Balthazar-5

Let me start by saying that I regard Terrence Malick as the sole currently working director who can be spoken of with the same reverence as that for the great early masters of cinema – Welles, Chaplin, Hitchcock, Renoir (make your own list). Since 'The Tree of Life' - even since 'The New World', I have thought of him as the saviour of modern cinema from the slurry of bland naturalism.

But the enormous stylistic advances in cinematic expression that have characterised his recent works have come at a price, and the price is clarity of vision. We do not necessarily need to *know* what his images represent, but we need to *feel* it. Occasionally in 'The Tree of Life', frequently in 'To the WONDER' and most of the time in 'Knight of Cups' most people would, I suspect, be at a loss to rationally explain the relevance of much of Malick's visual expression. (They don't always 'feel' right, either.)

So (after three viewings) I offer my 'guide' to this enigmatic film. The 'story' (no story) of 'Knight of Cups' is that of a 'celebrity' Rick (Christian Bale) on the loose in Hollywood, who has lost his moral compass and lives a life of total debauchery drifting from one soulless sexual encounter to another in between failed relationships.

This is represented in a kaleidoscopic torrent of imagery reminiscent of the works of Bruce Connor in the 1960s. Bale does the best he can with the central role of Rick, a 'celebrity' in Hollywood, but, like Sean Penn in 'The Tree of Life', he has really drawn the short straw, as he, like Ben Affleck, Penn and Richard Gere before him tries to wordlessly express his response to ambiguous emotional and moral situations.

Malick, to his credit, tells us what the film is about in an opening voice-over, which recounts a story ('Hymn of the Pearl') from Acts of Thomas in the Apocrypha. A king sends his son to search for a pearl in a foreign land. The pearl is to be found in the sea, protected by a hissing serpent, but the prince is seduced by the inhabitants of the foreign country and given a sleeping draft. After he awakes, he has forgotten not only what he came for, but even that he is a prince.

Much of the first half of the film memorably (but not graphically) depicts the life of total decadence that Rick finds in Tinseltown. But this is interspersed with encounters – real or imagined, present or past – with people from his former life – wife, brother, father.

The term 'emotional roller coaster' is often inappropriately used, but here it is very precisely apt, as one has the sense of Rick being propelled down paths he'd rather not take by external forces over which he has lost control. But, for me, at least, this section is too long and suffers from overkill, in the 'when you've seen one, you've seen 'em all' sense.

The rest of the film follows Rick in his attempts to make sense of his life and find 'the pearl', and, to be fair, the film does give the sense of an inexorable move in this direction which aids dramatic tension and gives clarity in some measure. As in 'To the WONDER', with the story of the crisis of faith of the priest, here also there are tangential sections in which compassion is seen as the alter ego of passion, and the place of young children adds positive emotion to an otherwise extremely bleak, if dazzlingly beautiful work.

Yes, Malick's unique visual lyricism is frequently on display, but, I would have to say that it seems less well integrated into the work's thematic thrust than it is in other of his films, but I could be mistaken here and I will be wanting to see it at least four or five more times when it opens in France in a couple of months.

Visually it is, from time to time, spectacular; sometimes Malick's montages are breathtaking, but there are great mysteries here that I have not come near to fathoming even after three viewings. Frequent shots of high-flying passenger jets, fast-moving shots from the front of a car on desert roads and long-held bleak landscapes from Death Valley and environs punctuate the film. It is not difficult to see the 'meaning' that these images carry, but it is difficult to know why they are repeated so often.

If I sound disappointed, I have not deceived, but Malick, with his entire work, has set the bar so high that anything not bordering on masterpiece simply has to be a disappointment. I drove a thousand kilometres to see this film and back again, and I do not regret the time and effort, but this is a desperately difficult work to fathom and, frankly, for me, makes 'To the WONDER' look like a model of clarity.

I see it as the third (and sadly least) in an intensely personal trilogy for Malick. So where next?

At a time when French cinema is at, IMHO, its lowest ebb, with not a single great auteur in sight, I had come to rely on Francis Veber to provide excellence in comedy if of only a not very profound type. After Three Fugitives (both versions) and Le Dîner des Cons (to name just two) his films seemed to be heading into Blake Edwards territory.

But, oh my word!, what a catastrophe is this grotesque. The central character drifts through a series of 'adventures' involving an unpleasant millionaire (Daniel Auteuil) who is cheating on his wife (the fabulous Kristin Scott Thomas) with a model.

The whole thing is flat as a pancake, probably due to the casting of Gad Elmaleh - French cinema's most over-rated actor. This numb-skull drifts through promising scenes but doesn't give what is needed to bring them alive.

This is all the more troubling as, given he is playing the same character (or at least the character with the same name) as the central character in Le Dîner des Cons, François Pignon, One imagines what the magnificent Jacques Villeret could have done in the same rôle, had he not died just before the film went into production.

Woody Allen's career seems to be on the up again. After 'Midnight in Paris and 'Blue Jasmine', 'Magic in the Moonlight' is another delight. Here he sets himself the problem of having a central character who is extremely unpleasant - arrogant, cynical, intolerant and close-minded. How will he win our hearts? The fact that the nasty Stanley is played by handsome, charming Colin Firth, of course, helps. But the actor's talent well convinces us that he is a nightmare on two legs.

Is is left to Sophie (Emma Stone), the lovely medium whom Stanley is trying to debunk, to bring out those limited human qualities that Stanley possesses. This is a gentle 'minor' Woody Allen but all the better for not trying too hard. The film is full of subtleties (and a few belief-stretching coincidences) that come into focus on second viewing. Stylistically, Woody seems to have evolved into late Chaplin, with the camera perfectly placed and unobtrusively expressive.

I think it was during his press conference for 'Excalibur' at Cannes that John Boorman made the observation that his films were the opposite of 'minimalist' in expression. Like Boorman - but even greater in his command of cinema - Josef von Sternberg didn't want to leave anything to the imagination of the audience - it was all there on the screen.

I just saw 'The Scarlett Empress' for the first time in almost forty years (albeit on DVD rather than on the screen) and I saw that, of all directors in this great and glorious art of ours, von Sternberg knew how to fill the screen with expression. His is a cinema of light and shade, of scale and gesture, of visual expression on a grand scale.

The story of Catherine the Great is perfect for Sternberg's hyper- abbreviated style. No messing about here. Catherine has been given a bum steer by the handsome Count Alexei with whom, as a cloistered teenager, she has fallen in love. Her fate is to be married to the imbecile Grand Duke Peter - heir to the Russian throne (Sam Jaffe in an extraordinary debut performance). To triumph over this misfortune, Catherine must use all her charisma and sexual guile.

The rôle of Catherine is perfect for Marlene Dietrich - who, alone in actresses of the Thirties, was, like Marilyn Monroe twenty years later, an irresistible melange of innocence and raw sexuality. It is fascinating to see the way in which Sternberg takes her from wide-eyed ingénue to worldly-wise seductress.

But the acting is only a small part of Sternberg's creative methodology. The real genius (not a word I use very often) in this film is its use of decor - arguably the greatest piece of set design in history - to reflect the great historical forces that were at work in this 18th Century cauldron. Once arrived at the Kremlin, Catherine is surrounded by gargoyles and breath-taking interiors - headed by the jaw-dropping enormous throne of the Imperial court formed as a menacing double-headed eagle.

The Art Direction was done by the noted German Expressionist Art Director Hans Dreier, but Sternberg was noted for having a grip of iron over every part of his productions in this era, so I think we can give him the credit for this amazing piece of visual expression.

No matter - whoever takes the credit, it is magnificent. The film ranks with 'Shanghai Express' as one of Sternberg's greatest achievements and a monument to creativity in studio cinema of the 1930s.

Though I am not a Bat-person, and do not wish to become one, I have admired Christopher Nolan for his early films and 'Inception', though, with the exception of 'Insomnia', I always regarded them as, in the immortal words of Andrew Sarris 'less than meets the eye'. I do not like to call films pretentious, but with 'Memento' and 'Inception' the word certainly came to mind. They seemed shallow pretending to be deep.

The same is, in my opinion, certainly true of 'Interstellar'. Yes, it carries you along for a ride, and yes the special effects are great, and yes, it might give us pause to think what will, in fact, be the destiny of our species. But, my dear Mr Nolan, surely you must realise that our species will not survive by planting American flags on distant planets. And, like 'Gravity' before it, the search for a happy ending has totally destroyed any shred of credibility of what might have gone before. The image of Cooper floating around Saturn without his spaceship, waiting to be picked up by a passing probe (just before his oxygen runs out, of course) is so ridiculous that if Stanley Kubrick were to be told that it is a respectful reference to the 'starchild' at the end of '2001', he'd punch you in the nose.

'Interstellar' - for all of its attempts to incorporate relativistic time dilation and very clever (I do not use that word in a derogatory sense) visual representation of multi-dimensional string theory towards the end, is void of any real cultural insight.

The film simply extends 'The Wizard of Oz' into the space age and decides at the end that there is really somewhere better than home. It is TOSH! Great films tell us something memorable about the human condition, or the nature of cinema itself. This film, for all its quotes from Dylan Thomas does neither. It is for people who think that the word 'awesome' has some profound meaning and not, as is the case, an excuse for not finding a more appropriate and restrained reaction.

Any suggestion that it deserves a Best Picture Oscar is a sad comment on the way that those awards have become debased in recent years.

As a passionate cinephile I get intensely annoyed when modern directors steal the ideas, situations etc., from great, and even not so great films from the past. 'Signs' is, in effect, little more than 'War of the Worlds' re-couched in a family environment that is reminiscent of 'The Birds' with a splash of 'The Wizard of Oz' thrown in. One has the idea that M Night Shymalan might claim that is film is some kind of homage to these films, but that is nonsense. It is a load of tosh (English slang for rubbish), that is interesting, up to a point, all the time it is 'about' crop circles, and disintegrates into ridicule when it becomes an apocalyptic vision. 'The Sixth Sense' was clever, well-constructed and thoughtful. This film is none of those.

It's funny how, sometimes, one has to see a minor film by a great director to really understand the essence of their art. 'The Lady Vanishes', for example, is minor Hitchcock of his late British period, but it reflects the joy that he had found in turning expectations inside out and directing the eyes of the audience through camera and character movement.

A few weeks ago I bought a box set of the last eight films of Kenji Mizoguchi, and I am finally getting round to watching them. Of all major film directors, Mizoguchi is the one whose work I know least – I had only seen two of his films (albeit two great masterpieces – 'Ugetsu Monogatari' and 'The Life of O-Haru').

From those two films, I thought of the director as a great weaver of mystical tales and adherent of tracking shots, both of which are fine as far as they go, but perhaps limiting in films of lesser stature. However, taking the films in this set chronologically, I encountered first 'Oyu-sama' - a tragic melodrama about the forbidden love of a young middle-aged artisan for a widow of higher social station in turn of the century Japan.

In spite of being toted as a minor work, it impressed immediately with two aspects: first the painterly precision of the film's early rural exteriors that closely resembled, structurally, several major Japanese artists – with nested planes of activity and visual interest drawing the spectator's eye irrevocably towards the focus of dramatic interest. The second and more important quality was that of the precision and the exquisite expression of the mise en scène.

The story revolves around the mistake made by the central male character, Shinnosuke, when being introduced to a potential wife. He sees from 'afar' the party of young women and falls for the elder, widowed, sister (Oye) instead of the bride on offer (Shizu). This is brilliantly managed by Mizoguchi by following the party of women in several long-shots largely from Shinnosuke's point of view, where Oyu takes the lead and Shizu is totally occluded by the other women. It sounds contrived, but in the context of Shinnosuke's ignorance and eagerness it fits the situation perfectly.

As the film progresses, the precision of the mise en scène becomes even finer. There is a scene late on in the film when Shizu is undergoing a personal crisis in her marriage and she runs out of the house onto the beach to free herself from her woes. Oye follows to comfort her, but Mizoguchi places the camera to show this as a pursuit with Shizu as running away from Oye – and, dramatically, that is exactly what is happening, even though Shizu is trying to conceal it.

It is said that Mizoguchi was unhappy with the film, partly because the studio insisted on a linear narrative even though the novel on which it is based and the original script were structured as three long flashbacks. But there is enough complexity and resonance in the film to make it a valuable part of the director's work.

The well-known film that this most resembles, in my view is Renoir's 'Une Partie de Campagne', with which it shares a moving account of the way in which social conventions can devastate the lives of those who love unconventionally. It doesn't have the lyricism nor humour of Renoir's little masterpiece, but it does illuminate the film-maker's art as mentioned above and, through its modest achievements, show Mizoguchi to be the great director that his reputation announces.

Don't get me wrong, it's not worthless, but like 'Children of Men' and unlike 'Y Tu Mama Tambien' it fails at a simple level of being convincing over it's entire length. I really don't mind when films make scientific gaffes, but this film simply changes situations that it has, itself defined when they prevent arriving at an artificial and totally improbable happy ending.

When one exits form a cinema and reflects on the film, one shouldn't feel cheated at a level of logic, with spectacular technical effects being used to mask the logical inconsistencies. The use of the fire extinguisher was clever, however. For some cheap temporary thrills and a glimpse into the psychology of astronauts, fine, for anything else, forget it.

I wasn't one of those that found District 9 original and compelling, but it was, for certain, much more original and compelling than this nonsense.

I know only too well that Hollywood studios look for the formulaic as films made to a 'successful' (ie financially rather than culturally successful) formula are less risky than those 'on the hoof' so to speak. But one would have thought that someone, someone along the line would have said 'Hey, wait a minute' this is just a re-working of bits of 'Avatar', or 'Aren't we in 'Children of Men' territory? or 'Hey this is treading on the toes of 'Metropolis' etc.

OK, to use are moderate, mediocre or great (respectively) film as a launch-pad for a new work can be justified, but 'Elysium' doesn't even seem to bother to conceal the origins of its 'inspiration'.

And there's the rub (Hamlet), the film uses thematic and structural cast-offs to hide the fact that it actually lacks its own inspiration.

The first fifteen or twenty minutes of the film is engaging enough, but thereafter its lack of originality, for me, at least, became increasingly irritating, as did its clumsy ways of papering over plot holes.

Along with the undigested 'references', the characterisations are weak as well, with the arrival of that cliché of clichés.... the sick little girl. Pur-leeeeeease!

And, oh, yes, ignoring the laws of physics is a dangerous game... 'open to space' space stations can NOT have breathable atmospheres.....

First, I must say that I am not an enthusiast of horror films, and that many of Brian Yuzna's subsequent films I find by turns stupid and vomit- inducing, but... this is, in my book, close to a masterpiece.

What do we have here? A full-blown assault on masonic (and other) corruption. Bill (Billy Warlock) lives in a very upper class neighbourhood close to some LA-like city. But Bill feels 'different'. In the course of the film, he finds that maybe it's not himself who is different, it is everyone around him.

What 'Society' is saying is that to get on, one has to be corrupt. That is as subversive a theme as one can find in all but a handful of modern films.

The film is truly, truly and gloriously shocking. Do yourself a favour, get shocked.

I have just watched this little gem for the first time since my childhood. Of course then, I didn't know much about classic cinema, it was just a ripping good yarn with funny and pointed dialogue.

With the benefit of a life in cinema behind me, it is much, much better than I remember. Think somewhere midway between 'The Lady Vanishes' and Ford's 'Stagecoach'. Perhaps this should not be so surprising as the writer of the original screenplay from which this is adapted is Frank Nugent, scenarist of 'Fort Apache', 'She Wore a Yellow Ribbon' and other classic, if less apposite John Ford films.

So from Nugent comes the 'army against the Indians' and from the very British situation come the characters who could easily have stepped out of a Hitchcock comedy. In fact there is a moment in the film which is almost identical to a moment in 'Lady Vanishes'. Kenneth More is handing out the guns and the lovable English colonialist, Bridie (Wilfred Hyde White perfectly cast)reluctantly takes one, and then admits that he once won something in a fairground.

This is almost identical to the scene towards the end of 'The Lady Vanishes' when, again, the guns are being handed out and Naunton Wayne, as Caldicott admits to having won something at a fairground.

Of course, J Lee Thompson is not Hitchcock, so there are some lesser moments, but really this is so much better than so much of the hyperbolic tedium of modern cinema.

There is a lot more in this than one would either hope or expect. It's funny too!

Some people say that film is like a language, but that is not exactly right, it is like language itself, and just as there are different languages, there are different cinemas. It seems to me that, in his last two films, Terrence Malick has been creating a very special type of cinema, that had hitherto existed only in an embryonic form. While most films have maybe 50-100 scenes, replete with dialogue and action, Malick's new cinema (MNC) has over twice that number of scenes, but they are fragmentary and consist of only the essence of meaning that was in a scene that would normally have been much longer. This can be sometimes several minutes or only a couple of brief shots.

Last evening I drove the 25 miles to see the early performance of 'To the Wonder'. I did that with the intention of returning to write this review while the film was still fresh in my mind. But after it I was so drained that I couldn't write a summary, let alone a review. At the current (late) stage in my life, what interests me most about the cinema is its limits. How far can the cinema go, and what exactly is a film?

Given the above, Terrence Malick is evidently the man for me, and I am convinced that 'The Tree of Life' is among the five greatest works of this greatest of the arts. So, after a masterpiece 30 years in the gestation and three + in the creation, how would Malick fare with a film relatively thrown together in a year or so?

On the face of it, this is a story of the relationship which starts in Paris between an American (environmentalist?), Neil, and an otherworldly French woman (Marina). When they return to mid-west America, Marina suffers from a sense of dislocation made greater when he daughter decides to go and live with her father in France.

But Malick seems much less interested in the *events* which he depicts than in expressing the feelings of the characters. Just the same way that 'The Tree of Life' was an *impression* of childhood, rather than the story of a childhood, 'To the Wonder' is an impression of a love affair, rather than its story. This is cinema infused in every shot with Heidegger's *dasein*. The logic of Malick's cinema is to *perfectly* catch the moment, and in doing so extract the truth of the experience. Hence, for Malick, a film story, is simply an assembly of 'essences'. These essences stay in the mind to thrill and haunt us.

There have been other examples of great filmmakers who have made films exploring the cinema's intimate connection with mental processes - Resnais and Bunuel come immediately to mind. But with Malick, it seems, the cinema's similarity to the mental processes of memory, dream and conjecture, have ignited a wildfire of creativity that has advanced the film art at a greater pace than has occurred since the sixties.

Here I have to admit to being only at the beginning of being able to appreciate what seems to be dizzying complexities in the film. My French is not up to totally understanding much of Marina's dialogue which, as I am in France, was not translated in the subtitles, so I am sure I have missed an entire dimension of the film. But Olga Kurylenko's performance is so magnificent, that this 'comprehension gap' didn't seem a problem.

Then there is the obvious question of the film's theme. Love, the very 'different' nature of women, dislocation in the physical, emotional and cultural senses - these are all up there writ large. But they are mixed with a nagging worry that, to return to my earlier concern, Malick has stretched the cinema to its limits, but sometimes, maybe beyond them. I do not think of myself as stupid, but I found great difficulty in grasping the relevance of certain shots or scenes. I rest convinced, however that this is another example of a film that it is necessary to watch dozens of times to find all of the poetic and meaningful connections.

I have great sympathy with those who go to the cinema wanting to be told a great story in the clearest manner possible. That is honourable and reasonable, but it is not the only experience that the cinema, this great and wonderful art of the cinema, can give. And it is certainly NOT the case that films that don't take the more prosaic approach are pretentious, meaningless or boring. 'To the Wonder' is to popular cinema what lyric poetry is to airport novels. So, if that is all you are looking for, it is best to avoid Malick's film.

But for those of us who know that beyond the sky is the limit for great cinema, Malick and MNC is the route to the stars, and 'To the Wonder' is a step, if a somewhat halting one, along that route.

As some other reviewers have noted, this production of one of Shakespeare's longest plays is very much 'enclosed' and presented on an abstract set. It is, for me , futile and irrelevant to speculate whether this was a creative or financial decision, but it does not invalidate the film. What we are getting is a record of a production of Henry VI Pt1 not a film of the events of the same play in 'real' locations.

For me, the production is a real curate's egg, but before commenting on that, I want to make a few observations about the play itself. In most of Shakespeare's plays there is a main driving narrative into which the Bard weaves his unique and wonderful insights into the human condition. This - apparently very early work (ascribed to ~ 1592), there is a melange of interlocking 'stories', and, structurally it seems more like, for example, 'Hannah and her Sisters' - that is a treatise on the inter- relatedness of things. It was hence written several years before the better-known and more celebrated Henry V, and in it's denouement, it is not so very different - with the King finally marrying a French princess to join the two nations in harmony (although it, and they, didn't).

It seems that scholars now regard this play as a collaborative work to which Shakespeare contributed but did not dominate. I was, nonetheless hugely impressed with the way in which the various narrative threads are joined together, and there are several exquisite scenes. In spite of the representation of Henry VI himself as weak and effeminate, his scenes ring with gentle wisdom in their optimism. By contrast, there is real venom in the scenes between Winchester and Gloucester. But the real jewel is the key scene (Act 4 Sc 5) in which Lord Talbot/Earl of Shrewsbury's son John comes to the aid of his father in an impossible military situation. Their dialogue on the place of valour and protective love of father for son is immensely moving and full of irony and the kind of insight into the human condition that we come to expect from Shakespeare.

So what of the production itself? Stylistically, is is virtually flat, with just the occasional close up for asides to break the sense that the director wanted to do no more than show the production 'from the front row'. So, ultimately, it stands and falls on the characterisations, the acting and the mise en scene. Trevor Peacock makes a creditable Talbot, Frank Middlemass is suitably venomous as Winchester/Cardinal Beaufort, David Burke makes a fine Gloucester/Lord Protector, and Bernard Hill is suitably Machiavellian as the Duke of York.

Clearly the casting of Peter Benson as Henry VI himself is controversial, to say the least. But this is difficult as the play presents events that take place over a 15+ year period during which Henry ages from 8 years old to at least 25. Benson would have been nearly 40 at the time of the production so we can only really regard his characterisation as 'symbolic'. And for me, at least, it works very well.

The French characters fare less well... Charles the Dauphin is all smirks and smiles, but carries no weight. Worse - indeed the major weakness for me is Brenda Blethyn's Joan la Pucelle (Joan of Arc) who is saddled with a ridiculous Yorkshire accent. But, in a way, she is written as a sort of pantomime villainess, and only comes alive at the hour of her death.

As long as one doesn't compare the production with the great Welles Shakespeare adaptations or suchlike, this Henry VI Pt 1 works fine. But it isn't cinema....

Maidens is a type of film I usually hate - feminist, happy-clappy, holistic... di-da-di-da. But it is , by turns, fascinating, intriguing, enlightening, lyrical, profoundly moving and ultimately euphoric. It reminds me, in a strange way of another 'documentary' - 'The Ballad of Crowfoot'. It preaches, yes, but in a celebratory not a censorious, way. In a year (2011/12) when the cinema has seen, in 'The Tree of Life' a masterpiece - the masterpiece of my life - based on the simple question 'who am I' and, by extension - of the audience, who are you?, this film with so little resources and in a quiet and unpretentious way, asks the same question. It is not only for women, nor only for new-age liberals, it is a wonderful reflection on the way that one's ancestors, knowingly or unknowingly shape one's life. Thank you Jeni Thornley.

Carnage is, in many ways, a companion piece to his other major play adaptation, 'Death and the Maiden', based on the work by Ariel Dorfman. The two works also share a common situation of two people/groups at loggerheads over an issue which at first seems cut and dried, but gradually unravels as tempers start to fray. Add to that the noticeable similarity between the characters played by Jodie Foster here and Sigourney Weaver in the earlier film, and Polanski does rather seem to be repeating himself. That having been said, Carnage has plenty of things going for it - especially a truly vicious sense of humour that allows us to squeal with laughter as these two appallingly mismatched couples gradually lose their sang froid while attempting to come to some agreement over how to deal with the injury that one of their sons caused to the son of the other pair. Polanski delights in taking sideswipes at several idiocies of modern life, and the tyranny of mobile phones in particular. It is interesting also to reflect on the similarities to some of the director's earliest films - 'Cul de Sac', for example, which features two couples equally as bonkers as those in this film. Worth going out to see, but not the scale and ambition that one hopes for from Polanski but the ironic coda is magnificent.

The first thing to say about 'The Tree of Life' is that it is ESSENTIAL VIEWING for anyone who believes that the cinema is a great art, and an early front-runner for 'Film of the Decade'. I first heard about this project in the early 80s when the film world was awash with rumours that Malick had a project that was 'Cosmic, too cosmic even for Hollywood' (John Sayles). And, being a number one fan of Malick's magical realism, I have been metaphorically holding my breath ever since.

Normally, in describing a film one says this is the story of... da da da da. But this film is NOT a story in any but the crudest sense of the word. It is an impression... an impression of a childhood - perhaps Malick's own childhood, which becomes, through Malick's poetry, an impression of childhood itself... of being tactile, of feeling the love of one's parents, of experiencing the arrival of a sibling, of learning to walk... of a thousand things that we take for granted, but are wonderful and shape us more than we can imagine. It is by far the most brilliant evocation of rural childhood that, as far as I can remember, the cinema has ever given us.

This is a film of gesture and movement, of happiness and insecurity, of learning to love and learning to fear. It is unlike any commercial film I have ever seen.... it is as if Stan Brakhage had been given a $100 million budget. The trouble is that Malick may have been too uncompromising. Many, perhaps, sadly, most, of the film-going public, in my experience, find abstraction in films difficult. This is the most abstract film most of them will probably ever see... but it's wonderful and moving and visually stunning. So the question is will they stick with it. With immense sadness, I have to say that I have my doubts.

The much vaunted 'history of the universe' sequence is stunning and is like a poetic editing of all of the most stunning images from science documentaries. It adds even more gravitas to a film that is as philosophically weighty as it is visually impressive. Douglas Trumbull was a special effects consultant and many might immediately think of comparing this sequence with the 'Stargate' climax of 2001: A Space Odyssey.

The film's philosophical/metaphysical weight rests, to some large extent on its deeply ingrained spirituality. Of course, this aspect has been there from the beginning with Malick, but here it is much more up-front. The film charts the paths of a family of characters. In the mother's opening line of dialogue she recounts how 'The nuns told us that there are two ways through life, the way of Nature and the way of Grace.' In the film, the characters show how much the difference between these two paths influences the personalities of the characters and the lives that they lead.

Because of this, it has a profound religious sense but without trace of piety or sentimentality. And if, like me, religion is not your thing, don't worry, the film's wonders do not require belief to reveal themselves.

There remains to be said a few words on Malick's stylistic approach. All of his films are incredibly visually rich, 'The Tree of Life' is no exception. But more important even than this is that large sections of 'The Tree of Life' are made in the magical style that he monumentalised in the two 'abstract' sections of 'The New World' - the love affair between Capt Smith & Pocahontas and the amazing final 20 minutes of the film covering her death. It is this fusion of magnificent meaningful imagery and musical montage that lifts this work to levels barely conceived of by most filmmakers.

'The Tree of Life', for all its wonders, is certainly not perfect as it seems again that Malick's dislike for dialogue has become a thorn in his side, as it was for 'Days of Heaven' and we get some embarrassing pauses as characters wordlessly confront one another or stare meaningfully into the void. It is not the matchless masterpiece to challenge 'Citizen Kane' that I was secretly hoping for, but it is wondrous and moving and unforgettable, a staggering piece of cinema that gives the impression of being immensely more meaningful than it appears at first sight... one just needs to put all of the pieces together... not in the narrative sense, for there is barely any narrative, but connecting up Malick's, 'universal' vision with the images of childhood that he presents. An example here is the confrontation between the two dinosaurs that has a resonance with the relationship between young Jack and his father.

All in all, this is one of those films, where it is more important to let one's psyche experience the incredible richness of the film's emotions, than to try to understand it intellectually - at first viewing, at any rate! (And I am sure that Malick would concur about the experience versus understanding conundrum.)

Finally... it is a very, very good idea to watch 'The New World' immediately before seeing 'The Tree of Life' - on DVD or VOD (if it is not being shown locally by some insightful cinema) because, stylistically, it puts you in the 'right groove' to appreciate Malick's cinematic expression... perhaps THE wonder of modern cinema.

Though I have loved watching Shakespeare plays both in the theatre and on film, I rarely watch them on TV. Just a few months ago, I decided to buy the BBC Shakespeare DVDs and watch the Bard's entire works in a systematic way (with the tome of the RSC Shakespeare at my side). So this is the first, as I have decided to watch the history plays chronologically (by history) before going on to the comedies and tragedies.

From my RSC Shakespeare I learn that, in the early 17th Century, this play was regarded as one of Shakespeare's finest... more so than Hamlet, for example. How times change. Perhaps it is because of the way in which the body politic has changed so much that the petty squabbles of nations seem tawdry these days.

It seems to me that this play (full title 'The Life & Death of King John') is subtler and more interesting than other reviewers have suggested. The subject is, in essence, the nature of 'kingship' and the qualities that it requires, and the nature of 'legitimacy' in that and other respects. The uncertain legitimacy of the seat of King John on the throne of England is brilliantly echoed in the somewhat prefatory scene in which John is required to make judgement on the claim of the younger son of Philip 'the Bastard' to be his father's heir. John, as portrayed by Leonard Rossiter (and written by Shakespeare) is a vacillating, self-serving knave, lacking confidence, but seeking to fulfil his royal charge. There are interesting parallels drawn, as well between the role of the Pope in the affairs of England in this epoch and that at the time of the Spanish Armada. Shakespeare being Shakespeare, in spite of the certain impression that the Papal legate is meddling where he shouldn't, he is no cardboard cut-out villain, and shown, finally, to be powerless.

It is certainly the case the 'the Bastard' has many of the best lines, and it is tempting to conclude that he represents, for Shakespeare, the innate nobility of the English people. But it is somewhat disturbing to think of the moral implications of one of his most memorable couplets...

'Bell, book and candle shall not drive me back

When gold and silver becks me to come on.'

Is Shakespeare really saying that money and not conscience should be the sole rationale for action?

As 'The Bastard' George Costigan is fine, but an actor of the quality of James McAvoy or Tobey Maguire is really required for this role 'on film'. The disappointment for me was Claire Bloom. Pace other contributors, I do not consider her part 'unactable' - indeed Constance is arguably the strongest part in the play, but she doesn't strike the right balance between displaying emotion and speaking the lines - preferring the elegance of Shakespeares words to the force with which they demand to be spoken. On this occasion the iambic pentameter is not the most important thing. I blame here the director more than the actress, as several of her speeches *demand* close-ups and we get none.

But this is simply carping perhaps, I would not dissuade any lover of Shakespeare from watching this fascinating production.

Best of all is the most harrowing scene in the play where Hubert is about to gouge out the eyes of the unfortunate young Prince Arthur.

Hubert: If I talk to him, with his innocent prate / He will awake my mercy which lies dead

Forget all these plethora of films about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Bard here trumps every other shot at defining the relation between the torturer and the tortured. (But we wouldn't, realistically, expect anything else, would we?)

Finally, one might ask why, in spite of my enthusiasm, the work gets only six stars... it is simply that there is precious little attempt to illuminate Shakespeare's moral ambiguities with visual expression. Olivier 'Henry V', yes, but that had Agincourt as a coda, and Olivier's camera placement was immensely more articulate than is the case here. And, of course, we are not in the same universe as Welles' sublime expressions of Shakespeare on film.

While being a great enthusiast of French cinema, I hadn't heard of Francis Veber when I saw this magnificent comedy in 1989. Unfortunately his wonderful films were never released in the UK, until 'Le Dîner des Cons'. So I came to it fresh... and WOW. Here we have Nick Nolte in a perfect role as the tough former bank robber and Martin Short as the perfect nerdish but determined sidekick. The opening bank robbery sequence, that sets up the film is magnificent and hilarious. The sub-plot involving the little girl is sweet and moving - almost worthy of Chaplin. The loopy vet is amazing and one of his scenes had me crawling on the floor with laughter. I could start analysing the structure or the mise en scène, but such sophistry is irrelevant - just see it and laugh out loud like you will rarely have done so before. (Amazingly I haven't seen the original with Depardieu and Pierre Richard... why don't they release a subtitled version?????)

Nothing that Woody Allen does in the rest of his career is going to alter that fact that he will be regarded as one of the greatest American directors of all time - one of a mere handful who have presented a unique world-view in their films.... However, our wonderful, wonderful Woody has seemed to be on a decline for some time... certainly since 'Deconstructing Harry' and perhaps before...

And yet every new Woody movie contains real insight into the human condition, it's just that he doesn't seem to be bothered to wrap them up in the near perfect packages that we saw in 'Manhattan', 'Hannah' and 'Crimes and Misdemeanors'.

Here we have a case in point. Love and responsibility is the subject - it is in all of Woody's best films. Vicky is conventional and reserved, Cristina is flighty and adventurous... But hey! Cupid can soon start turning things around...

It was one of the great disappointments of the latter half of Fellini's career that, for the most part - even just after 'Giulietta degli Spiriti' - he seemed to forget about the rigour of script-writing and narrative expression. It was as if her was saying 'people will come to see a Fellini film even if I don't bother my head too much.' It was the same with Godard - only for very different reasons. I wonder if, perhaps, Woody has got tired of all of the effort needed to hone his ideas into the near-perfect packages of earlier times. It could be that the title of his new film 'Whatever Works' - is a signal that the search for perfection has been replaced for the search for 'whatever works'.

As has been noted in an interesting thread on the board for this film, one of the main problems with this film is the narration. This is strange, as Woody can turn voice-over narration into pure gold (think of his poignant narration for 'Annie Hall'), perhaps, the real problem is that it isn't Woody who is narrating... it is some faceless narrator with a smug voice.

For me Woody is the comic Shakespeare of our age. I do so hope that he has a 'Winter's Tale' or a 'The Tempest' left in him... Regrettably this isn't it... even though it knocks spots off the awful 'Cassandra's Dream'.

As an undemanding way to spend a couple of hours, I have no objection to this film at all, and, yes, it has some fun dialogue and 'clever' moments.

But it is the need to put the word 'clever' in quotation marks that is the painful part. It has happened at least once before - in 'A Bug's Life', which must have had Kurosawa spinning in his grave. Here we have a film that shamelessly plagiarises a great film - 'The Wizard of Oz'.

No? Post-pubescent child is under threat and put upon. During a hazardous escapade he/she is injured and, in his/her mind taken away to a magical kingdom where he/she will need the help of some of its inhabitants (who bear an uncanny resemblance to persons in the real world). There he/she will have to overcome the evil machinations of a sorcerer/ess before realising that all he/she wants to do is to go home, ('I just want to go home/There's no place like home') where he/she will be a much wiser person.

Will the representatives of Frank Baum's estate, or MGM or whoever, please sue the insides out of these people. Pure and wonderful films/stories like 'The Wizard of Oz' should not be stolen and distorted to make crass rubbish such as this. It is an abomination.

Message to John Fusco (the 'writer')... if you are so unoriginal and incompetent that you have to steal the themes and structures of great films, find another job! I note in his biography that he dropped out of high school. It figures.

Marco Ferreri, during this era, made several films that had highly ambiguous endings, where optimism and pessimism were both raised to great heights and made barely distinguishable one from another. Previously he has made 'Ciao Maschio' (Bye-Bye Monkey) which left Jane Fonda sitting on the beach with a new baby looking at the ruins of her life.

Here Ferreri is in less iconoclastic mood, but still the ironies pile up to a heart-stopping finale. What this film asks is the agonising question 'Do we, by educating children, remove from them that which makes them wonderful?' Of course, there is more than that, but, when push comes to shove, that is what the film is about.

There may be a more Jungian film, but I don't know of it. Here we have 'liberal' primary school teacher Roberto (Bengini) on a collision course with the 'authorities'. We have a bunch of, possibly autistic, children and we have the wondrous mother earth of Dominique Laffin (Isabella), who, as far as I am concerned was the greatest screen siren since Marilyn Monroe. (How sad that she died before the world recognised her beauty and talent.) As Roberto and Isabella coalesce, procreate and 'rescue' these damaged little souls, Ferreri asks some huge questions about existence, evolution and our place in the universe. In the final shot, as Roberto carries his loved but irreparably damaged charge into the unforgiving sea, we see this tragic drama through the eyes of a caged frog. There are few films that I think I can't really get my head around, but this is certainly one of them!

I first saw '42nd Street' at a film society viewing session when I was 18. At that age I was very cynical, but still this amazing work swept me off my feet. Now I am less cynical and I can see it to be one of the cinema's finest gems.

This is a film in which it is really difficult to trace who should get the credit. Based on a novel by a writer whose subsequent work was unremarkable to say the least, its two scenarists wrote little else of note. Lloyd Bacon was a perfectly competent director, but he made nothing to compare with this little wonder. And Busby Berkeley? Well, one can hardly credit him with anything much beyond the dance numbers.

But it doesn't really matter. The characters are magnificent. Julian Marsh is the very essence of an ageing director - tetchy, insecure. Peggy Sawyer is a fabulous 'everygirl' plucked from obscurity by a chance miscalculation. Billy Lawlor is the perfect 'juvenile' lead and 'Anytime' Annie is hilarious in her unbridled nastiness and duplicity. Then there are the money men - Abner Dillon - leering at the legs of the chorus girls 'They've got faces too, you know!' says Barry... And Jones and Barry - they have some wonderful lines... 'His interest is our principal!' Every one of the actors inhabiting those roles makes them into archetypes that have remained valid to this day.

And of course, Marsh's 'you got to come back a star' speech is one of the high-points of American cinema.

Perhaps the dance numbers in 'Dames' were better, but for me this is the finest of the early (pre-Astaire-Rogers) musicals. If you have ten musicals to take with you to a desert island, you'd be a fool not to include this one.

Godard made '2 ou 3 Choses...' more or less at the peak of his creativity. It was also made 'at the same time' as 'Made in USA'. The latter film is, for me, the beginning of the end of Godard as a major contributor to cinema, This, on the other hand, seems to be quite wonderful.

Godard had always been interested in 'prostitution', literally and metaphorically. Here he monumentalises his theme. Juliette Jeanson is a fabulous intensely feminine creation, magnificently played by Marina Vlady. Augmenting her housekeeping money by prostitution as a rather more down-market version of 'Belle de Jour', she muses about her life and its meaning.

This is a film in which it is not the 'plot' or the 'narrative' or even the dialogue that conveys meaning, it is the counterpoint between the images, the dialogue and the situation. This is massively enhanced by the director's use of his own voice as a kind of commentary. 'Shall I speak of Juliette or the leaves on the trees...' etc.

In a way, the film is also an essay on subjectivity and the way that people are treated as objects in certain aspects of capitalism. I hasten to add that I do not swallow Godard's uncritical Marxism, but there is quite enough in this film to make you think long and hard about modern society - today just as much as when it was made.

But the great thing about the film is that it is not just an intellectual exercise, less a piece of unthinking propaganda. It is a film with a heart and Juliette is one of the most lovable female characters in 60s French cinema.

The downside for the here and now is that, of all of the serious films of its era, this is arguably the one that least fits on a television. The Techniscope seems to be the widest image that the cinema allows and trim anything from the edges of Godard's images at your peril. So the trick is to see it in a cinema!

Sometimes the market doesn't work. In theory, if a film-maker shows himself to be incredibly talented, some producer snaps him up and provides the resources to make a film that will in turn make a financial impact on the market etc., etc.

Here we have the most talented Irish director since Neil Jordan - without ANY question. He has made two short films that have made everything around them look flat. Both have won prizes, but still he hasn't had the opportunity to make something worthy of his immense talents.

'The Sound of People' is an extraordinary work. It takes a tiny moment in he life of a young man and expands it - using a kind of visual stream of consciousness that has happened elsewhere in the cinema (say the last minute or so of 'American Beauty', or the sensational last five minutes of 'The New World'). Yes, it is Malick-like in style and structure but not in content.

It is philosophical - a meditation on life and death and what separates the two - and yet it is also quite down to earth, as the ideas that it examines have probably occurred to many or most of the people who watch it. In a strange way, it is also literary. A visualisation of something that Joyce or Beckett might have written. But then again it is painterly - using the ever-changing patterns on the surface of a swimming pool to suggest what cannot be seen. But most of all it is cinematic - doing spectacularly and brilliantly what only the cinema can do - to see the world in a new light. One imagines Fitzmaurice repeating the famous words of D W Griffith - 'What, above all else, I am trying to do is to make you see.' And he does.

Message loud and clear to the film industry - DON'T LET THIS TALENT GO TO WASTE!!!

This film demonstrates the depths to which the documentary medium has sunk. Documentaries should be about exposing emotional and/or socio-political truth through reality. In the same way that it was Welles' tragedy to make 'Citizen Kane' as his first film, it is the documentary genre's tragedy that it was effectively created through 'Nanook of the North'. For many years, documentarists tried to keep pace with Flaherty, or, like Dziga Vertov, create an albeit inferior alternative.

Eventually, they gave up and succumbed to the talking head as the purveyor of truth. The only thing talking heads purvey is words, and words are not the prime medium of expression in cinema.

'Billy the Kid' the film is as sad a case as Billy the Kid the person. The film relies on obsessive immediacy in the same way that Billy relies on obsessive subjectivity. There is not, as far as I can remember, one time in the film where anything is communicated by the placement of the camera or the arrangement of the content of the frame.

With Flaherty, it is completely the reverse, it is difficult to find images that are not primarily giving us truth through the placement of the camera. Of course Flaherty *arranged* his films, he scripted them and they were 'acted', not made 'on the hoof'. But there is more emotional, and ontological truth in every scene in Flaherty's work than in the whole of 'Billy the Kid' and a hundred nonentities like it.

The film doesn't even try to be visually expressive. It is television and it has the same relation to the art of the cinema as an average magazine article has to the art of literature.