AJAMI

 Whatever we think we know about the Arab/Israel conflict on the ground, we probably don't and we are unlikely to learn much about the political side of the conflict from Scandar Copti and Yaron Shani's remarkable debut. "Ajami" might feel at times like a scripted documentary or at least a piece of neo-realism and deals, not with the wider picture but with a series of vignettes, told in chapters, of everyday life within the Ajami community where Muslims, Jews and Christians co-exist together. To complicate matters, the chapters don't run chronologically and the stories and characters seem only tenuously linked and although we frequently hear the words 'Jews' and 'Arabs' tossed about these stories could take place in the slums of Naples or in New York's Hell's Kitchen. In other words, this is closer to a gang movie than a political film though, of course, set as it is in Israel it is very much a political film.

The cast are largely non-professional and it all feels very real yet the two directors film it in such a way that we are about half way through the film before the plot begins to tie together or to make sense. This is a difficult film, perhaps a little too clever at times for its own good, but it remains a superb first feature that dares to take what we might think of as familiar material and twist it into unrecognizable shapes. Perhaps this is the kind of film Tarantino should be making.

INSTANT FAMILY

 A comedy about a thirty something couple who foster three siblings is going to be sickeningly sentimental, right? Wrong! "Instant Family" is sentimental but also has the courage to poke fun at that very sentimentality and is genuinely funny thanks mainly to two first-rate performances from Mark Wahlberg and Rose Byrne as the couple and an excellent supporting cast that includes Octavia Spencer, Julie Haggerty and the great Margo Martindale. The kids, too, are just dandy and if the comedy is at times predictably broad it balances very nicely with the inevitable saccharine moment. In fact, this might be the perfect movie about kids for people who don't like movies about kids.

SOUL

 This year's sure-fire Oscar winner for Best Animated Feature and probably Best Original Score, "Soul" is a brilliant mess of a movie more likely to appeal to adults than to children who almost certainly won't 'get' it, (and they certainly won't get the references to "A Matter of Life and Death" unless they have sophisticated cineaste parents). In some ways it's both old-fashioned and ground-breaking, at least in its attempt to push the boundaries of children's animation while never reaching the sublime heights of say "The Incredibles" or "Inside Out". The animation may be extraordinary but we've been here before.

The title, of course, has more than one meaning. Soul might refer to what a good jazz musician puts into his music but more fundamentally here it also refers to what we are all said to carry within us. Quite early in the film our hero finds himself on a 'Stairway to Heaven' to give that Powell and Pressburger film its other title and from here on it alternates between the avant-garde and that old-fashioned Pixar formula right down to a talking cat, (big mistake). A brilliant voice cast, (Jamie Foxx, Tina Fey, Angela Bassett, Daveed Diggs and a surprisingly cast Graham Norton of all people), do what they can with the material but the script is uninspired and it is noticeably lacking in gags, (I think kids will get bored quite quickly). Not one of the greats, then and maybe not even the best animation of the current year.

THE RAIN PEOPLE

 Of all his films it would appear that Francis Ford Coppola is particularly fond of "The Rain People", a very modest and some might say 'arty' drama he made early in his career. Like a lot of American films popular at the time it's a 'road movie' with Shirley Knight as the young wife who ups and leaves her husband in the middle of the night, gets in her car and drives West for no particular reason she can think of, meeting on her journey James Caan, (brain-damaged football player), and Robert Duvall, (randy motorcycle cop). She also happens to be pregnant and, like so many Americans in movies at the time, has gone off to 'find herself'.

Coppola says it was a personal project and there are some people who think it's his first masterpiece but it wasn't a hit and despite Coppola's name on the credits has become something of a lost movie. Knight is excellent as she mopes about and, you might say, teasing any man who comes her way while Duvall and especially Caan match her at every turn. You could say it's a quintessential American film of its time, a 'movie-brat' movie if there ever was one and Coppola's first real 'signature' picture, (though I do have a soft-spot for the wonderful "Finian's Rainbow" which preceded it). If you do get a chance to track this down it is certainly well worth seeing.

THE EIGER SANCTION

 This Clint Eastwood spy thriller was never going to win Oscars but in its own thick-eared and rather tasteless fashion it's reasonably entertaining with Eastwood both directing and starring as the retired assassin brought back to perform one last 'sanction', (that's a 'hit' to you and me). He was a sprightly forty-five when he made it, a bit old, perhaps, to be scurrying up drain-pipes never mind the Eiger. You may also think him a sexist, mysogynist, racist, homophobe and for someone posing as a qualified art professor he also seems to be singularly lacking in brains; this is definitely not one of his better performances. In fact, until they get to the mountain it's really rather banal with a 'McGuffin' as daft and as obvious as any in the movies. Luckily for us, George Kennedy and Jack Cassidy turn up and in their over-the-top fashion give the movie a much needed kick in the rear but unfortunately at 129 minutes it's also much too long.

ON THE ROCKS

 Like her father before her, Sofia Coppola is certainly an idiosyncratic filmmaker. She doesn't do ordinary, be it a movie about teenage suicide, a May-September rom-com or a film about a French Queen. "On the Rocks" is her father and daughter movie, (and it may have more than a touch of the autobiographical about it), and in some way it's a companion piece to her best, as well as her best-known film "Lost in Translation", right down to the casting of Bill Murray . This time round a much older Murray is the dad and Rashida Jones is the daughter whose wedding we see at the beginning. Seconds late she's got two children and is feeling dissatisfied in her marriage. She's also a writer and the way Coppola encapsulates all this information into just a few minutes of screen time is really quite stunning.

What follows is a funny, touching and hugely intelligent picture of two people who obviously love each other but who have kind of drifted apart, reconnecting as they play detective to see if her husband is cheating on her, as well as being something of a love letter to night-time New York, bolstered by two terrific performances from Murray and Jones and Coppola's superb dialogue; you hang on every word. A total pleasure from beginning to end and once again, shame on the Academy for ignoring it and most especially for ignoring Murray's great performance.

YOUNG MR. LINCOLN

 One of John Ford's very best films and although it's admired, it's never really been given its due. It's homespun Americana and it's also mostly fiction, dealing as it does with Lincoln's supposed first case as a lawyer defending two young settlers on a murder charge. Real life characters such as Ann Rutledge and even future wife Mary Todd flit by; Abe aside almost everyone else is an invention of screenwriter Lamar Trotti's imagination. Of course, you have to have a taste for this kind of material; the po' folks simplicity is laid on pretty thick and perhaps only Ford could make it work which he certainly does, helped in no small measure by a terrific performance from Henry Fonda as Lincoln.

Unlike Raymond Massey or even Daniel Day-Lewis, Fonda never adopts the mannerisms of Lincoln, the statesman. His is an easy-going, laidback Lincoln spouting those homespun epigrams so beloved of Ford and doing it beautifully; it's a great piece of acting. There's also a splendid supporting turn from Donald Meeks as the dogged prosecutor in the films lengthy trial scene which basically takes up the last quarter of the picture and is as good as any courtroom scene in American movies. The great Alice Brady, in her last role, (she died not long after the film was completed, at the age of forty-six), is the mother of the boys on trial but in the end this is Fonda's film and, of course, Ford's; they really do compliment each other.

ALL THIS AND HEAVEN TOO

 Not one of Bette's better vehicles, (she's noble in this one), but a reasonably entertaining 'women's picture' nevertheless. "All this, and Heaven Too" was based on Rachel Field's bestseller and Bette is the French governess in 19th century Paris who falls in love with her employer, the Duc de Praslin, (Charles Boyer, being equally noble), but only because he's married to a shrew, (Barbara O'Neill, going wildly over-the-top and getting Oscar-nominated for her efforts). Of course, their 'non-affair' leads to scandal and Bette is ostracized by all and sundry.

It's a typically sumptuous Warner Brothers' production of the time full of familiar contract players like Harry Davenport, Walter Hampden, Montague Love, Henry Daniell, George Coulouris and that supercilious brat Virginia Weidler as well as an obnoxious tyke called Richard Nichols as the child who survives diphtheria thanks to Bette's nursing care. It also seems to go on forever; well, for two hours and twenty minutes actually making me wonder why nobody thought of that old adage, 'less is more'. A huge hit at the time, it was even nominated for Best Picture but then, of course, so was "Love Story".

THE FATHER

 I haven't seen the play on which "The Father" is based, (or indeed the other two plays in Florian Zeller's trilogy on the family), but as cinematic adaptations go this is as good as it gets. Taking place almost entirely on a single set, this is an actor's piece of the highest order and its linchpin is a magnificent performance from Anthony Hopkins as "The Father" of the title, a man suffering from advanced dementia and perhaps, both in Hopkins's performance and Zeller's treatment of the subject, this will come to be seen as the definitive film on dementia as anyone with personal experience can testify.

Everything is seen through Hopkins' eyes. Olivia Coleman, (heartbreakingly good), is his daughter but there are other 'characters' who may or may not exist or rather, if they do exist, who are they or who does Hopkins perceive them to be? A man appears who says he's the daughter's husband but then the daughter has said she does not have a husband. Another woman comes in and says she's his daughter while another man appears and converses with Hopkins. Is he the husband? Is there a husband?

I've already said that this is an actor's piece of the first order but it is also a writer's piece with Zeller adapting his own play with Christopher Hampton. It may be mystifying initially for just as characters turn up to confuse us so the film follows no chronological timespans. Events keep repeating themselves if they happen at all until we come to realise we are simply inside Hopkins' dishevelled mind and for Hopkins I think I can safely say that this is a career- best performance. The Oscar givers may ignore it but acting like this deserves more than prizes; it deserves to be seen.