MADAME CURIE

 One of the better biopics with that paragon of virtue Greer Garson as Marie Curie and Walter Pidgeon as husband Pierre. "Madame Curie" was just one of several such films to have come out around this time, a history lesson dressed up as a somewhat sumptuous entertainment with a first-rate cast of character players giving the stars all the support they need. Garson is really very good in the title role and Pidgeon, one of the most underrated of actors, is superb while Paul Osborn and Hans Rameau provide a surprisingly intelligent screenplay with a little uncredited help from Aldous Huxley and Walter Reisch. Mervyn LeRoy was the director and while he wasn't the most inspired filmmaker Hollywood ever turned out he could usually be relied upon to deliver the goods and this remains one of his more enjoyable pictures.

ALI & AVA

 Once upon a time this would have been called 'ktichen-sink' but for now let's just call it British realism but whatever "Ali & Ava" is, it's a feather in the cap or maybe even a jewel in the crown of British cinema. It's a Clio Barnard movie which is really all you need to know. She may not be a household name and in America is probably not known at all but she's one of the best directors working in cinema and this hard-hitting, but deeply affectionate film is a joy from start to finish.

Set in Bradford it's a middle-aged romance between two people from very differnt backgrounds. Ali, (a terrific Adeel Akhtar), comes from an Indian immigrant family and earns his living as a 'landlord' and Ava, (an equally good Claire Rushbrook), is a classroom assistant from an Irish background who fall into a relationship almost by accident despite the racist oppositon of Ava's son.

They are united by a love of music and a need for company and they are two of the sweetest people to grace a movie in a very long time; you really want them to make it but you know this is a Clio Barnard film and Barnard never takes the easy option so ... It's also Barnard's most accessible film to date, funny and very moving in equal measure. How BAFTA came to pick "Belfast" over this as last year's Best British Film should be a mark of unending shame.

THE WRONG BOX

 With a screenplay by Larry Gelbart and Burt Shevelove of 'A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum' fame, Bryan Forbe's film "The Wrong Box" proved to be one of the best and most surprising comedy gems of the sixties. The source material was, in part, a Robert Louis Stevenson story which might only add to the sense of surprise and a terrific cast, (Michael Caine, John Mills, Ralph Richardson, Peter Cook, Dudley Moore, Nanette Newman, Peter Sellers and Wilfred Lawson amongst others), carry the whole thing off splendidly. The plot, involving a tontine, mistaken identities, a dead body or two, scheming relatives and two ancient warring brothers, is suitably daft while Ray Sims' set designs and Gerry Turpin's cinematography ensure it all looks great. Not seen much these days it's become something of a cult classic and it really shouldn't be missed.

GOLDDIGGERS OF 1935

 Hardly a high point of the Warner Brothers' musicals of the thirties. In fact, it's mostly terrible except for the magnificently spectacular and Oscar-winning 'Lullaby of Broadway' number. The plot is basically another 'putting-on-a-show' job, in this case an 'amateur' production in a fancy hotel with Alice Brady as the rich backer who hates spending a cent, Adolphe Menjou as the eccentric director and a cast that includes regular Dick Powell. This time Busby Berkeley wasn't just responsisble for staging the musical numbers but everything else as well and there is way too much unfunny 'comedy' padding. It's all fairly painless but it's certainly not memorable.

MARGIE

 Virtually plotless, Henry King's masterpiece "Margie" is just a series of reminiscences by the title character, (beautifully played by Jeanne Crain), looking back on her high-school years in the 1920's when she, and every other girl in the school, had a crush on their handsome French teacher, (Glenn Langan). Nothing much happens; this is a character-driven piece in which each of the characters have their own bits of business to contend with, (like losing your bloomers in public over and over again), while negotiating the ups and downs of young love. All the performances are first-rate, Charles G. Clarke's Technicolor photography is splendid and, for once, King never puts a foot wrong. This is his lightest and certainly his most charming picture. It's also very funny in a very sweet-natured way and why it isn't better known is something of a mystery.

MADEMOISELLE

 

Once upon a time this might have been directed by King Vidor with Bette Davis as the sexually frustrated schoolteacher but I doubt that even Miss Davis could have gotten up to the mischief Jeanne Moreau does here. "Mademoiselle" is Tony Richardson's hugely underrated, Jean Genet scripted tale of sexual obsession with Moreau's passion for handsome woodcutter Ettore Manni driving her to commit arson, flood farms and poison the water.

Vidor, of course, would have made this material even more hysterical than it is and probably a lot camper but Richardson and Genet manage to keep it in check and there is a shocking matter-of-factness about Moreau's actions where the distinction between pure evil and simple psychological malajustment becomes increasingly blurred.

Genet never 'explains' Moreau although her tendency to wear high heels and dress in her Sunday best while commiting her crimes sends its own kinky message. Filmed in France, released in English and magnificently photographed in black and white Panavision by David Watkins, this gem has never been given its dues and is largely unknown. See it at all costs.

LIFE WITH FATHER

Despite the love lavished on "Casablanca", Michael Curtiz has never really been thought of as an auteur but no-one can say he wasn't versatile; westerns, thrillers, swashbucklers, comedies and even the occasional musical may account for why he could just be the best jobbing director in the business. "Life With Father" was one of his comedies, based on a long-running and apparently 'autobiographical' Broadway play and it was fundamentally a vehicle for its stars, William Powell, (Father) and Irene Dunne, (Mother).

The setting was New York in the Eighteen Nineties and the cinematography, in Technicolour, of J. Peverell Marley and William V. Skall bathes everything in a gorgeously warm glow. It's really quite delightful even if it has no more substance than a marshmallow with a plot no thicker than a wafer-thin mint. The excellent supporting cast included Edmund Gwenn, Zasu Pitts, Jimmy Lydon as well as a very young Elizabeth Taylor and an equally young Martin Milner. Powell's terrific, (he won the New York Film Critics Best Actor award), and if the film is no "Casablanca" or "Mildred Pierce" it's a real pleasure nevertheless.
 

THE SAVAGE INNOCENTS

 Turned into something of a cult movie when Bob Dylan immortalised it in song, ('The Mighty Quinn'), "The Savage Innocents" would probably have otherwise gone unnoticed. A kind of ecological companion piece to Ray's earlier "Wind Across the Everglades", this was an almost documentary-like look at life among the Eskimos, visually superb though at times almost embarrasingly simplistic.

Anthony Quinn is Inuk, 'the savage innocent' of the title, who accidently kills a missionary and is forced to go on the run, (Peter O'Toole, no less, is one of his pursuers). If anything distinguishes the film it isn't so much the plot but Ray's mise en scene and attention to detail. It also highlighted a way of life not really seen on the screen since Flaherty's "Nanook of the North". It's hardly classic Ray; rather it's a curio from a maverick film-maker unafraid to take chances though some may say with this he took one chance too many and yet there is still much to admire. This is one 'lost' movie worth finding.

THE BATMAN

 Taking its cue from "Joker" and, to a lesser extent, from "Se7en", "The Batman" is the darkest Batman movie yet, literally. In an almost perpetually raid-sodden Gotham you have to peer through the murk just to see what's happening and a hearing aid might come in handy if you want to hear what's being whispered. Most of the usual suspects are here; Zoe Kravitz is Catwoman, an unrecognizable Colin Farrell, in a fat suit, is the Penguin and the great Paul Dano, effortlessly walking away with the film, is the Riddler. Robert Pattinson is the Batman; he's the strong, silent type and boy, is he grim.

Matt Reeves' film is aimed at the bigger kids. This is a Batman movie that years ago would have been given an 'X' certificate, meaning no-one under the age of 16 would have been admitted to the theatre and frankly, I can't imagine a younger audience taking to this. If, in the past, the Batman movies have only been a skip and a jump away from film noir this is the most noirish yet, (it's what Guillermo del Toro's "Nightmare Alley" should have been but wasn't).

Of course, whether it will appeal to the usual fan-base is another matter. I have a feeling this is a movie for the critics and die-hard fans rather than the general public. It's certainly imaginative but at 3 hours it's also overlong and some of the backstory is already overly familiar. On the plus side, it is brilliantly designed, photographed and directed and at its best it does put the other Batman movies in the shade. I just hope that when the inevitable follow-up comes along they will try to keep it shorter.

THE ASSASSIN

 We're back in 8th Century China in this visually sumptuous if largely oblique martial arts saga from Hou Hsiao-Hsien and being a Hsiao-Hsien film you can be sure there's more 'art' than 'martial' on display. Hou's films are slow and gorgeous to look at and this is no exception. "The Assassin" of the title is female though her gender seems to me to be somewhat irrelevant as indeed is the film's impenetrable plot. It would appear Hou wants us to swoon over the images rather than pay attention to the murky storyline, (it might help if you read Xing Pei's short story first). In fact, this is just the kind of movie that the expression 'like watching paint dry' was created for. The few fight sequences we get are well choreographed but this is certainly not an 'action' picture while the characters remain at arm's lenght throughout. A difficult watch, to say the least.

THE HOT ROCK

 A heist comedy and a superior one. William Goldman did the adaptation of Donald E. Westlake's novel and the always reliable Peter Yates directed. "The Hot Rock" is a diamond that Robert Redford, George Segal, Ron Leibman and Paul Sand steal from a New York museum at the behest of Moses Gunn except that, unlike in other heist movies, this is one hot rock that refuses to stay in the hands of the thieves.

It's hardly "Rififi" but it is very funny and is very well played, especially by Redford, (it's one of his best performances), and by Zero Mostel as the crooked lawyer father of the Sands character. It may not be the most sophisticated of comedy-thrillers but it's certainly one of the most entertaining.