FLOWERS OF SHANGHAI

 Shot entirely in a series of single takes, Hsiao-Hsien Hou's "Flowers of Shanghai" is set in the flower houses, (brothels), of 19th century Shanghai and the flowers are the courtesans. The film, based on the novel by Bangqing Han. Is a sumptuous, leisurely portrait of life there, comprising mostly of petty squabbles between the girls over their 'gentlemen callers'. In dramatic terms not a great deal happens. Hou's slowly moving camera becomes an interloper, picking up snatches of dialogue and conversations between the girls and their patrons, the subject almost always involving money; sex is conspicuously absent, at least on-screen. Eating and drinking seem to be the predominant past-times.

Superbly acted and directed and stunningly photographed and designed this magnificent film has already figured in polls of the greatest films ever made. 'Pure cinema' in the very best sense of the term and yet it could just as easily exist on the stage, (there are no exterior shots). Midway through it flirts with melodrama as movies involving jealousy are prone to do but Hou keeps even this at arm's length. It would appear that emotions in China are more restrained than some of those high-kicking action films might suggest. Gorgeous and surprisingly moving and with a surprising streak of humour, this is one of the greatest of all period films. A masterpiece.

NEVER SAY NEVER AGAIN

 I don't know whose bright idea it was to coax Sean Connery back to the role of James Bond, (never say never again, indeed), outside of the Broccoli/Saltzman franchise but a bright idea it certainly was. "Never Say Never Again" was a remake of the earlier Connery vehicle "Thunderball", (one of the least of the Bond movies), and while die-hard fans of the series thought it was sacrilege that it was made at all, this is actually one of the best of all Bond movies with an excellent Lorenzo Semple Jr. Screenplay, ('Now you're on this, I hope we're going to have some gratuitous sex and violence!', Alec McCowen's Q tells Bond), a first-rate director in Irvin Kershner and two of the best of all Bond villains; Klaus Maria Brandauer as Largo, (a vast improvement on Adolfo Celi in the first film), and Barbara Carrera as the murderous Fatima. Throw in Max Von Sydow as Blofeld and you know you're onto a good thing. Did we need it? Absolutely not, unless, like me, you didn't care for "Thunderball" and there's no denying Connery was now past his sell-by-date but even his age and physical condition was factored into the plot. Hugely enjoyable.

PETER IBBETSON

Henry Hathaway's "Peter Ibbetson" is one of the strangest love stories ever to have come out of Hollywood. It's a kind of 'Wuthering Heights' but with the roles of Heathcliff and Cathy reversed and Gary Cooper makes for a very strange 'Cathy'. It was based on George Du Maurier's novel and a subsequent play and is about how childhood friends Gogo and Mimsey, (those precociously talented brats Dickie Moore and Virginia Weidler), grow up to be Peter and Mary, (he's Cooper and she's Ann Harding), are separated, reunited though she's now married to John Halliday, and whose love knows no bounds in that even death itself can't tear them apart, (yes, it's that kind of nonsense).

On the plus side it is visually superb and it's certainly not like anything else by Hathaway while both Cooper and Harding are excellent but it's also preposterous in an often gob-smackingly awful way and its reputation in some quarters, (David Thomson, amongst others, is quite a fan), is highly exaggerated. Maybe you have to be in the right mood for it and perhaps one day I'll revisit it just in case I missed something first time round. For now, however, let's call it a curiosity but give kudos to Hollywood for making it at all.

VENOM

 This monster movie, from the Marvel stable, is surprisingly entertaining and pleasingly old-fashioned as in that feels like a late sixties picture despite all the 21st century technology on display and it gives that very fine actor Tom Hardy a chance to flex his superhero muscles as well as giving Michelle Williams the opportunity to dumb down. Throw in the hugely talented Riz Ahmed as the bad guy, some excellent cinematography from Matthew Libatique and great special effects and what's not to like.

Ok, at its core it's just a big, dumb monster movie about shape-shifting aliens and we've been down this road at least a hundred times before but it's also very funny and does make for a highly enjoyable might out at the multiplex; oh, and don't leave when the end credits begin.

PUSHOVER

 Richard Quine was certainly no Billy Wilder and "Pushover" was a long way from "Double Indemnity" but perhaps someone somewhere had the idea that if they cast Fred MacMurray as the crooked cop who falls for gangster's moll Kim Novak, (in her debut), perhaps some of the old "Double Indemnity" magic might rub off. It didn't but this noirish crime film is still a very solid entertainment with a more than decent plot.

It might have been better, of course, had Novak a tenth of Stanwyck's talent or if it had a screenplay by someone like Chandler but on the plus side it did have a supporting cast that included Philip Carey, Dorothy Malone and E. G. Marshall and some first-rate cinematography from Lester White and if, fundamentally, it's a B-Movie it's a good one and MacMurray is always worth watching. No classic, then, (though it is quite highly thought of in some quarters), but a very enjoyable genre piece nevertheless.

THE FOUNTAINHEAD

 A classic of American literature, though some people think its florid style marks it out as a camp classic, Ayn Rand's "The Fountainhead" simply had to be filmed and yet perhaps it was always one of the great 'unfilmable' novels to begin with. It was King Vidor who finally did bring it to the screen and Vidor, more than anyone, knew what 'florid' meant and was probably the director most capable of capturing the novel's hysteria and there's certainly a lot of hysteria on show.

It's about an architect, Howard Roark, clearly modelled on Frank Lloyd Wright, but the real theme of the film is fascism and the freedom of the individual. It might seem to be about architecture but equally it could be about McCarthyism, (how it slipped under the radar of the HUAC is a bit of a mystery). Roark's played by a miscast, over-aged Gary Cooper. Vidor had wanted Humphrey Bogart for the part, (an even greater piece of miscasting in my opinion), but Rand insisted on Cooper and to be fair he does carry it off.

As the spoiled, over-wrought young woman who loves him, abuses him and, in turn, is abused by him Patricia Neal is excellent and there's also a superb performance from Raymond Massey as the newspaper magnate Neal marries. Visually, too, it's extraordinary; there are shots here that could have been lifted from "Citizen Kane" while, at the same time, being almost unbearably 'literate', (Rand also wrote the screenplay). There's nothing remotely naturalistic about it; this was as over-the-top, visually, verbally, in every way, as it was possible to get. A camp classic, then, or a masterpiece or maybe both? It's certainly one of a kind and it really should be seen.

BOUDU SAVED FROM DROWNING

 Jean Renoir's 1932 masterpiece, "Boudu Sauve des Eaux", which he made on location in Paris, is one of cinema's great humanist comedies that makes you totally forget that Paul Mazursky ever remade it as "Down and Out in Beverly Hills" or indeed that it was even remade in France with Gerard Depardieu as Boudu. The simple plot is about how the over-sexed, ageing and kind-hearted Monsieur Lestingois, (a superb Charles Granval), resuces the tramp Boudu, (a magnificent Michel Simon), from drowning in the Seine, takes him home where he wrecks havoc, seducing both Lestingois' wife and maid.

It's a film about what's come to be known as the milk of human kindness and how easily it can turn sour but Renoir never plays it for easy laughs; watching this film you can see why some people believe he may be the greatest director of them all. Boudu may embody elemental man but you would have to be a saint to embrace him. He's a rogue and remains so and your sympathies are always with poor, misguided Lestingois. Renoir may indeed be a humanist but he can see how our good deeds come back to bite us while at the same time saving a good deal of affection for the rascally tramp. Yes, this is a masterpiece and one of the finest of all French films.

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.