THE 13TH DAY

 The problem with most religious films is that the filmmakers have a habit of equating religion with piety and piety with gross sentimentality. There is also usually a surfeit of kind priests and nice nuns being kind and nice to beatific children or else they will be about Jesus, saints and miracles and the inexplicable. Perhaps the most famous religious movie about sainthood is "The Song of Bernadette" with an unlikely Jennifer Jones as Saint Bernadette. That turned out to be so much better than it might have been, not free from piety but very well written, directed and acted.

Of course Lourdes, where many Christians, or at least Catholics, believe the Blessed Virgin appeared to Bernadette Soubirous, is probably the most famous place of pilgrimage in Christianity outside of Israel. Fatima, where a similar apparition is said to have happened in 1917, is less well known. The movie "The Miracle of Fatima" was a decent enough attempt to deal with those events and now we have "The 13th Day", a kind of amateur docu-drama about what happened at Fatima. Co-directed by Dominic and Ian Higgins it comes across as something commissioned by the Catholic Church purely for Catholics, (it certainly won't win any converts), and is acted by a cast of non-professionals.

The amazing thing is it, too, is nowhere near as bad as it could have been though it's certainly no "Song of Bernadette". Stylistically it's closer to Rossellini's "The Flowers of St. Francis" but without the rigor or the beauty that Rossellini brought to his subject and what passes for acting certainly lets it down. Non-believers will either avoid the film like the plague or will see it as nothing more than Catholic propaganda while believers might find it closer to a demonic horror movie than a tale of future saints. Shot mostly in monochrome with colour inserts it's well enough made but unlikely to appeal to all but the very few.

THE COUNSELLOR

 This terrifically cast, sleek, glossy and intricately plotted Ridley Scott thriller from a Cormac McCarthy script wasn't a success and yet it may be one of the best things Scott ever did. "The Counsellor" of the title is Michael Fassbender, a lawyer moving in high circles that includes drugs baron Javier Bardem and his lady Cameron Diaz as well as a shady 'cowboy' played by Brad Pitt and his involvement with such characters leads him into situations he might otherwise not want to find himself in.

It's typical McCarthy, even if it's not front rank McCarthy, and maybe the tortuous plot proved too much for both critics and audiences but it's a movie that uses its showy cast , (that also includes Penelope Cruz, Bruno Ganz, Rosie Perez, Edgar Ramirez and Rueben Blades), to excellent effect and thanks to Dariusz Wolski's cinematography it looks terrific. Best of all, it's a movie that takes familiar material and shakes it about in unconventional ways. In the acting stakes it's Pitt and Diaz who own the picture which certainly didn't deserve the critical thrashing it got at the time and is now ripe for reassessment.

HOLLYWOOD ENDING

 There's one really good gag in Woody Allen's "Hollywood Ending" and luckily it lasts for about three-quarters of the movie. In his most self-referential film since "Stardust Memories" Woody plays a film director who, in the course of making his comeback film, (for the producer who stole his ex-wife), goes psychosomatically blind and the gag is he must hide his blindness from everyone but the very few. What follows is what could best be described as 'one of the early funny ones', a farce with not too much analysis. Until he goes blind the movie isn't particularly funny and is more than a little self-indulgent; these are jokes we've heard a hundred times before. Consequently, "Hollywood Ending" isn't one of his better pictures and would probably make a better short story but there's a sweetness to it and Tea Leoni, (the ex-wife), and Debra Messing, (the dumb actress girlfriend), are both very likeable though when you get down to it, it's director Mark Rydell as Allen's perpetually optimistic Jewish agent who walks away with the movie.

BILLY LYNN'S LONG HALFTIME WALK

 The subject of Ang Lee's "Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk" isn't the war in Iraq but in how America reacts to its heroes and its soldiers and it's a theme that can be traced back through two World Wars. Indeed for almost as long as movies have existed the cinema has concerned itself with the relationship between the military and the world at large, how it performs and how it is perceived. The most famous example of this is probably the raising of the flag at Iwo Jima and the subsequent 'tour' back home immortalised in such films as "The Outsider" with Tony Curtis as Ira Hayes and Clint Eastwood's "Flags of Our Fathers" and Oliver Stone's Vietnam film "Born on the Fourth of July" so it was only a matter of time before someone would do something similar with one of the current wars.

Moving back and forth in time between the events in Iraq and the tour to celebrate the 'heroes' Lee's film is a complex and surprisingly satirical picture that doesn't go down the obvious route of 'what really happened and how the media constructs events' and, being an Ang Lee film, is very skilfully made. As Billy Lynn, the soldier chosen to be the poster boy for the military, newcomer Joe Alwyn is excellent and it's a film that ultimately confounds our expectations. The chest-thumping of "Born on the Fourth of July" is conspicuously absent and if the film seems to lack a big dramatic pay-off it's still a moving depiction of ordinary people caught up in extraordinary events.

SWEET MOVIE

 With the credits coming at you in a variety of bright colours and a highly eclectic international cast list you know Dusan Makavejev's "Sweet Movie" isn't exactly going to be your conventional Eastern European art-movie but I'm also sure no-one will be quite prepared for what follows those credits. Makavejev is out to shock you, maybe even titillate you. This is like a John Waters' movie co-directed by Salvador Dali with a little help from Sergei Eisenstein. There's no real plot as such but rather a series of sketches filmed in both Europe and Canada and while the film is described as a 'comedy', laughs are non-existent.

On the other hand sex, a little violence and various bodily functions are very much to the fore and if you can overlook some of the content, including a scene in which a very attractive and barely clad young woman has her way with some children as well as some newsreel footage from Katyn, you can't deny that visually it's often rather beautiful in an abstract kind of way. It's also got cult movie written all over it; a midnight matinee movie with its own built-in audience. Of course, the problem with movies that set out to be cults, as I have a feeling this one did, is that they keep drawing attention to just how clever they are and "Sweet Movie" is no exception. Maiden aunts are certainly not likely to get the joke, if there's a joke here to get, though cineastes should enjoy the odd movie reference if they can make it past the 'food' orgy and if, like me, you enjoy celebrity spotting, look out for George Melly and Ronald Topor among the cameos.