COQUETTE

 This early talkie, and the film for which Mary Pickford won her only Oscar, was based on a play and boy, would you know it; all that's missing is the Proscenium Arch. It's a melodrama that by today's standards would put "Madame X" to shame and as the "Coquette" of the title, a Southern Belle whose actions cause nothing but tragedy of the Greek kind and which are so over-the-top it looks like a spoof, (it isn't), Pickford just about redeems the picture and exudes something like star quality.

As the handsome lug who falls for her, (more fool him), Johnny Mack Brown isn't bad while director Sam Taylor is also credited with supplying the appalling dialogue. I suppose the best you can say about it is that it's an historical curiosity and a film that would never be made today. It's terrible but it's so bizarre neither can it be totally dismissed.

NIGHTMARE ALLEY

 Edmund Goulding's 1947 film "Nightmare Alley" is one of my all-time favourite noirs and it's the film in which Tyrone Power certainly gave his finest performance. Of course, not having read William Lindsay Gresham's original novel I can't say how faithfully it stuck to its source material any more than I can say that this Guillermo del Toro remake, clocking in at 40 minutes longer than the first film, is a faithful adaptation. I did expect del Toro's version to be more 'explicit' than Goulding's but would it capture the seedy vibe of the deliciously unpleasant 1947 classic or would this simply look like a 21st century over-art-directed period piece?

The good news is, that in typical del Toro fashion, it looks great and the period detail is perfectly captured without seeming overdone and it's also brilliantly cast. Bradley Cooper is a lot less appealing than Power as the carny with a dubious past and an uncertain future, which is just as it should be, while as the three women who impact on his life, Toni Collette, Rooney Mara and especially Cate Blanchett are all excellent and there's first-rate work from Willem Dafoe, Richard Jenkins and, walking off with the picture, David Strathairn.

The bad news is del Toro certainly drags it out. This is definitely a movie that could do with some trimming and worse, apparently there's an even longer director's cut out there somewhere. It's a good yarn and it's well told and as remakes go, it's a cut above but it won't supplant Goulding's classic in my affections nor does it approach "The Shape of Water" in del Toro's canon.

RIDE THE PINK HORSE

 Robert Montgomery not only took the lead in "Ride the Pink Horse" but directed it as well. It's a good noirish thriller that takes place in the New Mexico border town of San Pablo, or at least the studio where said town is 'constructed', as Montgomery's Lucky Gagin seeks out mobster Frank Hugo, (an excellent Fred Clark), presumably with the intention of killing him or, as it turns out, blackmailing him. With a screenplay by Ben Hecht and Charles Lederer it's certainly intelligent and Montgomery handles the decent plot with real skill.

Unfortunately his performance doesn't quite measure up; he's just a little too laid back and perhaps just a tad too old for the part and it's left to the supporting cast, including an Oscar-nominated Thomas Gomez, to carry the picture. It's definitely got an unusual plot that never quite goes where you expect it to and while it's not a memorable picture it's sufficiently off-the-wall to be of more than passing interest. It's not much seen these days but it's still worth seeing.

THE BROTHERS RICO

 Phil Karlson may not be one of the 'great' American directors but he was a very fine genre director, specializing in tough, gritty gangster thrillers of which "The Brothers Rico" is just one.  Richard Conte is the retired mob accountant who finds himself drawn back to his criminal past when one of his former associates asks him for a favour on the same day his brother confesses to carrying out a hit and Larry Gates is excellent as the mob boss who drags him back in. Others in a decent cast include Dianne Foster as Conte's wife, James Darren as the younger brother whose actions set the plot in motion, Kathryn Grant as Darren's wife and later director Lamont Johnson as one of the few 'good' guys.

The source material was a story by none other than Georges Simenon though you probably would never guess it. This is a good, old-fashioned mob movie, the kind that would sit nicely on a double-bill with either Siegel's "The Killers" or Boorman's "Point Blank". Conte spends most of the movie chasing after Darren while Gates' heavies close in and until the end action is kept to a minimum. You could say this is an American gangster film reflected through a European art-house lens. With a better actor than Conte in the lead it might have been a classic but even with Conte it still exerts a grip while the excellent black and white cinematography was the work of the great Burnett Guffey.

THE HARVEY GIRLS

 Apart from its big, Oscar-winning production number, 'On the Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe', "The Harvey Girls" isn't a particularly good musical but it's certainly a very likeable entertainment. Set in 'the wild, wild west', it has just enough 'action' to give it the feel of a proper Western, (it's got a good guy, John Hodiak, a moustache-twirling villain, Preston Foster, and even a bar-room brawl, though this one is between waitresses and dance-hall hostesses).

It's actually founded in fact. The Harvey Girls were real waitresses who operated in a series of restaurants throughtout America and the movie is dedicated to them. It's also got Judy Garland at her most spirited as well as the great Ray Bolger and, long before Broadway fame and Jessica Fletcher beckoned, Angela Lansbury as the 'bad' girl though the studio insisted on dubbing her songs. Indeed if the songs had been better this might have been a classic instead of just the very solid entertainment it is.

TENNESSEE JOHNSON

 In the UK this was called "The Man on America's Conscience", a title guaranteed to put off the Saturday night crowd but then would the Brits really be interested in the biography of the first American President to be impeached? Andrew Johnson was the President who succeeded Lincoln but despite his impeachment he's not really one of the 'famous' presidents. In "Tennessee Johnson", to give the film its US title, he's played by a young Van Heflin, fresh from his Oscar-winning success in "Johnny Eager", and he's actually very good, heading a cast that includes Ruth Hussey, Lionel Barrymore, (outstanding), Marjorie Main and Regis Toomey.

The director was William Dieterle, a dab hand at this kind of folksy Americana, and if this isn't one of his great films it's certainly one of his most entertaining and certainly one of his most underrated even if Heflin is a tad miscast, (he ages from young buck to grandfather overnight). It's certainly a handsome looking history lesson and a surprisingly intelligent one even if the Lincoln movies were always the ones to get the better press.

JOHNNY EAGER

 Snappy dialogue by John Lee Mahin and James Edward Grant, good performances all round, (including an Oscar-winning turn from Van Heflin), and excellent direction by Mervyn LeRoy all contribute to making "Johnny Eager" one of the most enjoyable gangster films of the early forties.

A surprisingly good Robert Taylor is Johnny, an ex-con who hides his Mr. Big status from the parole board by posing as a simple taxi driver and a gorgeous, twenty year old Lana Turner is the rich prosecutor's daughter who falls for him. It's not a great film by any means but it's a cracking entertainment that stands up to repeated viewings.

DRIVE MY CAR

 Around forty mintues into Ryusuke Hamaguchi's "Drive My Car" the credits finally appear and in the scene that immeadiately follows the credits the title is explained. This is a 'road movie' with a difference; the physical journeys taken by Yusuke Kafuku, (a superb Hidetoshi Nishijima), are realtively short but the emotional journeys he takes go on much, much longer. He's an actor, seemingly happily married to a beautiful screenwriter and then one day he catches her having sex with another young actor. They aren't aware of his presence and it's a secret he keeps to himself.

What follows is a deeply engaging roller-coaster of a movie in which the art of acting, and later directing, becomes Yusuke's way of dealing with infidelity, jealousy, possible revenge and real grief, his car becoming a metaphor for how he keeps his feelings bottled up. Each journey he takes with his young female driver, (they're rehearsing 'Uncle Vanya' at this stage and Yusuke is the director), brings him closer to acceptance of all that's happened in the past, not easy when his wife's young lover joins the company.

Of course, Hamaguchi's film is as much about language, in all its forms, and acting as it is about the relationships between the characters. The tiny details in Hamaguchi and Takamusa Oe's screenplay, adapted from Haruki Murakami's story, are phenomenol; not a gesture or a frame of this wonderful film is wasted and at three hours it never outstays its welcome. Unquestionably one of the very finest films of the year.