SUEZ

 In "Suez" a lot of Americans pretend to be a lot of Frenchmen, or maybe just plain old 'foreigners', as they often did on the big screen. This 1938 20th Century Fox picture might qualify as an epic; it's certainly a very handsome, prestige production directed by Allan Dwan with Darryl F. Zanuck producing. As you may or may not guess from the title it's the story of how the Suez Canal came into being with Tyrone Power as Ferdinand de Lesseps, the man who came up with the idea of a passage to link the seas of the East with the Mediterranean.

The large cast also includes Loretta Young as the Empress Eugenie, Leon Ames as Napoleon III and such stalwarts as Joseph Schildkraut, Henry Stephenson, Sig Ruman, Nigel Bruce and George Zucco. For a touch of authenticity the French actress Annabella was cast as the French girl Ty falls for out in Egypt. The Egyptian 'locations' were mostly shot in Arizona and California but an excessive use of sand helps us suspend our disbelief. It's also surprisingly entertaining and Power was as handsome here as he ever was on screen. A swan-necked Loretta Young also manages to live up to her given title as 'the most beautiful woman in Europe'. A huge hit in its day and a great way to pass a dull Saturday afternoon.

HARD PAINT

 Like "Stranger by the Lake", Filipe Matzembacher and Marcio Reolon's "Hard Paint" is both sexually explicit and set in a very specific gay milieu, in this case the world of gay chat-rooms where young Pedro works, mostly alone, but for a camera that records his every move as he dances and performs sex acts for the men watching. Unfortunately, Pedro is lonely, anti-social and sometimes violent, attracting the attention of 'Married Voyeur' who wants more than just to watch and Leo, another sex-worker who has 'stolen' Pedro's act.

When the film begins Pedro is living with his sister in Brazil's southern city of Porto Alegre but she leaves him for a job at the other end of the country; Pedro must cope on his own though he is clearly not cut out for it. As the sullen, sad hero who performs his 'act' under the name of Neonboy, applying different colours of luminous paint to his body, Shico Menegat is excellent while Bruno Fernandes is equally good as Leo, the sex-worker Pedro comes to depend on and possibly love.

As LGBTQ films go, "Hard Paint" is certainly a cut above; it's unsentimental and unapologetic, erotic but not sensational and sometimes surprisingly moving. Unfortunately the material itself is a bit on the thin side and at two hours it is overlong but it's also stylish and intelligent and clearly marks out its directors as talents to watch.

STRANGER ON THE PROWL

 "Stranger on the Prowl" is probably the one Losey movie most people haven't heard of. He made it largely on location in Italy in 1952 from a screenplay by Ben Barzman, (like Losey, Barzman was also a victim of the blacklist), and it gave Paul Muni a late starring role as a drifter on the run who strikes up a friendship with a small boy who comes to share his hiding place. Although technically an Italian film, it's in English and while hardly a masterpiece it's still a remarkable piece of work, a cross between Italian Neo-Realism and American Film Noir and it remains an essential part of the Losey canon.

It's a story the cinema has tackled many times with varying degrees of success. This one works in large part to the fine performances of Muni and Vittorio Manunta as the boy but mainly due to Losey's mostly unsentimental handling of the material and his brilliant use of his Italian locations. It may be difficult to see these days but it shouldn't be missed if you get the opportunity.

ULYSSES

 The one utterly 'unfilmable' novel was indeed filmed, and with a fair degree of success, by Joseph Strick in 1967. "Ulysses" is set over the course of one day, June 16th, 1904 in Dublin, now celebrated annually as 'Bloomsday' in deference to the book's central character, Leopold Bloom but Strick chose to update it to the time the film was made perhaps on the basis that the novel itself is 'timeless' or maybe on the basis that the events depicted could have happened at any time. It charts a journey through Dublin by Bloom and Stephen Dedalus, the young teacher and hero of Joyce's more accessible "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man".

It is, of course, the book that sits on the shelves of the intelligentsia, mostly unread, but essential to show off; the stream of consciousness novel to end them all. On the other hand, it may have gone unread for years as it was originally banned in most countries on the grounds of obscenity. That the film works at all is a great credit to Strick but mostly the critics didn't go for it feeling, perhaps, that the director over-simplified it, changing the text and that the updating was tantamount to sacrilege. He also chose to shoot it in widescreen when the material may have cried out for something more intimate but it is superbly shot by Wolfgang Suschitzky while the cast are mostly splendid. Milo O'Shea is a superb Bloom and Barbara Jefford is outstanding as his wife, Molly while the Dublin locations now add up to a great time capsule of what life was like there in the mid-sixties.

THE POWER OF THE DOG

 I hope the uncalled for comparisons with "Heaven's Gate" and, for that matter, "Brokeback Mountain" don't hurt the chances of "The Power of the Dog" doing well, either at the box-office or come awards season. This is Jane Campion's first feature film since "Bright Star" twelve years ago and it may be a masterpiece. It's a 'contemporary' western in that it's set in 1925 and is about two brothers, both ranchers, one 'good', (Jesse Plemons), and one 'bad', (Benedict Cumberbatch), and what happens when Plemons brings home a new wife, (Kirsten Dunst), and her teenage son, (Kodi Smit-McPhee).

It's a slow, visually stunning, (Ari Wegner is the DoP), character-driven piece written by Campion from Thomas Savage's novel and it deals with both the themes of revenge and redemption. Cumberbatch may appear to be the conventional villain but it's clear quite early on there are a great deal more shadings to his character and Cumberbatch is superb in a role he took over from Paul Dano. Plemons, on the other hand, never quite develops beyond being the decent family man though both Dunst and Smit-McPhee are excellent.

You could say the other major 'character' in the film is the house where they live. A great gothic pile standing in the middle of nowhere, (the film was shot in the vast open spaces of New Zealand standing in for Montana), this house is as memorable as those in "Giant" and "Days of Heaven". As with all of Campion's films nothing here is rushed. This is no more an action film than something Terrence Malick might turn out, (Malick is another point of reference), and consequently will be more suited to the art-house than the multiplex but in its simple, direct and unadorned way it's as good as anything you will see this year and it shouldn't be missed.

THE PHENIX CITY STORY.

 Probably the most brutal and certainly one of the best of the docudramas popular in the forties and fifties and dealing with crime in American cities, "The Phenix City Story" begins as a piece of pure photo-journalism as journalist Clete Roberts introduces some of the real-life people whose stories shape the events of the movie.

It's fundamentally a B-Movie that sets out to condemn vice and violence by showing it and it's photographed with enough documentary-like realism to hit home, mostly in the streets where the action took place. Also by using actors who were not exactly 'names', (John McIntire, in a rare leading role, was probably the best known face), adds to the feeling that everything we see is the Real McCoy. A critical success, (Martin Scorsese rates it among his favourite films), it has now achieved cult status.