DUNKIRK

Only days after its cinema opening it has already become fashionable to knock Christopher Nolan's magnificent "Dunkirk" as if Nolan's past success was tantamount to some kind of blot in his present copybook or did the films naysayers simply expect more? I admit a bit of CGI might have helped the films scale; there seemed to me a paucity of both men and boats but for once scale isn't the raison d'etre for Nolan's film. Clocking in at under two hours and eschewing stars in favour of a handful of decent actors Nolan homes in, not on the epic, but on the small

At the beginning of the film titles tell us that we are actually seeing three different time-spans running concurrently; a week at the Mole, (Dunkirk itself), a day on the sea and an hour in the air and thanks to some brilliant editing we experience events on the beaches, in one small pleasure cruiser and in an air battle simultaneously. This is no "The Longest Day" but something altogether more intimate. If the action sequences are on a relatively small scale for a war picture of this size, the suspense and the fear they generate are epic and Nolan ensures that every dogfight and burning vessel looks damn real. Here is a war film that has a ring of truth to it and I found it deeply moving.

The cast may seem large but by using talented players who can actually act, the characters he concentrates on come vividly to life. Newcomer Fionn Whitehead is excellent as the young soldier we are first introduced to at the beginning of the film and follow through to the very end while Mark Rylance has no trouble stealing every scene he's in as the civilian determined to make it to the beaches and back again. If Kenneth Branagh and Tom Hardy seem more like guest stars, they too create credible characters with whom we can identify while technically the film cannot be faulted; this is a film that can safely expect a slew of Oscars next year. It's also the film most likely to pick up the coveted Best Picture prize. Nolan has finally proved he is a lot more than the sum of his parts.

TORN CURTAIN

Largely dismissed at the time of its release, "Torn Curtain" is, I feel, one of Alfred Hitchcock's most underrated films. Okay, it's no masterpiece but it is consistently entertaining and has several splendid Hitchcockian set-pieces, (including one particularly gruesome murder and another very suspenseful sequence set once again in a theatre). It's also very nicely played by Paul Newman as a would-be defector and Julie Andrews as his fiancee who unwittingly gets caught up in his schemes and there's an excellent supporting turn from Ludwig Donath as the German professor whose brain contains the secrets Newman is after as well as a terrific cameo from Madame Hortense herself, Lila Kedrova while the Cold War espionage plot harks back to some of Hitch's classic '40's spy pictures. The fine script is by Belfast-born novelist Brian Moore and Hitchcock makes excellent use of his European locations as well as some suitably artificial studio settings.

THE DAMNED

Much maligned at the time of its release, (even by me), Visconti's late, great masterwork on the rise and fall of a German industrial family at the time of the Third Reich is now finally getting the recognition it deserves. It's a cross between "Macbeth" and "Gotterdammerung" with extra incest, paedophilia and homosexuality thrown in just to make sure we get it, that the Nazis were a thoroughly depraved lot. Visconti shot it in English with a huge international cast, many of whom were dubbed, and it is unevenly acted. Dirk Bogarde, never much good when playing 'butch' heterosexuals, is utterly miscast as the outsider being thrust into power by his mistress, (a superb Ingrid Thulin), whose son just happens to be the businesses major shareholder. Helmut Berger plays him as a child-molesting mother's boy, (he finally rapes mother), who likes to dress up as Marlene Dietrich. It is an extraordinary performance in many ways even if it is 'bad' acting. Others involved include Charlotte Rampling, Helmut Griem, (excellent) and Reinhard Kolldehoff.

The film's main centrepiece is The Night of the Long Knives when Ernst Rohm's SA were murdered on Hitler's orders in a bid to consolidate power, (here it's basically The Family doing things their way). Visconti films it as a bloodthirsty orgy, Genet out of Fassbinder, (Fassbinder rated the film as his own personal favourite), and the sequence is certainly a masterclass on how such things should be filmed even when it's a monument to bad taste. This is a hot-house movie with so many 'perversions' that it keeps going over the top but it is also one of the great Nazi films whose very 'campness' works in its favour. Aficionados of Visconti won't want to miss it.

THE GREAT NORTHFIELD MINNESOTA RAID

"The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid" wasn't Philip Kaufman's first film but it was the one that put him on the map. It was a revisionist western clearly influenced by "The Wild Bunch" and "Bonnie and Clyde" and dealt with the events that lead to the capture of Cole Younger when the bank raid of the title went disastrously wrong and it starred Cliff Robertson as Younger and Robert Duvall as Jesse James, (he escaped and lived to fight another day). Naturally, realism and violence were the order of the day. Here was a western about outlaws that broke the rules; here was a western with a baseball game in the middle, introduced as America's national sport, though Cole Younger counters that remark by reminding the speaker that shooting was, and always will be, America's national sport.

Kaufman, of course, treats everything, not just 'realistically', but with a good deal of irreverence and a steak of black comedy with the raid itself brilliantly handled. The film certainly marked Kaufman out as one of the brightest of the new kids on the block and he followed it with a handful of brilliantly deverse films that included "The Incredible Lightness of Being" and "The Right Stuff" but he never really had the career one might have expected of him and ended up making only twelve feature films in total.

SABRINA

Billy Wilder in a benign mood but then what other kind of mood could he be in when his title character, "Sabrina" is none other than Audrey Hepburn. She's the chauffeur's daughter in this charming Cinderella tale, who leaves Long Island for Paris where she's to learn cooking, (yes, like me, you may think her chauffeur father a tad extravagant when it comes to his daughter's education), only to return, no longer an ugly duckling, (as if she ever was one in the first place), but a fairytale princess. Her Prince Charming is William Holden but he's slightly tarnished, (he's actually something of a heel), and Audrey has been too busy gazing longingly at him to notice it's his older brother, sweet, old-fashioned Humphrey Bogart, that she really loves.

It's based on a play by Samuel Taylor and Taylor, Wilder and Ernest Lehman did the adaptation and it's very fine. Wilder directs with the lightest of touches and his cast responds accordingly. Hepburn, acting and looking more beautiful than ever, is charm personified, Holden displays a rare comic streak and seems much more comfortable than in many of his dramatic roles while Bogart is the revelation here. Of course, he played comedy before, (and won the Oscar for it in "The African Queen"), but he's so good, (and so relaxed), here it makes you wish he had done comedy more often. A huge hit, the film has  remained a perennial favourite. It was remade with Julia Ormond as Sabrina and Harrison Ford and Greg Kinnear in the Bogart/Holden roles. It wasn't a patch on the original.

CALAMITY JANE

It's hardly the most politically-correct of movie musicals and, to be honest, it's not much of a movie but "Calamity Jane" is still one of the most enjoyable films of the fifties thanks in large part to Doris Day in what was certainly her most iconic role as well as a wonderful song score by Sammy Fain and Paul Francis Webster. not to mention Howard Keel, admittedly not given very much to do here, and the excellent and underrated Allyn Ann McLerie. What it lacks is innovation or indeed a plot but who needs plots and innovations when the songs and their delivery are this good. Ultimately, it may only be a guilty pleasure but it's a huge pleasure nevertheless.

BLACKHAT

Despite its relative failure at the box-office "Blackhat" is typical, and typically brilliant, Michael Mann. The theme is cyber-crime, the plot almost irrelevant. This is Mann at his sinewy, abstract best; another visual tour-de-force, (DoP Stuart Dryburgh), as hacker extraordinaire Chris Hemsworth and associates track a mysterious cyber-criminal from China to the US and back again. When the denouement comes it's actually a bit of let down until you realise it never mattered that much to begin with. What does matter is Mann's remarkable handling of the action and his brilliant build up of suspense; even when we know a bomb is about to go off under a car it still shocks us when it eventually happens. Unquestionably this is his best film since HEAT and like HEAT it has a terrific gun-battle midway through, (here we get two great gun-battles mid-movie), and a brilliantly choreographed shoot-out for the climax. Okay, so it doesn't have De Niro or Pacino but then this is hardly an actor's piece. It's a director's picture and it puts Mann, now 71 but working like a 30 year old, right back on top.

ONIBABA

"Onibaba" is one of the cinema's masterpieces of horror, perhaps because the horrors it depicts are appallingly real and because the director, Kaneto Shindo, has succeeded in making a film that is truly a work of art. It is set in 14th century Japan where two women, a mother and her daughter-in-law, kill wounded samurai, steal their armour and bury them in a deep hole in the middle of a sea of grass.

It's a visually stunning film, shot in widescreen and in black and white by the great cinematographer Kiyomi Kuroda and death permeates almost every scene, (either death or sex and here they are intrinsically linked). The women are monsters but only because war and the male-dominated society in which they are forced to survive has made them so. Shindo's extraordinary film is as much a critique of medieval Japan as it is an outright horror film. Praise, too, for Hikaru Hayashi's tremendous score, which like the best scores in the best horror films, adds considerably to the sense of dread.

JERSEY BOYS

When I saw "Jersey Boys" on stage I thought it would make a great film, a gift for Martin Scorsese; think "Goodfellas" as a musical minus the killings. Now it's finally, and somewhat inevitably, reached the screen but under the guidance of Clint Eastwood, who also knows a thing or two about this sort of milieu; think a New Jersey "Mystic River" as a musical minus the killings, and I can safely say he has done it proud. Of course, Scorsese and Eastwood are two very different kinds of director. Scorsese, now in his seventies, is still the fly-boy, a super kinetic director of in-your-face entertainments.

Eastwood, now in his eighties, has always been something of a classicist, a film-maker in the Howard Hawks mould whose films don't necessarily draw attention to themselves. I think this is why he is the most underrated of all the great American directors and it may be one reason why the critics have given "Jersey Boys" a rather lukewarm reception. Even I had my doubts that Eastwood still had it in him, that he could pull the rabbit out of the hat one more time. I needn't have worried, "Jersey Boys" is terrific; a full-blooded, thoroughly old fashioned biopic that totally transcends the term 'jukebox musical'.

It is, of course, the story of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, or rather The Four Seasons, the band that included Valli, and who rose to inclusion in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame despite their connections to the Mob. In some respects it's a gangster musical along the lines of "Love Me or Leave Me" but with a rock n'roll slant. It's not perfect; there is still a soap-opera feel to some of the more emotional moments but luckily these are dealt with reasonably quickly. For the most part it zips along buoyed by a handful of highly credible performances.

John Lloyd Young recreates his Tony award winning performance as Valli. He's great in the musical scenes but his lack of experience as a serious actor tells as the drama progresses, (for here was a band that didn't just have to worry about breaking up but maybe even staying alive). On the other hand, Vincent Piazza, Michael Lomenda and Erich Bergen are all excellent as fellow band members, (Piazza, in particular, is superb), and Christopher Walken, as always, raises the bar with what is basically a glorified cameo as an old-time Jersey gangster. And then there are those songs, which are still some of the best in the pop canon and which, thanks to this marvellous show, have now been given a new lease of life. Oh, what a night!

HIROSHIMA, MON AMOUR

She is a French actress in Hiroshima to make a film about peace. He is a Japanese architect. They meet in a cafe and have sex and they talk, about themselves and about the war but mostly about her experiences in the war. She tells him a story about loving a German soldier in Nevers and how that experience scarred her life. Alain Resnais' first feature film, "Hiroshima, Mon Amour" is one of the greatest debuts and one of the greatest love stories in all cinema. Choosing Hiroshima as the location for his love story, just over a decade after the dropping of the bomb, might seem tasteless to some but Resnais was the man who made "Night and Fog", his great documentary that showed the world the horrors of the concentration camps so there is no doubting his integrity. This is a film as much about memory and about guilt as it is about love. The players are the remarkable Emmanuelle Riva and Eiji Okada, (it's virtually a two-hander). The deeply felt script is by Marguerite Duras, Michio Takahashi and Sacha Vierny did the brilliant cinematography and the great score is by Georges Delerue and Giovanni Fusco. A masterpiece.

STAGE DOOR

Gregory LaCava's "Stage Door" has some of the best dialogue ever heard in an American movie. It was based on a play by Edna Ferber and George S. Kaufman and was brilliantly adapted, and altered, by Morris Ryskind and Anthony Veiller and delivered at breakneck speed by some of the best actresses ever put together in one film. It's set mostly in a boarding house for aspiring actresses, most prominent of whom are Katharine Hepburn and Ginger Rogers who spark off each other magnificently. Others cracking wise include Eve Arden, Lucille Ball, Gail Patrick, Ann Miller. (14 but you would never believe it), and Andrea Leeds who was Oscar-nominated for her performance while the always wonderful Adolphe Menjou is the big producer who can make or break anyone who steps into his office. It's move from comedy to melodrama also works beautifully, making this not just one of the best female orientated films of its period but one of the high-
points of thirties cinema.