BACKLASH

 "Backlash" is a totally unpretentious western that, back in the day, we might simply have called a 'Cowboys and Indians' picture or just a good old-fashioned oater before words like psychological or revisionist started to be applied to the genre. Action-packed right from the opening minutes its themes are greed and revenge and its stars are Richard Widmark and Donna Reed, both of whom seem to relish the fact that they aren't required to apply much depth to their characters but simply to stick to Borden Chase's fairly stereotypical screenplay, say their lines and lift their take-home pay but being the two fine actors they are they make it all seem effortless. This is a western without an ounce of fat on its bones and director John Sturges keeps it galloping along nicely. Excellent supporting cast, too.

THEATRE OF BLOOD

 With Vincent Price cast in the lead Douglas Hickox's "Theatre of Blood" was sold as a horror film but it's so much more than that. It is, in fact, a delicious black comedy about an aggrieved Shakespearean actor, (Price, who else), bumping off his critics, (a whole host of Britain's best acting talents), in ways that would have appealed to the Bard himself, beginning with Michael Horden in the manner of Julius Caesar and naturally on the 'ides of March'. In this he is aided by dutiful daughter Diana Rigg.

It is, of course, a camp delight with Price deliberately hamming it up to the nines and if none of its brilliant cast, (others include Dennis Price, Robert Coote, Jack Hawkins, Harry Andrews, Ian Hendry, Arthur Lowe, Robert Morley, Diana Dors, Mrs. Price herself Coral Browne as well as Milo O'Shea and Eric Sykes as a couple of none-too-bright coppers), are around long enough for us to fully appreciate them, just having them gathered together in one film is enough. It may be no masterpiece but it certainly is great fun.

CAGED

 Perhaps this women's prison picture wasn't what you might have expected from John Cromwell but remember Cromwell was a studio director and basically did what he was told to do and did it very well. Cromwell was, in fact, one of Hollywood's finest directors and one who has never really been given his critical dues. Still, "Caged", with its almost exclusively female cast, was different from other Cromwell pictures.

This was a tougher, darker film with a fine screenplay by Virginia Kellogg and Bernard C. Schoenfeld and excellent performances from an outstanding cast, (Eleanor Parker, Agnes Moorehead, Ellen Corby, Hope Emerson, Lee Patrick, Jan Sterling and others). Both Powell and Emerson were Oscar-nominated as was the screenplay and it's beautifully shot in black and white by Carl E. Guthrie. Indeed, this is a 'woman's picture' much closer in tone to something that might have come out of Europe rather than Hollywood, (Bergman could have made this), and while it was a hit in its day it is now largely forgotten. It's certainly worth reviving and it stands amongst Cromwell's very finest work.

CANYON PASSAGE

 One of the most beautiful Technicolor films ever made as well as one of the most unjustly neglected of westerns "Canyon Passage" may be Jacques Tourneur's masterpiece. Actually it doesn't feel like a western at all with its rambling narrative and its Oregon setting, (no Monument Valley vistas here). With Hoagy Carmichael warbling through several scenes it's almost a musical western while the relationships between its principal protagonists, (Dana Andrews, Susan Hayward, Brian Donlevy and Patricia Roc), is surprisingly complex.

Indeed, this is a western that breaks several rules, (and it's nice seeing Ward Bond as a dastardly villain), being set in a believable community with characters you can empathize with and with first-rate performances throughout. The fact that violent action is largely absent until near the end only adds to its autenticity. A great film that cries out out for rediscovery.

HARRY AND TONTO

 Art Carney was the surprise winner of the Best Actor Oscar for his performance as Harry in Paul Mazursky's "Harry and Tonto". Already middle-aged Carney was a well-known face from television but was certainly not known as a film actor and there was a lot of competition that year but you might say the role itself was Oscar bait, an old man who, after being evicted from his New York apartment decides to go on a cross-country trip to California visiting his grown-up children on the way and taking his cat, Tonto, with him.

This could have been a painfully sentimental film but Mazursky doesn't do sentimental and the result is a genuinely likeable road movie with a great supporting cast that includes Ellen Burstyn, Herbert Berghof, Josh Mostel, Melanie Mayron, Geraldine Fitzgerald, Arthur Hunnicut, Chief Dan George and Larry Hagman.. It's a character study from the old school and one of the very best; its humor is authentically American and Carney was a worthy winner. He was only 56 at the time and didn't bring any of the 'old man' tics to his acting. His performance and the film itself are small gems.

STRANGE WAY OF LIFE

 At just thirty-one minutes Pedro Almodovar's "Strange Way of Life" is hardly subtle. Basically it's 'Lust in the Dust' with a gay slant, (Think "Last Train from Gun Hill" with Douglas and Quinn as former lovers), and as it stands it's undoubtedly minor Almodovar but if it's just a taster it's really rather a delicious one and we can only pray that he extends into a full length feature soon.

Ethan Hawke is the local sheriff and Pedro Pascal his old bedmate who comes riding into town in the hope of rekindling their passion but is that his only motive as Hawke is about to arrest Pascal's son for murder? Considering the running time Almodovar manages to cram a lot in and both leads are excellent. It's also great to look at; this is definitely a Technicolor kitsch Wild West. Naturally it all ends too soon so that feature length version is something of a must.

DINNER IN AMERICA

 Adam Rehmeier's "Dinner in America" is without doubt the best serio-comic punk-outlaw indie movie to have come along since I don't know when. Although it doesn't go too far off the beaten track of dozens of other 'youth' movies, (even blatantly stealing a gag from "Heathers"), I can't think of many as fresh or as likeable as this one. It's your old-fashioned boy-meets-girl plot though neither the boy nor the girl fit the stereotypical roles that might suggest.

He's a punk rocker but since he keeps his face hidden under a mask when performing nobody knows his real identity and she's a nerdy fan generally regarded by everyone she meets, (including her family), as 'retarded'. They certainly don't meet cute, (he's on the run from the police and she hides him), and they don't hit it off straight away until her 'secret' becomes the key that unlocks his bad-boy heart, (he likes to smash things and set fire to people's property).

Despite its propensity to violence and a screenplay as foul-mouthed as any in recent movies this is definitely a sweet-natured movie and as their unlikely romance blossoms you will undoubtedly find yourself cheering for it to succeed. As the central pair of lovers both Kyle Gallner and especially Emily Skeggs are absolutely terrific and I am sure both they and writer/director Rehmeier have the brightest of futures ahead of them.

HUNGER

 An art-house and festival circuit hit at the time of its release, (Per Oscarsson won the Best Actor prize at Cannes), Henning Carlsen's "Hunger" has now largely disappeared. Based on Knut Hamsun's novel 'Sult' it's the story of one man's descent into something akin to madness as, destitute, he wanders the streets of Christiania too proud to ask for help. He's a writer but his failure to find proper employment and his general attitude towards the people he meets has brought him to his lowest ebb.

Hardly ever off the screen, Oscarsson is superb; he has that lean and hungry look the role demands, part predator and part victim and he totally dominates the film which is superbly shot by Henning Kristiansin. As the title and the subject suggests this is a bleak and fairly unrelenting film and yet one with a potentially hopeful ending. One of the great Danish films, it cries out for a revival.

A TIME FOR DYING

"A Time for Dying" was Budd Boetticher's last western and it's certainly the strangest he ever made. It brings in the characters of Judge Roy Bean, (Victor Jory, absolutely terrific), and Jesse James, (a plump Audie Murphy, who also produced the film), though neither is central to the plot which is about a young, fast-draw of a cowboy, (Richard Lapp), who 'rescues' new gal in town, (Anne Randall), from a life of prostitution in Mamie's Saloon and is then forced to marry her by the wily old hanging judge. Unfortunately life in the Wild West proves to be no bed of roses for the young couple.

A critical and commercial disaster it's now being reassessed as a 'revisionist' western and it's certainly like nothing else in the Boetticher canon; there are scenes here that could have been directed by Peckinpah or even Robert Altman. Where it fails is in the truly terrible performances of both Lapp and Randall, neither of whom went on to have what you might call a career but it looks great, (Lucien Ballard was the cinematographer), and it's so off-the-wall it simply can't be ignored, (Jory and Murphy alone are sufficient reasons to see it). There's also an unsettling mix of comedy and violence as well as a highly nihilistic ending that you might find intriguing.

 

THE HASTY HEART

 Vincent Sherman was one of Hollywood's better jobbing directors who was never given the opportunity to stretch himself and despite its qualities "The Hasty Heart" wasn't really much of an exception. Based on John Patrick's play it's set almost exclusively in a hospital ward in Burma at the end of WW2 where Richard Todd's unpleasant young Scotsman drives Nurse Patricia Neal and his fellow patients to distraction by his attitude. When they start being nice to him he wonders why; of course he's dying but no-one has told him.

In the central role of the dislikable young soldier Richard Todd, in a part he played on Broadway, is superb and was nominated for the Best Actor Oscar while co-stars Neal and, perhaps surprisingly, Ronald Regan as the only American in the ward, are also excellent and if its theatrical origins are always in evidence Sherman handles it with his customary skill. This is one of the better weepies of the period and one that's also got a nice and very welcome sense of humour.

MARATHON MAN

 Brutal and sensationalist it may be but John Schlesinger's "Marathon Man" is also one of the best thrillers ever to have come out of America and a great deal of the fun is just trying to put the pieces of this brilliant jigsaw puzzle of a picture together. William Goldman adapted his own novel for the screen and Schlesinger seemed to be the perfect man for the job. He certainly doesn't put a foot wrong here and it's got a terrific cast. The undeniably complex plot has Hoffman becoming the unwitting target of both 'The Division', (some kind of off-shoot of the CIA and the FBI), and some old Nazis simply because his brother, Roy Schneider, was an agent involved with WW2 Nazi Laurence Olivier, now forced from his hiding place in South America and on the trail of his diamonds in New York.

Hoffman, at 39 clearly too old for the role he's playing but brilliant nevertheless, is a student in New York where Olivier seeks him out believing he knows whether or not his brother Schneider planned to steal Olivier's diamonds from him. Several sequences are classics; the opening car chase between two old men through New York streets, Olivier's torture of Hoffman, ('Is it safe?'), the attempts to kill Schneider in Paris and best of all the scene where Oliver is recognized by a couple of Holocaust survivors in New York's diamond quarter.

Goldman doesn't make things easy for us. You will probably have to pay close attention to get the relationship between Schneider and colleague William Devane or just to figure out how they became involved with Olivier in the first place, (in one scene Devane attempts to put the whole thing into some kind of context at breakneck speed). The whole cast, (including Marthe Keller as a woman Hoffman takes up with), are excellent while Oliver is simply magnificent in what was probably his last great performance. He's a monster but a civilized monster which seems to make him all the more dangerous. A great movie and one that still seems to be sadly underrated.

BENEDICTION

 Terence Davies' last film, "Benediction" is thematically, and indeed in every other way, very definitely a Terence Davies Film, dealing as it does with the past, the effects of war, spirituality and, of course, homosexuality and like "A Quiet Passion" is a biography of a famous poet, in this case Siegfried Sassoon, beautifully played by both Jack Lowden and Peter Capaldi. Shooting both formally in widescreen and colour, Davies also uses newsreel to great effect but what really distinguishes this film is the sure and certain knowledge that no-one else could have made it. From the very beginning of his career Davies developed a style that was distinctly his own and which, on occasion, could alienate even his followers. His films can be painfully slow and even uninvolving and yet their beauty remains undiminished.

"Benediction" does feel like a late masterpiece. Davies clearly felt an affinity with Sassoon and this is a deeply moving film in which you can see aspects of Davies' own life; in making a biography of Sassoon, Davies has also made yet again another deeply autobiographical film. It may be a sad and at times self-critical film and yet it's one that doesn't lack humor.

The performances throughout are excellent, (even the late Julian Sands redeems himself here), and if the film does nothing else but send you in the direction of Sassoon's work then it will have done its job but then it is so much more than another literary biopic or another dose of Masterpiece Theatre. If it has a fault it's that Davies seems to be doing his best to keep us at arm's length as if to open up too much he might be exposing himself more than he might want to. Nevertheless what we have is more than sufficient and a fitting end to a great, if much too short, a career.

NIGHT HAS A THOUSAND EYES

 An excellent and very underrated film noir, "Night has a Thousand Eyes" certainly takes its noirish credentials seriously beginning in almost total darkness as John Lund saves Gail Russell from jumping under a train. The movie is then told in flashback, at least up to the midway point, by Edward G. Robinson as the mind-reader Triton, quite happy to admit his act was a phony until one night he actually did seem to develop second sight.

John Farrow's film is based on another novel by the great Cornell Woolrich and it might have been just another B-Movie chiller were it not for Farrow's intelligent direction and another excellent turn from Robinson whose genius was that he could play quiet and introvert just as easily as loud and pugnacious, underplaying just as easily as playing to the gallery and making the film's supernatural element totally believable.

This is one far-fetched yarn and yet you hang on every word. It may be no classic and it lacks the hard-edged brilliance of Edmund Goulding's "Nightmare Alley" but it's certainly smart, at times genuinely funny and deserves to be better known that it is.

SOUND OF FREEDOM

 Alejandro Monteverde's "Sound of Freedom" neither sensationalizes nor sentimentalizes its subject which is the sex trafficking of children, but neither does it engage us on an emotional level. Based on fact, it's the story of how Tim Ballard left his job in Homeland Security to go to Columbia to rescue children trafficked into slavery there.

Part of the problem is that Jim Caviezel who plays Ballard is totally devoid of personality and it's almost impossible to engage with him. Is he an action hero or a living saint and is this meant to be an action movie with a big heart? You can certainly say director Monteverde's heart is in the right place and there are scenes here both moving and disturbing but ultimately this is a film that fails to do its terrible subject justice. Superb cinematography by Gorka Gomez Andreu and another sterling performance from Bill Camp as an altruistic paedophile hunter just aren't enough. No disgrace but it could have been so much more.

HAMLET

 There are people who think this Russian version of "Hamlet" is the best of all screen Shakespeare's and it is certainly up with the best. The problem I found is, being spoken in Russian, we have to rely on the subtitles which sometimes disappear before we can read them. That said, the text has been preserved yet beautifully abridged by Boris Pasternak and superbly rendered by the cast.

Director Grigori Kozintsev has opened out the play to make this possibly the most visual of all "Hamlet's", superbly shot in black and white Cinemascope by Jonas Gricius and cut to 140 minutes it fairly races along. Innokenti Smoktunovski makes for an energetic Hamlet, looking, at times, like a young Richard Burton while both Elza Radzina as Gertrude and Yuri Tolubeev as Polonius are outstanding and the whole piece is handled like a medieval thriller. This one is far from gloomy.