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.

THE 13TH DAY

 The problem with most religious films is that the filmmakers have a habit of equating religion with piety and piety with gross sentimentality. There is also usually a surfeit of kind priests and nice nuns being kind and nice to beatific children or else they will be about Jesus, saints and miracles and the inexplicable. Perhaps the most famous religious movie about sainthood is "The Song of Bernadette" with an unlikely Jennifer Jones as Saint Bernadette. That turned out to be so much better than it might have been, not free from piety but very well written, directed and acted.

Of course Lourdes, where many Christians, or at least Catholics, believe the Blessed Virgin appeared to Bernadette Soubirous, is probably the most famous place of pilgrimage in Christianity outside of Israel. Fatima, where a similar apparition is said to have happened in 1917, is less well known. The movie "The Miracle of Fatima" was a decent enough attempt to deal with those events and now we have "The 13th Day", a kind of amateur docu-drama about what happened at Fatima. Co-directed by Dominic and Ian Higgins it comes across as something commissioned by the Catholic Church purely for Catholics, (it certainly won't win any converts), and is acted by a cast of non-professionals.

The amazing thing is it, too, is nowhere near as bad as it could have been though it's certainly no "Song of Bernadette". Stylistically it's closer to Rossellini's "The Flowers of St. Francis" but without the rigor or the beauty that Rossellini brought to his subject and what passes for acting certainly lets it down. Non-believers will either avoid the film like the plague or will see it as nothing more than Catholic propaganda while believers might find it closer to a demonic horror movie than a tale of future saints. Shot mostly in monochrome with colour inserts it's well enough made but unlikely to appeal to all but the very few.

THE COUNSELLOR

 This terrifically cast, sleek, glossy and intricately plotted Ridley Scott thriller from a Cormac McCarthy script wasn't a success and yet it may be one of the best things Scott ever did. "The Counsellor" of the title is Michael Fassbender, a lawyer moving in high circles that includes drugs baron Javier Bardem and his lady Cameron Diaz as well as a shady 'cowboy' played by Brad Pitt and his involvement with such characters leads him into situations he might otherwise not want to find himself in.

It's typical McCarthy, even if it's not front rank McCarthy, and maybe the tortuous plot proved too much for both critics and audiences but it's a movie that uses its showy cast , (that also includes Penelope Cruz, Bruno Ganz, Rosie Perez, Edgar Ramirez and Rueben Blades), to excellent effect and thanks to Dariusz Wolski's cinematography it looks terrific. Best of all, it's a movie that takes familiar material and shakes it about in unconventional ways. In the acting stakes it's Pitt and Diaz who own the picture which certainly didn't deserve the critical thrashing it got at the time and is now ripe for reassessment.

HOLLYWOOD ENDING

 There's one really good gag in Woody Allen's "Hollywood Ending" and luckily it lasts for about three-quarters of the movie. In his most self-referential film since "Stardust Memories" Woody plays a film director who, in the course of making his comeback film, (for the producer who stole his ex-wife), goes psychosomatically blind and the gag is he must hide his blindness from everyone but the very few. What follows is what could best be described as 'one of the early funny ones', a farce with not too much analysis. Until he goes blind the movie isn't particularly funny and is more than a little self-indulgent; these are jokes we've heard a hundred times before. Consequently, "Hollywood Ending" isn't one of his better pictures and would probably make a better short story but there's a sweetness to it and Tea Leoni, (the ex-wife), and Debra Messing, (the dumb actress girlfriend), are both very likeable though when you get down to it, it's director Mark Rydell as Allen's perpetually optimistic Jewish agent who walks away with the movie.

BILLY LYNN'S LONG HALFTIME WALK

 The subject of Ang Lee's "Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk" isn't the war in Iraq but in how America reacts to its heroes and its soldiers and it's a theme that can be traced back through two World Wars. Indeed for almost as long as movies have existed the cinema has concerned itself with the relationship between the military and the world at large, how it performs and how it is perceived. The most famous example of this is probably the raising of the flag at Iwo Jima and the subsequent 'tour' back home immortalised in such films as "The Outsider" with Tony Curtis as Ira Hayes and Clint Eastwood's "Flags of Our Fathers" and Oliver Stone's Vietnam film "Born on the Fourth of July" so it was only a matter of time before someone would do something similar with one of the current wars.

Moving back and forth in time between the events in Iraq and the tour to celebrate the 'heroes' Lee's film is a complex and surprisingly satirical picture that doesn't go down the obvious route of 'what really happened and how the media constructs events' and, being an Ang Lee film, is very skilfully made. As Billy Lynn, the soldier chosen to be the poster boy for the military, newcomer Joe Alwyn is excellent and it's a film that ultimately confounds our expectations. The chest-thumping of "Born on the Fourth of July" is conspicuously absent and if the film seems to lack a big dramatic pay-off it's still a moving depiction of ordinary people caught up in extraordinary events.

SWEET MOVIE

 With the credits coming at you in a variety of bright colours and a highly eclectic international cast list you know Dusan Makavejev's "Sweet Movie" isn't exactly going to be your conventional Eastern European art-movie but I'm also sure no-one will be quite prepared for what follows those credits. Makavejev is out to shock you, maybe even titillate you. This is like a John Waters' movie co-directed by Salvador Dali with a little help from Sergei Eisenstein. There's no real plot as such but rather a series of sketches filmed in both Europe and Canada and while the film is described as a 'comedy', laughs are non-existent.

On the other hand sex, a little violence and various bodily functions are very much to the fore and if you can overlook some of the content, including a scene in which a very attractive and barely clad young woman has her way with some children as well as some newsreel footage from Katyn, you can't deny that visually it's often rather beautiful in an abstract kind of way. It's also got cult movie written all over it; a midnight matinee movie with its own built-in audience. Of course, the problem with movies that set out to be cults, as I have a feeling this one did, is that they keep drawing attention to just how clever they are and "Sweet Movie" is no exception. Maiden aunts are certainly not likely to get the joke, if there's a joke here to get, though cineastes should enjoy the odd movie reference if they can make it past the 'food' orgy and if, like me, you enjoy celebrity spotting, look out for George Melly and Ronald Topor among the cameos.