THE 13TH DAY

 The problem with most religious films is that the filmmakers have a habit of equating religion with piety and piety with gross sentimentality. There is also usually a surfeit of kind priests and nice nuns being kind and nice to beatific children or else they will be about Jesus, saints and miracles and the inexplicable. Perhaps the most famous religious movie about sainthood is "The Song of Bernadette" with an unlikely Jennifer Jones as Saint Bernadette. That turned out to be so much better than it might have been, not free from piety but very well written, directed and acted.

Of course Lourdes, where many Christians, or at least Catholics, believe the Blessed Virgin appeared to Bernadette Soubirous, is probably the most famous place of pilgrimage in Christianity outside of Israel. Fatima, where a similar apparition is said to have happened in 1917, is less well known. The movie "The Miracle of Fatima" was a decent enough attempt to deal with those events and now we have "The 13th Day", a kind of amateur docu-drama about what happened at Fatima. Co-directed by Dominic and Ian Higgins it comes across as something commissioned by the Catholic Church purely for Catholics, (it certainly won't win any converts), and is acted by a cast of non-professionals.

The amazing thing is it, too, is nowhere near as bad as it could have been though it's certainly no "Song of Bernadette". Stylistically it's closer to Rossellini's "The Flowers of St. Francis" but without the rigor or the beauty that Rossellini brought to his subject and what passes for acting certainly lets it down. Non-believers will either avoid the film like the plague or will see it as nothing more than Catholic propaganda while believers might find it closer to a demonic horror movie than a tale of future saints. Shot mostly in monochrome with colour inserts it's well enough made but unlikely to appeal to all but the very few.

THE COUNSELLOR

 This terrifically cast, sleek, glossy and intricately plotted Ridley Scott thriller from a Cormac McCarthy script wasn't a success and yet it may be one of the best things Scott ever did. "The Counsellor" of the title is Michael Fassbender, a lawyer moving in high circles that includes drugs baron Javier Bardem and his lady Cameron Diaz as well as a shady 'cowboy' played by Brad Pitt and his involvement with such characters leads him into situations he might otherwise not want to find himself in.

It's typical McCarthy, even if it's not front rank McCarthy, and maybe the tortuous plot proved too much for both critics and audiences but it's a movie that uses its showy cast , (that also includes Penelope Cruz, Bruno Ganz, Rosie Perez, Edgar Ramirez and Rueben Blades), to excellent effect and thanks to Dariusz Wolski's cinematography it looks terrific. Best of all, it's a movie that takes familiar material and shakes it about in unconventional ways. In the acting stakes it's Pitt and Diaz who own the picture which certainly didn't deserve the critical thrashing it got at the time and is now ripe for reassessment.

HOLLYWOOD ENDING

 There's one really good gag in Woody Allen's "Hollywood Ending" and luckily it lasts for about three-quarters of the movie. In his most self-referential film since "Stardust Memories" Woody plays a film director who, in the course of making his comeback film, (for the producer who stole his ex-wife), goes psychosomatically blind and the gag is he must hide his blindness from everyone but the very few. What follows is what could best be described as 'one of the early funny ones', a farce with not too much analysis. Until he goes blind the movie isn't particularly funny and is more than a little self-indulgent; these are jokes we've heard a hundred times before. Consequently, "Hollywood Ending" isn't one of his better pictures and would probably make a better short story but there's a sweetness to it and Tea Leoni, (the ex-wife), and Debra Messing, (the dumb actress girlfriend), are both very likeable though when you get down to it, it's director Mark Rydell as Allen's perpetually optimistic Jewish agent who walks away with the movie.

BILLY LYNN'S LONG HALFTIME WALK

 The subject of Ang Lee's "Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk" isn't the war in Iraq but in how America reacts to its heroes and its soldiers and it's a theme that can be traced back through two World Wars. Indeed for almost as long as movies have existed the cinema has concerned itself with the relationship between the military and the world at large, how it performs and how it is perceived. The most famous example of this is probably the raising of the flag at Iwo Jima and the subsequent 'tour' back home immortalised in such films as "The Outsider" with Tony Curtis as Ira Hayes and Clint Eastwood's "Flags of Our Fathers" and Oliver Stone's Vietnam film "Born on the Fourth of July" so it was only a matter of time before someone would do something similar with one of the current wars.

Moving back and forth in time between the events in Iraq and the tour to celebrate the 'heroes' Lee's film is a complex and surprisingly satirical picture that doesn't go down the obvious route of 'what really happened and how the media constructs events' and, being an Ang Lee film, is very skilfully made. As Billy Lynn, the soldier chosen to be the poster boy for the military, newcomer Joe Alwyn is excellent and it's a film that ultimately confounds our expectations. The chest-thumping of "Born on the Fourth of July" is conspicuously absent and if the film seems to lack a big dramatic pay-off it's still a moving depiction of ordinary people caught up in extraordinary events.

SWEET MOVIE

 With the credits coming at you in a variety of bright colours and a highly eclectic international cast list you know Dusan Makavejev's "Sweet Movie" isn't exactly going to be your conventional Eastern European art-movie but I'm also sure no-one will be quite prepared for what follows those credits. Makavejev is out to shock you, maybe even titillate you. This is like a John Waters' movie co-directed by Salvador Dali with a little help from Sergei Eisenstein. There's no real plot as such but rather a series of sketches filmed in both Europe and Canada and while the film is described as a 'comedy', laughs are non-existent.

On the other hand sex, a little violence and various bodily functions are very much to the fore and if you can overlook some of the content, including a scene in which a very attractive and barely clad young woman has her way with some children as well as some newsreel footage from Katyn, you can't deny that visually it's often rather beautiful in an abstract kind of way. It's also got cult movie written all over it; a midnight matinee movie with its own built-in audience. Of course, the problem with movies that set out to be cults, as I have a feeling this one did, is that they keep drawing attention to just how clever they are and "Sweet Movie" is no exception. Maiden aunts are certainly not likely to get the joke, if there's a joke here to get, though cineastes should enjoy the odd movie reference if they can make it past the 'food' orgy and if, like me, you enjoy celebrity spotting, look out for George Melly and Ronald Topor among the cameos.

LAND OF THE PHARAOHS

 Stick a director at the helm of an epic and he's sure to become a cropper. Of course, that old adage is a fallacy; you just have to look at "Spartacus" or "El Cid" to see what a Kubrick or an Anthony Mann can do for the genre but for every "Spartacus" you've got "The Robe" or "Cleopatra", neither of which represent the best of anyone. Indeed "The Robe" has a lot to answer for; as the first Cinemascope picture it sparked a fondness for Roman, Egyptian and Biblical epics, very few of which are worth remembering and it seemed in the fifties every director worth his salt wanted to have a go. Even Howard Hawks wanted to get in on the act.

"Land of the Pharaohs" came out in 1955 and was both a critical and financial disaster but Hawks isn't easily written off and over the years this has built up something of a reputation. It's no masterpiece but neither is it a turkey and it's certainly strange enough to be of interest. Here was an epic, (and a fairly short one, clocking in at under two hours), about nothing more than the building of a tomb. The tomb in question is that of Khufu, Egyptian Pharaoh, and it's to be a pyramid greater than any other. Of course, if you want an audience you have to throw in a little sex and violence, a lot of spectacle and a few stars. The sex comes in the form of the Pharaoh's scheming wife who's also the instigator of the violence while spectacle there's aplenty. Remember this was long before CGI so every extra up on the screen is a real person costing real money and with two DoP's, Lee Garmes and Russell Harlan, it certainly looks the business.

Unfortunately all the money, (it went way overbudget), went on the spectacle so there was nothing left for 'stars'. Jack Hawkins, (hardly likely to set the box-office on fire), was Khufu while his wife was Joan Collins, who was certainly no Liz Taylor. The supporting cast was made up largely of Brits speaking in plummy voices, a few lesser known Europeans and Dewey Martin in a skirt. However, one of the three credited scriptwriters was none other than William Faulkner, though listening to the fairly banal dialogue you would never know it. This was to be a prestige production and Faulkner's name on the credits was part of that prestige but to the masses that meant nothing and the lack of epic 'action' scuppered the project.

Now, of course, it's a curiosity; a gloriously bizarre folly that might have ended another director's career but Hawks lived to fight another day and to make his late masterpiece "Rio Bravo" and no Hawks aficionado can afford to miss "Land of the Pharaohs". You might wonder what the hell he thought he was doing but you can't say he didn't make the most of what he had been given. A one-off and, if it's not among Hawks masterpieces, it's still an essential part of his canon.

PARADISE LOVE

 You know where you stand with a Ulrich Seidl film; usually on the edge of a precipice and you know whichever way you fall the outcome is unlikely to be pleasant. Seidl is a director out to shock us; you may hate his films and see them as exploitative but you are unlikely to ever forget them. "Paradise Love" was the first in a trilogy very roughly based around the Christian virtues of faith, hope and charity but if you're unfamiliar with his work, be warned; piety and what we perceive as the attributes usually associated with religion are conspicuously absent.

This first film in the trilogy is set in Kenya and deals with sex tourism, in this case women who go there with the sole purpose of having sex with the boys who hang around the beach and outside the hotels. Sex is their profession and it seems everyone is on the make. The tourists exploit the locals who exploit them in return. Seidl films all of this in the most matter-of-fact way; we could be watching a documentary.

What plot there is revolves around Teresa, (a superb and utterly fearless Margarete Tiesel), an Austrian woman who comes looking for sex but wanting love and who falls under the spell of Munga, (Peter Kazungu, one of many non-professionals in the cast). At first he's the boy who doesn't harass her on the beach or seems interested in her money but he has his own agenda and while other directors might milk this material for purely 'dramatic' effect, Seidl approaches it more as an anthropologist might, studying both sides at once and treating no-one with much respect. This is a film about racism and it leaves a very sour aftertaste. In its clinically chilly fashion it's a horror movie that will alienate many.

THAT COLD DAY IN THE PARK

 A year before M.A.S.H. shot him to international fame, and ignored at the time of its release, Robert Altman made "That Cold Day in the Park", an adaptation by Gillian Freeman of Peter Miles' novel. It's like "The Collector" with the roles reversed. Sandy Dennis is the young woman who brings an apparently homeless boy back to her apartment, (so he can dry off, out of the rain she tells him), and then does her damnedest to make sure he doesn't leave. The title is apt; this is a chilly movie in every detail, in the Altman canon more in keeping with films like "Images" and "Quintet" than later masterpieces like "Nashville" and "Short Cuts".

The setting is Vancouver and the film has a European art-house feel to it like something Bergman might have made on an off-day and it was clearly never destined for commercial success. Dennis, usually the most mannered of actresses, gives a stiff, starchy performance and it's Michael Burns as the boy in question who gives the more naturalistic  performance even if his initial silent acceptance of Dennis' hospitality is a bit hard to swallow while his later motives in going along with things is never really made that clear. It has now built up something of a cult reputation though I doubt most people would give it the time of day were it not an Altman movie.

RAGTIME

 E.L. Doctorow's picaresque novel was always going to be one of the great unfilmable books until Czech director Milos Forman, working from a Michael Weller screenplay, brought it to the screen in 1981. It might have been better if he had left well enough alone. It's reasonably entertaining but the novel's several interlinked stories never gel on screen so it's left to Forman's large cast to carry the picture and a number of them very ably do so with Howard E. Rollins Jr.'s Coalhouse Walker Jr. coming off best.

The various tales involves the murder of Stanford White, (Norman Mailer) by Henry Thaw, (Robert Joy), over Evelyn Nesbit, 'the girl in the red velvet swing', (which was the title of an earlier film dealing with this incident with Joan Collins as Nesbit, a part much better played here by a young Elizabeth McGovern). Then there's the story of Brad Dourif's initial courtship of Evelyn before getting involved in the Coalhouse yarn while yet another tale, (the weakest), follows Mandy Patinkin's down-and-out inventor who becomes a famous movie director all culminating in the Rollins' story of a proud African-American taking his revenge on those who abused him and which takes up the final section of this long film.

For this story Forman was able to coax James Cagney out of retirement to play the city's Chief of Police while other 'oldies', mostly guesting in the cast, include Donald O'Connor, Pat O'Brien and Bessie Love. It's not a bad film, just a meandering and disappointing one that, despite all the dramas onscreen, never really builds up a head of steam and when it's over it all feels very anti-climatic.

ANOTHER ROUND

 Most films that deal with the demon drink have been po-faced manifestos on the dangers of alcohol and there are very few films that celebrate drunkenness and those that do usually do so for comic effect. Thomas Vinterberg's "Another Round" is something of a rare exception. It's a film about drinking to excess that's indeed both funny and tragic in equal measure as it explores the theory that we all seem to have a blood alcohol level that is 0.05% too low and that we should drink enough, during daylight hours at least, to raise it to that level, where 'psychologically' we should all be at our best.

The protagonists are four Danish school teachers at the same school who decide to test this hypothesis with mostly disastrous results; like all good drinkers they either forget when to stop or simply choose not to. But Vinterberg's film isn't so much about the alcohol as it is about four sad men whose lives have stagnated and who find that drinking actually makes them happy in ways that sobriety never could. It doesn't hold back on the dangers but neither is it an outright condemnation. Ultimately this is a character study with alcohol a supporting player, albeit a major one.

It's also superbly acted and in particular by Thomas Bo Larsen as the sports teacher who really doesn't know when to stop and by Mads Mikkelsen, in what might be a career-best performance, as the history teacher caught in a failing marriage and it's Mikkelsen who delivers the film's coup-de-theatre, performing a remarkable dance sequence at the climax that could just earn him an Oscar nomination. "Festen" not withstanding, this might also be Vinterberg's best film to date and, as predicted, if does win the Best International Film Oscar it will, indeed, be a worthy winner.

JOE KIDD

 Excellent and certainly underrated Clint Eastwood western, this time directed by John Sturges and designed very much to cash in on the Spaghetti Westerns Eastwood made with Sergio Leone; you only have to look at the credits to see the wealth of talent involved including a screenplay by none other than Elmore Leonard. Clint is the titular "Joe Kidd" who finds himself in the middle of a war between cold-blooded landowner Robert Duvall and a group of Mexicans lead by John Saxon. There's nothing very original about the plot but it gallops through its less than ninety minutes running time and makes for a very entertaining Saturday Afternoon Matinee movie. It's also well cast throughout and boasts some beautiful location photography by the great Bruce Surtees.