LATE SPRING

 Ozu made his masterpiece "Late Spring" in 1949 and it dealt with a subject very close to his heart, family and in particular the bond between father and daughter. It was a theme he was to return to often and yet perhaps never more affectingly as here, (indeed, his final film, "An Autumn Afternoon", was really a remake of "Late Spring"). It was also the first film in what came to be known as 'the Noriko trilogy', the others being "Early Summer" and "Tokyo Story", and as the daughter Noriko, who refuses to get married so as to stay with her ageing father, Setsuko Hara gives a luminous performance as does Chishu Ryu as her father. These were performers Ozu worked with often and he knew them, and the characters they played, intimately.

It's a deeply moving film, very simply told and it cemented Ozu's reputation as one of cinema's greatest directors. (it's frequently listed among the best films ever made), and there are few films about family to touch it. Ozu's genius was his ability to use a very simple surface palette to disguise a wealth of emotions; love, jealousy, loneliness are handled with slightest of touches. How different this is from the way an American director might have dealt with the same material. For Ozu, there are no 'happy endings'; life really is disappointing and everything is tinged with sadness. Heartbreaking but in the most beautiful of ways.

ONLY ANGELS HAVE WINGS

 One of Howard Hawks' several masterpieces and again an example of the Hollywood studio system at its zenith with every aspect of the production as perfect as pictures can get. As was so often the case Hawks directs the film as if he hadn't been on set at all, as if everything we are seeing had simply evolved naturally. A sublime cast, (Cary Grant, Jean Arthur, Richard Barthelmess, Thomas Mitchell, Rita Heyworth, Allyn Joslyn, Sig Ruman), working from a sublime screenplay by Jules Furthman make it seem effortless just as Lionel Bank's art direction and Joseph Walker's brilliant cinematography create a real place out of the South American port of Barranca and all in the studio.

The story concerns a group of hotshot flyers whose job it is to deliver the mail by flying it out over some very treacherous mountain terrain and when you throw some Hawksian women into the mix things can get pretty hot on the ground, too. Arthur is the archetypal Hawksian female and this might just be her best performance though you can't really fault any of the cast. Some of the lines, "Calling Barranca" and "Who's Joe" have passed into movie folklore.

RIFKIN'S FESTIVAL

 I don't hold out much hope that in my lifetime the home of the brave that we call the USA will ever recover from the disease of sexual hypocrisy that is currently afflicting the movie industry so I'm not expecting them to 'forgive' Woody Allen anytime soon. To many Allen is guilty until proven innocent and he'll probably carry his 'guilt' to his grave so it's heartening that in Europe at least there are still people willing to work with him. He's currently got a new film at Venice though his last film, "Rifkin's Festival, which he made in San Sebastian, is still awaiting a release here.

Unfortunately it isn't very good. (although in some respects it's a cineaste's delight). This time Wallace Shawn is Allen's alter-ego, (though Allen is now of an age he could have played the role himself). He's a lecturer in film in San Sebastian for the festival because his wife, (Gina Gershon, very good), is there to promote her client's new film. He's a sexy, young and very pretentious French director played by Louis Garrel, very nicely sending up his own image, and Shawn's convinced she's having an affair with him and in typical Allen fashion Shawn is also convinced he's dying and embarks on his own pursuit of the beautiful doctor who's treating him, (Elena Anaya).

Basically this is just another excuse for Woody to give us the same old Woody shtick he's been giving us almost since "Annie Hall" and sadly, due to the law of diminishing returns, it's no longer near as funny as it once was. This time around Woody indulges himself in a series of parodies of his favourite art-house films and at least these show some imagination and have some of the best gags. There is also a smattering of good one-liners and Shawn does his best to walk in Woody's shoes but we've seen it all before and with better results. Hopefully his latest film, which may well be his last, will be a considerable improvement.

RIDE IN THE WHIRLWIND

 One of two westerns Monte Hellman made back to back, (the other is "The Shooting"), "Ride in the Whirlwind" was definitely a post-modern take on the genre, very much a product of the New Hollywood. It was produced by Hellman and Jack Nicholson and Nicholson not only starred in the picture but also wrote the screenplay. If it follows the trajectory of a traditional western it also breaks from that trajectory scene to scene. Hellman clearly wanted to make a 'realist' western with banal dialogue that doesn't seem to advance the story, shooting it in a totally naturalistic style that's as close to a documentary as you are likely to get.

As an actor Nicholson had yet to find his voice but he's very disarming nevertheless and it's he and Harry Dean Stanton, (billed here simply as Dean Stanton), who walk away with the acting honors in a film that is leisurely to the point of inertia. Of course, both this and "The Shooting" have built up a considerable cult following on the back of the director's reputation and there is something of the Peckinpah in this vision of a West where life and death are mirror images of each other and where survival isn't so much a matter of choice but is purely down to chance. It is a deeply pessimistic picture; here is an American West that offers no hope for the future, bleak and quintessentially Hellman.

GREEN DOLPHIN STREET

 There's enough plot in "Green Dolphin Street" for a dozen movies and here the central plot is pretty ridiculous and while the film has no artistic merit it remains a great guilty pleasure. Based on Elizabeth Goudge's best-seller and set both in Europe and New Zealand but filmed on the MGM lot in Hollywood it's hugely entertaining as newcomer Richard Hart finds he's the object of affection of two sisters, Lana Turner (surprisingly good) and Donna Reed. He's in love with Reed and she with him but in a state of intoxication sends his marriage proposal half way across the world to Turner who then ups sticks and travels to New Zealand.

Being a man of honor he marries her while all the while it's his partner, Van Heflin, who really loves her, (I hope you're following this and I haven't even mentioned how the sisters' mother, (Gladys Cooper, naturally) was once in love with Hart's father, (Frank Morgan, looking like a refugee from Oz). Indeed the supporting cast ham it up very nicely, treating the material with a good deal more respect than it deserves. Throw in a lot of cardboard sets, some revolting natives and an Oscar-winning earthquake and what's not to love? If the dialogue is pure Mills and Boon, the style is classic Hollywood and no-one can fault director Victor Saville for holding it all together. It will never make any list of great films but as camp classics go it's at the top of the pile.

THE BATTLE OF BRITAIN

 Despite some excellent scenes of aerial combat and an all-star cast of the cream of British acting talent "The Battle of Britain" isn't much of a movie which may account for why it isn't revived much. The director was Guy Hamilton and while he was usually a proficient craftsman he never showed a great deal of imagination in his work so this is pretty much business as usual with the big name thespians playing the Brits and a host of actors we've never heard of, with the exception of Curd Jurgens, and he's out of the picture before the credits, cast in the German roles.

It soars when it's in the air but grinds to a halt on the ground with scenes of banal romantic domesticity and of little aeroplanes being pushed around on big boards. Cast as Air Chief Marshal Sir Hugh Dowding only Lord Olivier acquits himself with dignity while Susannah York, as the wife of Christopher Plummer, is so shrill I kept hoping she might be dispatched early on by one of Herr Hitler's many bombs. Unfortunately for us, she survives.

MALCOLM X

 Spike Lee's finest film, "Malcolm X" is a vast, sprawling three hour plus epic built around a magnificent, career-best performance from Denzel Washington and opening with credits that might recall "Patton" as Washington castigates White America over images of the American flag as it bursts into flames. Of course, it was inevitable that a biography of Malcom X, one of the great figures of the 20th century, would be filmed at some stage and equally inevitable, given his track record, that Lee would be the man to do it.

As a political picture it does follow a predictable trajectory but from the beginning it's obvious that Lee wants to make something more than just a conventional biopic. Lee's film is nothing less than an epic account of the history of Black America in the second half of the twentieth century. It's tragedy isn't only that Malcolm X was assassinated but that very little has actually changed in the interim despite Obama's tenure in the White House.

Washington may dominate the picture but there's superb work too from Delroy Lindo, Albert Hall and Al Freeman Jr. in Lee's huge cast and thanks once again to Ernest R. Dickerson's cinematography it's also a fantastic looking film. Naturally, in 1992, the Academy almost totally overlooked the film with only Washington and Ruth E. Carter's costume designs getting nominations. As I said, very little has changed and it's taken a rule change by the Academy for diversity to fully get the recognition it deserves. Had it been made today, this might actually win Best Picture.

LIBELED LADY

 A classic screwball comedy but it's also one of the least known. "Libeled Lady" boasted a cast headed by William Powell, Myrna Loy, Spencer Tracy and Jean Harlow, all brilliant and yet it's Harlow who almost steals the show. Loy is the libeled lady, Tracy the newspaper man who libeled her, Harlow is Tracy's fiancee who has to marry Powell, (don't ask), and Powell is the guy who has to seduce Loy, (again, don't ask). As in the best screwball comedies nothing goes according to plan. There's a host of great one-liners and it has one of the funniest fishing scenes ever committed to film. Walter Connolly's in it, too, which is just an added bonus. A real treat.

MEANTIME

 As the title of Mike Leigh's first film testified he had his bleak moments and "Meantime" was certainly one of them, He made it in 1983 for ITV and yes, it is funny in that very mordant, very sour Mike Leigh manner but it is so grim at times it's a difficult film to like or even fully appreciate. Set on a housing estate in London's East End it centres on one working-class family though neither the father, (Jeffrey Robert), nor either of his two sons, (Tim Roth and Phil Daniels), actually work and Leigh, at least initially, treats them with something bordering on middle-class contempt though by the end he seems to have mellowed into a kind of warped affection for them.

They are all portrayed as stereotypical yobs; one son appears to be mentally defective, the other corroded by cynicism with only the would-be middle-class aunt given any trace of humanism in Marion Bailey's superb performance. It's a deeply depressing film chock full of deeply depressing characters such as Gary Oldman's skinhead and lacks any of the basic warmth you might associate with Ken Loach. It's terrifically well-acted by everyone, (Oldman, Roth and Daniels are particularly brilliant), but it's also a very tough watch.

THE SAGA OF ANATAHAN

 By the time Josef von Sternberg made "The Saga of Anatahan" you might as well say his career was over. His glory days working with Dietrich were in the past and since the critical disaster that was "The Shanghai Gesture" in 1941 he had made only three other features, one of which, "Jet Pilot", wasn't released until after "Anatahan". He filmed "The Saga of Anatahan" in a studio in Kyoto 'especially built for the purpose' as an opening credit tells us, with a Japanese cast acting out a drama in an artificially constructed jungle, speaking Japanese but without subtitles. Instead von Sternberg himself narrates the film in English; he also wrote the film and photographed it in a black and white as evocative as that used in "The Scarlett Empress" or "Shanghai Express".

The story is a familiar one; a group of men find themselves stranded, in this case, on an island on which there is only one woman and set about destroying themselves over her. It was quite an erotic film for the period, featuring female nudity, something rare at the time. Indeed it was just the kind of film you might have found in a Soho or 42nd Street porno cinema rather than in the mainstream and for years it was thought of as a lost work but no von Sternberg movie, especially one as strange as this one, is going to remain lost for long and today is often considered something of a masterpiece.

It is certainly extraordinary; an avant-garde film totally unlike anything the director had done before and von Sternberg himself though it was his best film, a bold experiment that may have failed commercially but not artistically. If the acting is closer to Kabuki Theatre than mainline cinema it's because most of the cast came from the Kabuki Theatre. What audience did von Sternberg think would be attracted to such a film? Surely he knew it would be a flop but equally he must have known that a film as imaginative and as bold as this would not pass unnoticed. Although von Sternberg was never to work again he would live another sixteen years yet not long enough to see this extraordinary film reassessed and given its rightful place in his canon. See it and marvel for yourselves.

VENGEANCE

 This terrific little movie is going to disappear without trace because it's virtually unclassifiable. It's a comedy, it's a thriller and it's a satire about Trump's America, the so-called intelligentsia and social media in general and it's all the work of one man, the extremely gifted B. J. Novak who wrote it, directed it and plays the lead. He's a writer for the New Yorker who suddenly finds himself both exploiting and helping the family of a former girlfriend, (more of a casual hook-up, actually), who has been found dead in rural Texas. Did she OD or was she murdered?

Summoned to her funeral by her red-neck brother, (an excellent Boyd Holbrook), who intends for the two of them to avenge her death, he turns a very awkward situation into a podcast entitled 'Dead White Girl'. It's a funny and smart movie though perhaps Novak is aiming at too many targets; sometimes he misses but for a movie aimed at a general mass audience it shows real flair. Best of all it goes places you don't expect it to. It may not burn up the box-office now but I can see cult status beckoning.