HUSBANDS

 John Cassavetes and pals Ben Gazzara and Peter Falk play three husbands forced to re-evaluate their relationship and their lives after the death of one of their closest friends in Cassavetes' film "Husbands", the follow-up to his early masterpiece "Faces". As you might expect from Cassavetes the result is extraordinary cinema but a far from likeable movie mainly because the characters are far from likeable, (at times they are downright repulsive with some scenes I found deeply disturbing), while much of what they do is just plain boring to anyone other than themselves.

This is a home-movie on a grand scale and I kept asking myself are the people on the screen playing a role or just being themselves. I know some people rate this film very highly and there is no question that Victor J. Kemper's up close and personal cinematography and Cassavetes' editing (uncredited) are remarkable and if the people in this movie really are 'acting' then it's great acting but in the end I think I would rather take arsenic than be asked to sit through it again.

PEAKY BLINDERS; THE IMMORTAL MAN

 It may take a turgid 40 minutes or so to get going but once it does kick in "Peaky Blinders; the Immortal Man" really lives up to its promise and gives Tommy Shelby the send-off he so richly deserves. Yes, this is the big screen version of Steven Knight's television series with Cillian Murphy still alive and just about kicking but now he's coping with nasty Nazis and Fifth Columnists and wondering whether or not he will ever get his son, (a superb Barry Keoghan), to see things his way.

As I said, it takes awhile to get going as Tommy mopes over the death of brother Arthur and decides to stay away and write his memoirs but circumstances drag him back into the fray as they inevitably do in movies of this kind and after a literally explosive encounter with some squaddies in the Garrison pub he's out for vengeance and a possible reconcilliation with Keoghan. It looks great and as well as Murphy and Keoghan there's Stephen Graham, Ned Dennehy and Tim Roth as the most hissable of villains, a predictably moving ending, (at least for fans) and it even leaves the way open for a revival of the series

THE LIVES OF A BENGAL LANCER

 More 'brown-face', pro-British, anti-Indian shenanigans around the Khyber Pass but Henry Hathaway's action flic "The Lives of a Bengal Lancer" is also beautifully acted and directed and has been unjustly forgotten over the decades. Gary Cooper, Franchot Tone and Richard Cromwell are the young officers fighting off the pesky Afridi tribesmen and C. Aubrey Smith and Sir Guy Standing, (as he was billed), are their older commanders.

It's basically just another western set on the Northwest Frontier and, however politically incorrect it might seem today, must be judged on the time in which it was made. What distinguishes this from similar movies of the period is the interplay between its central characters, (Cromwell is the green-around-the-gills son of Standing's commanding officer etc), the way Hathaway handles the 'domestic' scenes and from some very fine work from the cast, (even Cromwell is good in this one). Indeed this is something of a classic and it deserves to be better known.

JULIA

 Today the films of Fred Zinnemann are seen as 'safe'. Staid almost, afraid to take chances even when the material itself can be seen as dangerous. Despite twice winning the Oscar as Best Director Zinnemann has now fallen out of critical favor, thought as more a director of tasteful, well-made entertainments rather than of anything more worthy of note.

He made "Julia" late in his career, in 1977, and it is in its way a kind of biopic, (of the writer Lillian Hellman), as well as a fairly suspenseful thriller set in the Europe of the Nazis and the rise of Fascism and it's a beautiful piece of work, made with all the skill of a great director. It was a considerable success at the time, winning three Oscars and the BAFTA for Best Film.

Based on a story by Hellman it tells of how in the 1930's she smuggled money into Germany, at great risk to herself, in order to help the anti-fascist movement. As Hellman, Jane Fonda is superb, capturing both her vanity and her vulnerability while both Vanessa Redgrave as her friend Julia, the woman who supplies the money and who is fighting on the ground in Germany and Jason Robards as the writer Dashiell Hammett won Oscars for their work.

Of course, there has been an ongoing debate as to how much of the film, if any, is fact and how much is fiction and this may be one of the reasons why it has fallen out of favor, that and the decline in Zinnemann's reputation and yet it is a sterling piece of work, one of the director's best, in fact and the kind of intelligent entertainment we often don't see in the cinema these days.