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Also showing at the Barbican is Francois Ozon's romantic socialist 'musical' Potiche- set in 1977 (adapted from the 70s play by Pierre Barillet and Jean-Pierre Gredy). Ozon deserves an entire article to describe his idiosyncratic cinematic style that always has seemed to divide critics. But it'd be hard for anyone not to succumb to the charms of Potiche ('trophy wife' colloquial in French). Suzanne (Catherine Deneuve) was the catch for Robert (Fabrice Luchini) who ruthlessly took charge of the umbrella factory his new wife had inherited from her father. Union troubles are now afoot reducing Robert to a sick bed yet allowing Suzanne (formerly only the "Queen of kitchen appliances" in Robert's eyes) to flower as a trouble-shooting honey-bee. She buzzes over to an old-flame who just happens to be the town's Communist mayor Babin (Gérard Depardieu) and all becomes well again (no pollination required just the batting of wings). With the current problems of European socialism (let alone the old Communists hanging in there for dear life) it's an incredibly apposite film. "These days the personal is political" says one character, and Ozon's great skill is never allowing his subject matter to be trivialised by his flamboyant cine-style. Rather it is elevated from the mundane weary path to a plateau of human happiness.

Incendies directed by one of Canada's most respected directors Denis Villeneuve was also based on a play (Wajdi Mouawad). This long winding tale of two twins who must retrace their family past returning to the Lebanon after reading their mother's will could so easily have run itself down into a bog over 131 minutes - and the "17 different factions with alliances and betrayals of a baffling complexity for neophytes," said Villeneuve who makes no attempt to elucidate those details. What the film does is hit you in the chest slamming one against the wall in helpless rage and anger leaving us to quietly contemplate the importance of our actions in the world. Ostensibly the twins' mother is presented as a martyr. But is she really any more noble than anyone else fighting their cause asks the film? If anything, it is the nurse who delivered and saved the babies who deserves nobility. At times one almost fears that the music score of Grégoire Hetzel even singing 'Mensch' might swamp the film but Villeneuve and his team have created such a 'Guernica' canvas no element seems out of place nor out of time.

Hong Kong director Johnnie To with Sparrow "wanted to make a light-hearted musical" in the vein of Jacques Demy's Umbrellas of Cherbourg. "[I even chose] a French composer [so it wasn't] a typical Johnnie To macho film." Mr.To's company Milkyway is a shining example showing that indyfilmmaking can indeed make money and give one independence. To isn't simply an 'action movie' director: "a man who knows how to use a gun does not shoot in a haphazard way. Each shot must make sense. Each bullet is important. Thanks to this attitude my gunmen are similiar to the swoerdsmen of the past," he explains on the 1hour feature included in this special 3-DVD box set that includes a soundtrack disc and interviews with all his actors.

Ivan Passer's 1981 Cutter's Way is re-released in a new digital print as part of the BFI's Jeff Bridges season. You can read all about the film's distribution trials and tribulations on the web and for many cineastes it's on their Top 10 list. Based on a novel, the film's laconic tone is similar to Chinatown. "The routine grind drives me to drink. Tragedy I take straight," says Alex Cutter, a Vietnam War amputee vet who finds renewed vigour in mounting a 'Don Quixote' quest to reveal Santa Barbara's richest man as the murderer of a teenage girl. What film buffs treasure in this film is probably it's lack of any genre self-conciousness -it seems to meander like a river but its tide can be leathal as is the beauty of its many placid coves. Jack Nitzsche (of the Rolling Stones Performance soundtrack) provides a glass harmonica, zither, strings score that is a collectors' item. These days you'd have to go independent to make a film that anywhere near approaches the subtlety in every aspect of Cutter's Way.

Optimum continue the battle to keep DVD alive (many of the titles you'd happily see in the cinema again if only they ever were shown). This month sees 3 Blu-ray only war titles: Ice Cold in Alex (1958), The Cruel Sea (1953), and Sam Peckinpah's Cross of Iron (1977) chock full of new extras (nearly 100 minutes).

On DVD are 2 Anna Wong Ealing Classics and long awaited The Halfway House (1944). The latter is from director Basil Dearden who had before this only solo-helmed The Bells Go Down (1943). The highly respected film critic David Thomson has never been an aficionado and is accurately quoted in Wiki: "[Dearden's] films are decent, empty, and plodding and his association with Michael Relph is a fair representative of the British preference for bureaucratic cinema. It stands for the underlining of obvious meaning". Oh dear. Dearden's high point was Victim (1961) with Dirk Bogard - one of the first Brit films that openly discussed homosexuality. On the surface there's nothing particularly revelatory about The Halfway House and one could hardly deem it 'a classic'. It's hard not to write about this film without spoiling the plot (though it's soon fairly obvious what's afoot). In a nut-shell, this time-warped tiny pub (everything is a year behind) in the Welsh valleys functions as an aide-memoir for its guests: could we have lead our lives differently or were we always fated? And in retrospect it's a far cry from the jingoistic Brit cinema of its time. Interesting comparison with the directorial effort of The Halfway House's producer Calvalcanti Went the Day Well? (out July 25 on both formats), based on a Graham Greene short story. Excellent extra is the audio featurette BBC Radio 3's The Essay - British Cinema of the 1940s.

A year can be an eternity in wartime. In The Messenger gruff U.S. military's Captain Tony Stone (Woody Harrelson) and his underling Sergeant Will Montgomery (Ben Foster) have the job of notifying next of kin after an Iraq combat death. Director/co-writer Oren Moverman had amazing tutelage on this script - Sydney Pollack, Roger Michel; and even Ben Affleck was set to direct. Thankfully, there's very little that's 'Hollywood' about this film and certainly nothing sentimental. It has laughs, too, but they are hard won. Why a studio didn't release the film even without an 'Affleck' name is also cause for concern about the health of our cinema. It was nabbed by UK distributor The Works (as was World's Greatest Dad).
The BBC's 3-hour film The Fallen is a must see also.

Countdown to Zero is so obvious a documentary you kick yourself for not making it on your own. And so obvious you think surely someone else must have made an equivalent over the years. This potted history of the nuclear bomb directed by Lucy Walker- its ownership, manufacture, deployment and proliferation- owes its existence to producer Lawrence Bender (The Inconvenient Truth and Tarantino's Inglourious Bastards) -he accessed most of the key interviewees. The footage from these is quite staggering; the archive footage all too painfully familiar e.g. newsreel of the first UK nuclear test in 1952 bringing 'peace to a troubled world'. See this doco and your eyes will just roll out of their sockets in disbelief.

more tomorrow....

Kaboom

Prom

Raise Ravens (Cría Cuervos)

Honey 2

Bridesmaids