Lovely bunch of films I've been watching . Continuing on from the last post, having seen Lemon Tree I was in the mood for more Hiam Abbass so I checked out her other film with the same director (Eran Riklis) called The Syrian Bride. It's a very interesting set up where there is going to be a Druze wedding between a Syrian actor and a Druze woman in the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights. Her nationality is "undefined" and when she goes through with it she won't be able to see her family again as the border is closed because the two countries are still officially at war. Lovely cast, Abbass as the bride's sister is the clear standout and it gets better when it moves away from the family quarrels and into the meat and bones of the bureaucratic nightmare to get the bride across.

How I found this next film should give you an insight into how finding films works for me - I'd seen a film on youtube and was linking someone online to the person's profile. There I see that person has also put up a couple of Kate Hepburn films I want to see. The next day instead of going to those Hepburn films, I type in Alice Adams to see if anyone put *that* up because it's the one of Kate's I've not seen that I want to the most. Someone did and that pleased me, but before I got around to pressing play I checked what else that person had put up and found Z, which I want to see even more so I ended up not watching ANY of the Hepburn films and settling down with Costa-Gavras .

Z has one of those delightful disclaimers at the beginning of the film that claims that any similarity to persons living or dead is completely deliberate . It's a not-very-thinly veiled account of the assassination of Greek politician Gregoris Lambrakis (who with a name like that really sounds like he should be playing Centre-Back for Olympiacos  - he was the MP for Piraeus after all ), who was a pacifist, doctor and former olympian. This is very like his later film Missing in that it takes a tragic event and shows the build up to it plus examines how the powers that be were involved. What this lacks that Missing has is the great performances, the cast are fine but they don't have a tremendous amount to do. It's also a lot more thick on the politics than Missing was (that had two people with completely different ideals searching for the same truth). This is very one-sided and again deliberately so because the Junta were still in control of Greece at the time and it's very much a protest-film. For a while it gets a tad bogged down with the repeated lies and cover ups but the final 15 minutes or so really give the film a boost. Very worth seeing but given what he went on to do plus the film's reputation I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a little bit disappointed.

Michelle Williams

Okay it's taking an unusually long time to write this entry so I'll try to push on quickly. In anticipation of Wendy and Lucy (which comes to an arthouse near me in three weeks time) I found Incendiary and gave it a watch. It's basically Michelle Williams having an affair with Ewan McGregor when her Arsenal-mad husband and child are killed in a terrorist attack on the Emirates Stadium. Michelle is simply superb in the role, giving as good a regional English accent as you'll get from a foreign actress and showing a remarkable amount of soul and restraint in a knockout performance.

I found out afterwards the film got widely panned on release (and said release was a complete joke, why spend $10m on a film if you're going to release it on 16 screens for one week? Really, why bother at all?) and the film is indeed not without flaws. It's very ambitious and goes for too much, a 21 Grams-style stalking/befriending, a love triangle and a psychological examination. Two of the three in combination is probably the most this story could have held. That said though, despite the abundant cliches, too much being packed into it and some general implausibility I did enjoy the film. It's moving in parts and Williams holds everything together nicely - a film that's easy to be cynical about but I would think this is one audiences would be a lot more patient with than critics, hence its woeful distribution is rather sad. It's out on dvd now.

Polishing this entry off, I saw A Soldier's Story last night on Sky, I almost missed it but am very glad I caught it because I liked it a lot. It's 1944 Louisiana and an NCO in a "colored" regiment (commanded solely by white officers) has been murdered and to everyone's surprise Captain Davenport is sent to investigate the crime. Why the surprise? He's black too and the first black officer everyone there has seen, received in delight by the men but despair from the white Captain who is convinced Davenport will never be able to arrest a white man for the crime. It tells the background through flashbacks as the Captain gets closer and closer to the truth. This really rattles along, is frequently amusing, but is at its best when examining the attitude of a man who realises how people from a different race see his ethnic group then rallies against people who fit into the stereotype. A very accomplished ensemble (including a young Denzel Washington), this is a not-unpredictable film, but with Norman Jewison you always get solidly made, watchable stuff. A very pleasant surprise.