Another long film- over 2 hours and a half, although it's clearly not time enough for characterisation. The lead character CIA agent Maya (Jessica Chastain) is on the hunt for Osama Bin Laden, because some terrorists blew up her mate. Well any other motivation doesn't show on screen- the woman's not exactly likeable.

If you share the all-American politics of the film or don't care about politics, you'll probably find this more enjoyable. None of the locals are portrayed sympathetically and none of the operatives are sympathetic. This is probably quite true to life but they could have had a portrayal of a Middle Eastern person who wasn't a terrorist or a deserving victim.

As a docudrama, it sort of works, but it never goes beyond the docudrama mentality. Maya remains a blank throughout and moments of characterisation are sparse. Characters are clearly not writer Mark Boal's or director Kathryn Bigelow's strong point and I was longing for something that might provide some drama rather than a re-enactment of something which we already know the outcome of. The ending hints at this but doesn't really push it. I'd like to think that the ending showed Maya as unsympathetic but I'm not sure Bigelow is subtle enough for this.

Its lack of a balanced political viewpoint and proper human drama, despite having an unnecessary two and a half hours, means that it's not quite the definitive epic it wants to be.

EDIT: I just have to mention the John Barrowman cameo. It was about halfway through the movie and I was holding out for a little bit of drama to break the blow-by-blow dubious docu-dramatic narrative. We were in a room of CIA agents and I notice a man who looks exactly like John Barrowman. Then I realise that it IS John Barrowman. Maybe he might sing. But no, his cameo consists of him going into an elevator with the protagonist and saying one innocuous line. Could this be the most bizarre and pointless cameo in film history?

I'm not sure how Henry King managed to make such a boring film out of F. Scott's Fitzgerald's darkest, perhaps best, novel. Well, I am a little because his shoot-and-point style made Carousel drag as well. He basically gives the film the kiss of death. Every event- and there's a LOT- in the novel has been removed, so what we have is two-and-a-half hours wallowing in a failing marriage.

What it should be is a two-and-a-half hour exploration of Nicole (Jennifer Jones) and Dick Diver (Jason Robards)'s respective breakdowns, with a backdrop of the French Riviera (to be fair to the film, we do get plenty of Riviera shots). Nicole is Dick's wife and former patient, who hasn't quite got over her condition, and it's driving Dick to a breakdown. Who, if either, will be able to get their life back together?

It's not really the fault of the actors. Jason Robards does what he can with a generic Hollywood script, which portrays Dick as just a drunk and glosses over his adultery. Jennifer Jones, a poor man's Elizabeth Taylor, was forty when she did the film, so it was a struggle to buy the flashback scenes when Nicole is meant to be eighteen. She nails the neuroticism but there's no horror in it. Her performance is watchable but more suited to Tennessee Williams than Fitzgerald.

The film's problem is that it takes the novel and sucks everything out of it. This was the days of the Code, so there is a large degree of bowdlerisation here. The bowdlerisation either comes from omitting things or by making such oblique references that they might as well ask the audience to bring in a copy of the novel with them. For example, Nicole was sexually abused as a teenager but instead of including the scene where the father admits it, they try to drop it into a scene where Nicole's sister Baby (Joan Fontaine) comes to visit. It's as if the filmmakers know that we want an explanation but mumble it in the hope that we won't actually hear. There's no murder scandal either.

Poor Jill St. John playing Rosemary Hoyt, the Hollywood starlet who has her eye on Dick, has nothing to do except be consistently rejected by Dick and smile a lot, seeing as in this film he's the perfect gentleman to her. Joan Fontaine gets a little fun as Baby but they robbed a lot from the script. Screenwriter Ivan Moffat wrongly thought he could do a better job than Fitzgerald. Very wrongly.

The film was nominated for an Oscar but tellingly only for Best Original Song. One of the Divers' friends Abe (Tom Ewell) is a failing concert pianist, which is a perfect chance to play the title tune ad nauseum. Nice as the song is, it's not exactly the theme to Laurence of Arabia. When you're not listening to the song, you're listening to the score, which is basically a rehash of the song and comes knocking on the door at all the right moments to add some weepiness- in case you weren't depressed enough already.

I'd love a faithful adaptation of this novel. Sure, it's very hard to film- even harder than Gatsby- but if they could even capture half of what Fitzgerald does, it would be worth it. This film captures nothing and no one.

Part 2 of my Dirk Bogarde double bill is a more minor film- Accident. Co-starring Stanley Baxter and Jacqueline Sassard, the film tells the tale of mild-mannered Oxford don Stephen (Dirk Bogarde) who develops an obsession with one of his students- Anna (Jacqueline Sassard), an ice cold beauty. However she's in a relationship with fellow pupil William (Michael York) and Stephen's academic rival (Stanley Baxter) looks like he might become a love rival too...

All this would be a standard episode of Inspector Morse were it not for the fact that Harold Pinter wrote the screenplay, adding some artistic merit. The film starts off with the accident of the title: a car crash. It then flashback to show the events leading up to it, We don't get that many present-day glimpses, though they are the strongest parts. They're both chilling and yet touching, such as when Stephen climbs into bed with sleeping Anna and strokes her hair, telling her that he loves her. Because Bogarde's character is so polite, it makes the audience's reaction to him complicated.

The structure and minimalist dialogue- the hallmarks of Pinter- means that this is a film you'll have to concentrate for, but it does add some enigma to what is an overtly melodramatic plot. Anna is enigmatic to the point of impenetrability, which may make Sassard's performance look wooden but it really works for the film. She is both everything and nothing and the camera loves to linger on her, just as Stephen would if he had the guts.

My criticism of the film is that it's thinner than a Ryvita, so you're watching for the acting and cinematography rather than plot. There are some great moments but the psychological horror could have been played up a lot more

Today, a Dirk Bogarde double bill. First on the menu is Victim, a groundbreaking film for its time that actually got banned in America.

Dirk Bogarde stars as lawyer Mel Farr, who begins a personal crusade when 'Boy' Barrett (Peter McEnery) hangs himself due to blackmail. The blackmail circle extends beyond Boy however- even Mel may be involved. All of these people have committed a crime- but what is it? Homosexuality of course, which became legalised at the end of the sixties and so was at this time a prisonable offence as well as a social taboo. Though Mel never consummated his relationship with Boy he's explicitly attracted to him.

This isn't the first film to deal with homosexuality but it was the first English language film to use the term. If you bear in mind the context of the film, it still packs a punch today daring to debate both the question behind making homosexuality legal or not and the moral right of people to love whoever they want. Although Brokeback Mountain came out over 45 years later, this has a far more relevant and daring approach. There's no pretty women trying to cover up characters being gay and Laura (Sylvia Sims), Dirk's wife, tentatively confronts the matter head-on and is even supportive. Actually all the characters in the film are pretty decent about it- apart from the blackmailers.

Sims took a part that many actresses turned down and she creates a believable tension between the wife's jealousy and the wife's love for the husband. Bogarde is just brilliant as the lawyer. Far from being stereotypically gay, he's charming, sophisticated and gains the respect of everyone he talks to.

It's ironic that this film does more for gay rights than Brokeback Mountain, considering its age. Though it's part of the sixties angry-young-man genre, it still stands up well today. Plus for the thea there's some shots of the West End, advertising new musicals Flower Drum Song and Oliver!

So, first up we have Brokeback Mountain, Hollywood's attempt at a gay love story. It's a watchable and entertaining film but its depiction of homosexuality (or bisexuality, depending on how you read it) is a bit prudish. Not content-wise- we do get a violent-looking sex scene shot in a dark tent- but in its desire to brush the question of sexuality under the carpet.

The premise is that two cowboys (Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal) are stuck for the sumemr of 1963 on a remote mountain called Brokeback Mountain, with only the sheep and each other for company. And what do two men do when you coop them up together for long enough? Of course, they have sex, even though their friendship has been established as a close friendship rather than a romantic one. It has a horrible undertone of rape to it, not exactly promoting the idea that this is a universal love story.

To cancel out all of that, there's two female love interests- Michelle Williams and Anne Hathaway- who both have partial nude scenes, for no apparant reason. They both do fine in roles that aren't exactly a gift for a female actress.

Onto the performances of Ledger and Gyllenhaal. They're very good, apart from the fact that there is no sexual chemistry. They look like they're enduring the love scenes. To be fair, you could argue that they're portraying their self-loathing and guilt but they seem perfectly comfortable performing with the lead women. There's a chemistry between them as close mates- I don't doubt the strength of the frienship. What I do doubt is what they're actually meeting up at Brokeback Mountain consistently over a period of twenty years for, because nothing you see between them on screen is something that you'd sacrifice your family for.

Don't get me wrong, it's not a bad film to rent and the end is quite heartbreaking, but Hollywood have diluted the story, trying not to make it too gay but adding in the odd titillating reminder that the cowboys are gay