption all anchored in Binoche's performance.

In this film, magnificently photographed by Slawomir Idziak, blue is the colour that predominates; it seems to seep into every frame of the movie and becomes, both symbolically and literally, a character in itself. This was clearly the work of a great filmmaker in total command, both of his subject and his medium, hugely intelligent and very moving without a touch of sentimentality to be seen anywhere.

SCANDAL

I doubt if anyone would call "Scandal" one of the great British films but this account of the Profumo affair and the scandal that finally toppled McMillan's government is a hell of a lot of fun with an excellent cast, a smart script
and an almost obscene relish in the very pleasures it's pretending to condemn. Not that "Scandal" is in any way hypocritical; I mean what's the point of making a film that's largely about sex if you leave out the sex!

John Hurt is a superb Stephen Ward. Joanne Whalley-Kilmer is perfectly cast as Christine Keeler, Ian McKellen, with a largely bald wig, is an unusually sympathetic Profumo and Bridget Fonda is great fun, and Golden Globe nominated, as Mandy Rice-Davies while the story itself is one of those juicy, gossipy affairs we never tire of hearing about. Throw in a great sixties soundtrack and a Pet Shop Boys/Dusty Springfield closing number and you really can't miss.

MRS. PARKER AND THE VICIOUS CIRCLE

What's not to love? An Alan Rudolph film produced by Robert Altman and starring the remarkable Jennifer Jason Leigh as one of the 20th Century's greatest wits and best critics. "Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle" is as smart as the characters sitting around that round table in the Algonquin Hotel. Of course, it won't be to everyone's taste. This is a niche product full of bitchy intellectuals being intellectual, (and bitchy), but who can deny the skill with which it's done or the superb performances by a cast very well used to this sort of thing. Most of the fun, of course, is identifying who's who and if Campbell Scott doesn't look much like the real Robert Benchley, who cares when he's this good. As for Leigh, she's terrific, (and Oscar-worthy), and Matthew Broderick is a revelation as Charles MacArthur. Hugely enjoyable.