HOFFA

 Not as bad as many people say but it's not good either. "Hoffa" certainly looks terrific, (Stephen H. Burum was justly Oscar-nominated for his cinematography), but despite a screenplay by none other than David Mamet it lacks heft and there are long dull stretches as it flits back and forth in time, (it's told in flashback), through the career of Union boss and mob associate Jimmy Hoffa, (Jack Nicholson in one of his least charismatic performances).

The director of the picture is Danny DeVito who also plays his life-long friend Bobby Ciaro but this is a film that needed a Scorsese and not a DeVito at the helm. There are some good set-pieces, again enhanced by Burum's cinematography, but the acting is all over the place and at two hours and twenty minutes it's far too long. Mamet probably hoped this would be an epic tragedy but he keeps missing the mark. It's certainly not a total write-off, (there's a great supporting turn from J.T. Walsh), but it still counts as a failure albeit an ambitious one with an ending that is pure conjecture.

REQUIEM FOR A HEAVYWEIGHT

 A masterpiece and one of the greatest of all movies set in the world of professional boxing even if scenes of actual boxing are conspicuous by their absence. "Requiem for a Heavyweight" also represents one of the great debuts in American cinema. Ralph Nelson was already 46 when he made this and had already more than a decade working on television behind him, where in 1957 he had already directed the original television version of this film.

As the heavyweight of the title Anthony Quinn is magnificent; it is almost certainly his best performance and in any year other than 1962 he would have been nominated for the Best Actor Oscar. He is superbly supported by Jackie Gleason, Mickey Rooney and Julie Harris. Arthur J. Ornitz did the luminous black and white cinematography while as the young fighter who lays Quinn out in the pre-credit sequence Mohammad Ali appears under his original name of Cassius Clay, naturally playing himself.

LOOK BACK IN ANGER

Before George and Martha there were Jimmy and Alison, the vituperate couple at the heart of Osborne's legendary play and I suppose you could say the British Kitchen Sink movement started here. The difference, of course, being that while the Arthur Seatons and Colin Smiths of this world were unequivocally working-class kicking against the system and the intelligentsia, Jimmy and Alison were the intelligentsia playing at being working-class. And therein lies the rub; unlike later 'kitchen sink' movies "Look Back in Anger" isn't so much looking back as mired in the past, an uneasy amalgam of the kind of British films that were coming out in the late fifties and the kind of ground-breaking British cinema that would come to prevail in the early sixties.

There is no denying it is extremely well played. Burton is loudly splendiferous as Jimmy yet he seems strangely miscast at the same time. Perhaps it's that booming, melodious voice; this is a Jimmy that is more Shakespeare than Osborne, (note how Olivier completely subsumed his Shakespearean tendencies to become the definitive Osborne hero in "The Entertainer"). By the time Burton got around to playing George in "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf" you could say he had grown into the part.

Better cast are Mary Ure as Alison and Claire Bloom as Helena. Their performances feel new and edgy, a move away from the traditional kind of performances that British actresses had been giving up to then while Gary Raymond is an admirable Cliff and a miscast Edith Evans does what she can with Ma Tanner. Tony Richardson opens it out from the Porter's depressing flat to give a more 'cinematic' feel yet it still feels stagey and not in a good way. It's a refreshingly 'grown-up' movie but you may still wonder what all the fuss was about when the original play first opened.

 

RIDE WITH THE DEVIL

 Ang Lee's "Ride with the Devil" deals with an aspect of the American Civil War usually ignored by the cinema; not the great battles between the Yankee and Confederate armies but the brutal and bloody skirmishes carried out by those Southern 'gentlemen' and farm boys who didn't join up and this, being an Ang Lee film, is remarkably faithful to the period both in look and in the patina of James Schamus' antiquated dialogue from Daniel Woodrell's novel "Woe to Live On".

Lee cast the film mostly with young actors whose careers had yet to take a foothold, (Tobey Maguire, Skeet Ulrich, Jim Caviezel, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Jeffrey Wright and the singer Jewel who really is excellent), and the pace of the film is certainly measured. The action scenes are indeed bloody and the film's one great set-piece, (an attack on a town by Quantrill's Raiders), is suitably savage but Lee prefers a slow, almost documentary-like approach to his material and the film often goes in directions we don't expect. This is definitely a post-modern western and in the Lee canon it's been largely overlooked but it remains one of his very best pictures, one that makes no concessions to its potential audience. It really is very fine.

PROVIDENCE

 Filmed in English, (though originally in France with the actors dubbed into French then 'dubbed' back again for an English-speaking audience), from a screenplay by David Mercer yet unmistakably Resnais and set mostly inside the head of dying novelist John Gielgud. I have to admit I hated "Providence" when I first saw it finding it both arch and pretentious and at the time I couldn't quite understand why so many international critics thought it was a masterpiece.

Maybe it seemed to me to be an old man's movie or at least a middle-aged man's movie, a picture about being old and dying but now that I'm a relatively old man myself I finally 'get' it and "Providence" does indeed feel like a masterpiece and a worthy companion piece to "Last Year at Marienbad".

As I said it takes place mostly inside the mind of dying author Gielgud who spends his long sleepless nights mostly drunk and in pain, this thoughts a mixture of memories, some real, others imagined and amalgamated with ideas from the novel he's writing and in which his family are the characters. Dirk Bogarde, (superb), is his fey son, at least fey in Gielgud's mind. Ellen Burstyn is Bogarde's wife, Elaine Stritch his mistress and his mother depending on Gielgud's point of view and David Warner both Burstyn's lover and Bogarde's half-brother.

Like "Marienbad" it's a memory piece, even at its most fantastical and, of course, it's highly literate as perhaps you would expect from a film about a writer and it's often very funny. It may never be as profound as it thinks it is, a smart doodle by a great director enjoying playing with his audience and this time round, to quote a particular Oscar-winning actress, I liked it...I really liked it.

GOD'S CREATURES

 Anyone who thought "The Banshees of Inisherin", "The Quiet Girl" or even "An Irish Goodbye" were a flash in the pan that is Irish cinema, think again for now we have "God's Creatures", co-directed by Saela Davis and Anna Rose Holmer from a story by Fodhla Cronin O'Reilly and Shane Crowley. Here is a film that aspires to be a Greek Tragedy by way of Donegal with its very own Oedipus and its very own Medea.

Brian, (Paul Mescal), is the errant son who returns home from Australia, seemingly with nothing to show for his time there, to the small fishing community he left and Aileen, (Emily Watson), is his doting mother. There are family tensions and secrets, both at home and abroad, and by the time the plot finally kicks in, (an accusation of rape), the film has darkened, both literally and metaphorically.

Aileen lies for her son but instantly regrets it. While clearly made from a feminist perspective, Davis and Holmer's film isn't afraid to tease its audience. Mescal is the very epitome of 'the broth of a boy' and yet there is a darkness to his charcter, too. Why, we ask ourselves, did he leave the village in the first place and why did he suddenly leave Australia and come home? These are questions that are never answered and it's left to us to fill in the blanks.

Both leads are superb. Watson remains one of the finest actresses of her generation and Mescal may yet turn out to be one of the best of his generation. It isn't an easy watch, often moving at a snail's pace and leaving as much out as it puts in and you won't come away from it on a high but it's a bold and intelligent picture and a credit to all concerned.

BERGMAN ISLAND

 The title hints at something gloomy or perhaps a documentary but then we know Mia Hansen-Love isn't inclined towards either documentaries or gloominess and this beautiful movie, filmed in English and set on the island where Bergman lived and worked, comes across as her love letter both to the place and the director. Vicky Krieps and Tim Roth are the couple who go to "Bergman Island", (Faro), one summer for what might be described as a working holiday.

She's a writer who hopes that living and working in Bergman's home will influence her creativity and yet is afraid to sleep in the bed Bergman used in "Scenes from a Marriage" and who finds all the beauty around her depressing. He's a director of horror films, there to work on a new screenplay and because one of his films is being screened. Early on we feel this may be an anti-love story.

Of course, this is also Hansen-Love's movie about the movies in general as well as about Bergman. Our protagonists spend hours talking about and analysing the director who is like a ghost between them; he's everywhere and every waking moment seems to be about honoring the maestro. It's as if the island exists only as an extension of Bergman..

Then, about the half-way mark, Krieps starts to tell Roth the plot of a story she's writing and which she hopes will make a good film and we see this acted out. This film within the film is about a female film-maker, (Mia Wasikowska), who has made a film about her own life and loves and who has come to Faro for a wedding and is now rekindling that old passion with her former lover, (Anders Danielsen Lie), and with Abba on the soundtrack.

Unfortunately the two halves don't quite gel. Krieps' story with Wasikowska is rather trite and it takes a reversal back to the original story for the film to give us its final, glorious kick as the two films merge and some of the actors blend into their characters. It's a smart move and the least Bergman thing about the film, a triumph finally, not for the gloomy maestro, but for Hansen-Love.

CAUSEWAY.

 Terrific performances from Jennifer Lawrence and Brian Tyree Henry raise this quiet, powerful character piece to an altogether higher plain than it might otherwise have reached without them. She's a former soldier trying to adjust to civilian life having returned from Afghanistan with a brain injury and he's the mechanic who becomes her friend.

"Causeway" isn't quite a two-character piece; there's fine work, too, from Jayne Houdyshell as a rehabilitation counsellor, Linda Emond as Lawrence's slighty flaky mother and Stephen McKinley Henderson as a neurosurgeon but it is Lawrence and Henry who carry the picture. Despite the downbeat and serious nature of the subject matter there are no big dramas on display. This is a picture of ordinary people living ordinary lives and it really is very engaging.

ARGENTINA, 1985.

 The best political thriller since "Z", the difference being that while "Z" was banned in Greece, (despite the fact that Greece itself wasn't mentioned as the country in question), Santiago Mitre's extraordinary film "Argentina, 1985" wasn't just filmed in Argentina but is also Argentina's entry for this year's Oscars.

It's a great film but there is nothing ostentatious about it unless you consider Ricardo Darin's closing arguments as the prosecutor tasked with bringing the Junta to justice, ostentatious. Like "Z" this is a film about one prosecutor standing up to his superiors so as not to make the required trial a show-trial that will lead to the defendent's acquittal. In his determination he wasn't entirely alone having recruited a team of young students and workers to help him as well as a 'deputy prosceutor' probably planted in his team because he came from a military family, (PeterLanzani, superb), a strategy that backfired on the powers-that-be since this young lawyer was very much on the prosecutor's side.

What really distinguishes this film, apart from the significance of the subject matter, is that Mitre never tries to blind us with technical flourishes. This is an old-fashioned courtroom picture that holds us in its vice-like grip simply from what is presented as evidence on the screen. It would be a worthy Oscar-winner in any year.

LIVING

 Kurosawa transformed Tolstoy's novella "The Death of Ivan Ilyich" into "Ikiru", the study of an elderly man dying of cancer in post-war Japan and in "Living" director Oliver Hermanus has transformed Kurosawa's version into the story of an elderly civil servant, (Bill Nighy), dying of cancer in 1950's London. While never really aspiring to reach the heights of Kurosawa's masterpiece, (often sited among the best films ever made), Hermanus has nevertheless created a deeply moving and surprisingly unsentimental film that, thanks to superb cinematography and design, actually looks like it might have been filmed in the period in which it's set.

While certainly different from the Kurosawa version it can't be considered a poor cousin with Kazuo Ishiguro's brilliant screenplay honoring the maestro at every turn and with Nighy turning in a career-best performance. In fact, there is nothing in the film with which I can find fault, (the entire supporting cast are superb). Of course, it could have been crushingly gloomy but Hermanus, Ishiguro and Nighy imbue it with the lightest of touches making the least likely of sceanarios plausible. Ultimately it may be a film about the death of a human being and yet I found it among the most life-affirming of films.

EMPIRE OF LIGHT

Anyone who goes to see "Empire of Light" expecting another cosy movie about the love of cinema, both the medium and the building, will be sadly disappointed since Sam Mendes' superb new movie is about so much more. Yes, it's a love letter to all aspects of 'cinema' but it's also about racism and mental illness, lonliness and our ability to connect and it works on all these levels.

The setting is an unnamed town on England's South Coast in the early 1980's and the Picture Palace in question, (the Dreamland Cinema in Margate standing in for the Empire), really is a Picture Palace of the old school, (well, the bits of it that are open to the public are, at least), and Hilary, (an Oscar-worthy Olivia Colman), is the unhappy, lonely and mentally challenged duty manager who has allowed herself to drift into a casual sexual relationship with her married boss, (Colin Firth), and who now finds herself drawn to a new young employee who happens to be black, (Michael Ward, excellent).

Today, even with the age difference between them, this wouldn't be thought of as a problem but this was the early '80's and the National Front were on the march and Mendes' 'romance' doesn't shy away from the racism directed at Ward's character or from Hilary's mental problems. But this isn't a glum picture. Gorgeously photographed by Roger Deakins it is indeed a love letter to the movies and if like me you don't go stir crazy over "Stir Crazy", the joys of "Being There" should draw you in. Beautifully written, (also by Mendes), directed and acted, (as another employee Tom Brooke is also outstanding), this moving and intelligent picture really shouldn't be missed.