C/O KANCHARAPALEM

 I'm sure the ghost of Satyajit Ray is looking down from whatever heaven he is in and smiling since his legacy is alive and well here on Earth. "C/o Kancharapalem" is a film Ray could have made in the blink of an eye. By that I mean it oozes Ray's humanity as well as a great deal of the skill he brought to everyone of his projects. Using non-professional actors Venkatesh Maha's marvellous film spins four separate love stories through four different generations in the Indian village of Kancharapalem and it's a charming and heart-breaking film, funny and touching in equal measure. It's also remarkably frank in its portrayal of the way in which women are treated in Indian society.

If the performances don't always hit the mark remember that few of these people are professional actors and yet they handle the intricacies of Maha's multi-layered script with considerable aplomb. It also eschews Bollywood gloss for a much rawer, more naturalistic, feel and is a very hard film to dislike. This is an intimate epic that unfolds like a great novel and confirms its writer and director as a major player. It's also got one of the best codas I've seen in a movie in years.

BLACK PETER

 Anyone who has seen the early films of Milos Forman will know that, contrary to popular belief here in the West, they really did have a sense of humour in Eastern Europe and that "The Loves of a Blonde" and "The Fireman's Ball" are still among his very best films. "Black Peter", which he made in 1964, was his first feature length film and while not quite in the same class as the films that followed it, is still something of a small gem.

Heavily influenced by both the British New Wave and Italian Neo-Realism it's a lovely comedy about a young man starting on his first job as something of a store detective, a job he's woefully not cut out for, as well as a great coming-of-age film, a brilliant satire on bureaucracy and a superb picture of life in the Czech Republic in the 1960's. Peter himself, the boy in question, is beautifully played by 19 year old Ladislav Jakim making his film debut but then Forman gets great performances from all of his largely non-professional cast, (as his Hollywood career showed, he was one of the great actor's directors). This might be a 'small' film in the Forman canon but it's a joy from start to finish.

THE MISSOURI BREAKS

 A realist or revisionist western but then "The Missouri Breaks" is an Arthur Penn movie so you know it was never going to be traditional; you just have to look at the cast. Jack Nicholson is the leader of a gang of outlaws but he's a hippie outlaw more in keeping with the 1970's, when the film was made, than the 1870's and with a gang that includes Randy Quaid, Frederic Forrest and Harry Dean Stanton you know exactly where you're meant to be. John McLiam is the rancher so tired of being robbed he brings in a 'regulator', (a totally over-the-top Marlon Brando in one of his funny voice modes and even dressing up in drag at one point), to put an end to the rustling and to operate with, what became known as, 'extreme prejudice'.

As written by Thomas McGuane it's like a parody of or an antidote to "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid". It has the same post-modern outlook on the old West but with a much more cynical streak as the gang decide to go straight but aren't allowed to. It's very funny in a way you don't expect Penn to be but it wasn't a success. I'm not sure audiences knew what to make of it but it's as close to a cult movie, ("Bonnie and Clyde" notwithstanding). that Penn ever made. There's also an excellent performance from newcomer Kathleen Lloyd as McLiam's free-thinking daughter who falls for Nicholson. It's a lovely piece of acting but for some reason her career never really went very far afterwards.

THE COURTSHIP OF EDDIE'S FATHER

 An eight year old Ron, or as he's called here 'Ronny', Howard gives a phenomenal performance as Eddie, (it's easily the best thing he's ever done, either as an actor or as a director), while Glenn Ford gives what is almost certainly a career-best performance as his father in Vincente Minnelli's late masterpiece "The Courtship of Eddie's Father". It's a comedy, and often a very funny one, but with a dramatic edge to it and a large dollop of sentimentality which Minnelli carries off beautifully.

Ford's a widower with a young son and it's the son who decides it's time his unhappy dad found a new wife. The potential candidates are Stella Stevens, (wonderful), Dina Merrill and Shirley Jones as the next-door neighbour and since it's Jones who gets star billing it isn't too difficult to work out who the new Mrs. Ford is likely to be. There's a housekeeper, too, splendidly played by Roberta Sherwood and a nice supporting turn by Jerry Van Dyke as an associate of Ford's and they are all helped along by John Gay's superb screenplay adapted from Mark Toby's novel. The film was sufficiently successful to spawn a television series which lacked the ingredients that made this a classic of its kind and the last truly great film Minnelli would ever direct.

PALE RIDER

 Clint Eastwood's "Pale Rider" is a cross between Shane and The Man With No Name with a touch of the supernatural thrown in for good measure. This time it isn't ranchers but miners he comes to help like a saviour summoned by a young girl's prayers; he also happens to be a preacher if a somewhat unconventional one just as this is a somewhat unconventional western. If it isn't as popular as some of Eastwood's other westerns it has built up something of a cult following though it's a little too close to a "Shane" remake for my liking. As well as Eastwood the exceptional cast includes Michael Moriarty and Carrie Snodgress, (fine actors whose large screen careers never really took off), Chris Penn, Richard Dysart, John Russell, (in the Jack Palance role), and 'Jaws' himself, Richard Kiel. Bruce Surtees' superb cinematography is also a major bonus.

AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PRINCESS

 Sometimes it can take three, four or even several hours for a film-maker to tell their tale or sometimes just several minutes and sometimes a director will make a feature that is the cinematic equivalent of a short story. "Autobiography of a Princess" falls very much into this category. It's a Merchant/Ivory picture, again with a screenplay by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala and made in 1975. It lasts less than an hour and is basically a two-hander in which an Indian princess living in London, (Madhur Jaffrey) and her father's former tutor, (James Mason), spend an afternoon drinking tea and watching home movies of life in a past India.

It's no masterpiece but it's superbly acted, particularly by Mason who underplays beautifully and, of course, in very little time it says a great deal about India's past and England's present, the class system in both countries and the psychological makeup of the two participants in this annual orgy of nostalgia for bygone days. It's clear the team making this film have no real fondness for the events we see but Merchant/Ivory are too clever to simply attack them. This is a very subtle demolition job captured in Jaffrey's prattling on and in Mason's pained expressions. It makes a perfect companion piece to the later "Heat and Dust" and is an essential part of the Merchant/Ivory canon.

DAMSELS IN DISTRESS

 

If Jane Austen were a man and lived in the 20th century she would be Whit Stillman whose last film was indeed an adaptation of Austen's novella "Lady Susan" and like Austin he isn't prolific. In fact, he's only made five features in the last thirty years and each is an event though his smartly funny and hugely intelligent comedies have never been box-office giants; maybe he's the only director whose entire filmography consists of five cult movies.

"Damsels in Distress", which he made in 2011, is set in an American college where Emma-esque heroine Violet, (a terrific Greta Gerwig), and her band of female followers spend their every waking moment helping (i.e. messing up), the lives of their fellow students and run, God help us, the Suicide Prevention Centre where their main source of therapy is tap-dancing.

While we may be in an American college we are definitely in Austen territory, (any of Stillman's earlier films are much closer to Austen way of thinking than Amy Heckerling's 'Emma' adaptation "Clueless"), and where the battle of the sexes never amounts to more than a ticklish skirmish. This, like everything Stillman's done, is a gem.

LIGHTS IN THE DUSK

 The miniatures of Aki Kaurismaki are among the best European art movies of the last forty years though calling them 'art movies' is putting them in a very narrow bracket since their content alone gives them a universal appeal. These little stories, funny and sad in equal measure, deal with the most understandable and basic of subjects, human relationships, though admittedly Kaurismaki does choose oddball characters and sets them down in the most unprepossessing of locations.

"Lights in the Dusk" is about a lonely and unpopular night-watchman, (Janne Hyytiainen), who wants to break away from the life he leads and start his own business though basically that's a pipedream. He starts to date a young woman he meets in a bar but in typical Kaurismaki fashion it's a very monosyllabic relationship, (she's actually been planted in his life by a crooked businessman for his own unscrupulous ends).

This is an observational film about the kinds of people other filmmakers wouldn't think of observing, shot in the sharp, neon colours Kaurismaki favours, (his characters are like people in an Edward Hopper painting). Since robbery is involved you could call this a thriller and any other director would have concentrated on the 'action' but Kaurismaki is more interested in 'inaction', in what isn't said and what doesn't happen, and yet it's never boring. Kaurismaki has the knack of making us care about characters who are often no more than cyphers. it's a potentially grim little story and perhaps not a very likely one but as always Kaurismaki has the last laugh. Ultimately there is a lot more humanity here than initially meets the eye.

FIRST COW

 Kelly Reichardt doesn't make movies that move or if they do, they move very, very slowly and "First Cow" is no exception, (it has just won the New York Film Critic's Best Picture of 2020). It begins in the present day before moving back in time to the Oregon of the Old West where a cook to a bunch of trappers and a Chinese immigrant he meets hiding in the forest strike up an unlikely friendship before going into business together making cakes with milk which they steal from the cow of the title.

This is an art-house western and no mistake, moving at a pace that makes Terrence Malick seem like an action director, (did we really think it would be otherwise?). Of course, you could say that Reichardt, who shoots the film in Academy Ratio, gives us the truest picture of life in the West since Altman's "McCabe and Mrs. Miller", though Reichardt doesn't go in for 'star' names, (the nearest we get to 'stars' here are Toby Jones, Ewen Bremner, Scott Shepherd and Rene Auberjonois in his last film role). The cook is John Magaro and the Chinese man is Orion Lee and you will be forgiven if you haven't heard of either of them. and yet for all it realist trappings it often feels like 21st Century people playing at being cowboys. That said, and despite its funereal pace, this is a western like no other, (it's certainly the most original since Jim Jarmusch's "Dead Man"). Of course, you might also be surprised that a movie like this is being tipped for Oscar glory but then, 2020 has been a year unlike any other and it's independent movies like this that are stealing the limelight. It's also Reichardt's most accessible film to date.

THE LANDLORD

 I'm not sure this satirical comedy about race relations in 1970's America would be made today, times being what they are. Let's just say that if it were made today it would almost certainly be directed by an African-American director and the satire would be even more pointed. Unfortunately for many people the stereotypes are just...well, too 'stereotypical'. It was a Norman Jewison production but directing duties were handed to his former editor Hal Ashby, making his directorial debut.

It's about a white yuppie, (Beau Bridges, very good), who buys a tenement building in an African-American neighbourhood as an investment but finds he just can't get rid of his tenants and that, as he gets to know them, he becomes a little too involved in their lives and problems. Here is a movie about as subtle as a sledgehammer and it's often hard to shake the feeling we are meant to laugh at these characters, both black and white, rather than with them as if sending up the rich white folks makes the racist jibes seem funny.

About midway through it takes a somewhat melodramatic and unlikely turn that might seem even more offensive than the comedy but in its favour you can see that Ashby was prepared to take chances, (as Jewison had done with "In the Heat of the Night"), and risk being offensive if that's what it took. The performances throughout are excellent, (Lee Grant was Oscar-nominated as Bridges' mother), and while today we have to view it as a period piece and something of a curiosity, it's also a striking debut and deserves to be better known.

A HIDDEN LIFE

 You know that when Terrence Malick tackles the true-life story of an Austrian conscientious objector during World War Two it won't be like anyone else's true-life story and it certainly won't be a 'biopic'. In recent years Malick has been severely criticised for what many saw as pretentious doodlings in the world of music and show-business, as if what creativity he might have had had dried up and he was just making expensive, personal home-movies. Actually, I'm a big fan of both "Knight of Cups" and "Song to Song" even if I did find "To the Wonder" unendurable. Now Malick has made an anti-war film in a way that only Malick can; five minutes into "A Hidden Life" you know you are watching a Terrence Malick film. Diehard fans will, of course, love it while his detractors will be groaning in their seats and crying, 'Oh no, not another one'. Ten minutes in, however, and you can see that while all the Malick tropes are here, this could be a movie that harkens back to "Days of Heaven", if a 'war' movie, not quite as guttural as "The Thin Red Line" and again, in typical Malick fashion, voice-over or narration seems to dominate much more than conversational dialogue.

Visually it's extraordinary, (the DoP is Jorg Widmer), but then you knew it would be and yes, it is very slow, (as you knew it would be), and it is three hours long but it's also beautifully written by the director and beautifully acted. August Diehl is superb as Franz Jagerstatter, the conscientious objector while Valerie Pachner is equally good as his wife and there are excellent supporting performances from Karl Markovics, Johan Leyson, Johannes Krisch and Franz Rogowski. This is certainly no self-reflective doodle from some inward looking artist with nothing left to say but confirmation of Malick's stature both as a film-maker and as a thinker; it is also incredibly moving in a way Malick's previous films never were. If there's a downside, even for Malick aficionados, it's that it does require a great deal of patience and it could certainly do with a trim here and there but Malick is not the kind of man to make concessions. This will be loved and loathed in equal measure but if you are prepared to give yourself over to it, the rewards are considerable.