Evening Standard from London, Greater London, England • 22

WWP HWVA(ti 0 VI ir if ITTil 1 1I hir i I i'i EVENING STANDARD THURSDAY DECEMBER 20 1073-23 EVENING 8TANDARD THURSDAY DECEMBER 20 1073 ALEXANDER WALKER THE NEW FILMS il ij CHRISTMAS FILMS FOR THE KIDS pm'Tt Redford and up to 9 Cassidy team) against supercrook Robert Shaw in an endlessly tricky talc set in the 1930s The surprise ending is the best in years Day Of The Jackal (Universal: A) Fred Zinnem marveltousfy detailed plot to assassinate De Gaulle with Edward Fox in hair-trigger form as the killer and an intensely absorbing race-egainst-the-bullet climax Paper Moon (Paramount: A) comedy set in the 1930s withRyan O'Neal as a con man and Tatum his daughter as the kid who's wished on him and whom he learns to love Nice gentle deiicatelyplayed period piece by Peter Bogdanovich The Invitation (Academy AA) Swiss-made comedy of morals and manners among the bourgeoisie observed with relish and occasionally malice by Claude Goretta reminds one of Renoir at its best That'll Be The Day (Rialto Nostalgia for the 1950s as observed through David grammar school boy who quits nls books for the twang of the guitar Ringo makes his funniest appearance in years and the mood of 20 years ago is neatly caught in sound and image Kids? play Digby The Biggest Dog in the World (Studio One Funny little comedy about a dog that's 40-feet tall and leads the Army and Air Force a rampage Neat enough gags to appeal to adults too and Jim Dale and Spike Milligan (as German psychiatrist) -should appeal to all Robin flood (C Square Disney's latest cartoon A bit flat to look at but the voices of all the animals as the Robin Hood characters are a delight especially Peter Ustinov's as Prince John the cowardly lion and Terry-Thomas as Sir Hiss the snake Golden Voyage Of Sinbad (Odeon Marble Arch: U) The trick photography is great even if the voyage is a rough one and remember the multi-armed Indian idol that can hold a dozen men at bay Good for a gasp by the younger kids curvaceous girl for eye Adult fun The Sting(Emplre: Tremendous value as great old fashioned entertainment pitching Robert Redford and Paul Newman (the Butch their tricks again THE STING (Empire: Cert A 129 mins From December 26) is in the tale Two hours of better entertainment it would be hard to obtain Here are all the good old-fashioned film virtues standing' up to the test of storytelling in a movie that Is constantly whetting your curiosity to know What happens next What hapoens first is that Robert Bedford a budding Xounz con man in mid-Thirtles merica is run out of town by gratters and links forces an old-time trickster played by Paul Newman In order to get his revenge on the big time crook in the massive shape of Robert Shaw he pulls a trick on him that's worth half-a-million dollars of his own money It's also worth the most gee-gees are money on when the past the post office heroes But the nice thing is no one has scrimped No easy carbon-copy relationship is involved here PAUL NEWMAN: Surprise ending RINGO STARR: Funniest role In his button-down cep waisted Jacket i Redford iinst Newman's irayed-at-the- lacket and big wide grin Is perfectly paired off against Newman's The beautiful set-up involves a wholly pro-fabricated betting shop staffed and patronised by dozens of minor con men all posing as legitimate staff and clients Through these Runyon-esque ranks poor Shaw eventually sweats with his suitcase full of dollar bills and his heart full of avarice Slow torture would not drag from me what happens then But it is safe to say that in a film where absolutely no character however major or minor is com- frayed-ftt-the-edges expertise: and the two actors somehow bring each other up to pitch in ways neither really seems to achieve alone or In other company in other films Shaw is also terrific A cold ever to' set Shaw up and lead him drooling at the mouth with thoughts or gain to the infinitely delicious moment when he is First Newman whets the appetite by playing him a marathon poker game- lasting all the run between Chicago and New York on the -old -20th- ratty tatty but marvellously relaxed atmosphere of place and period now so nostalgically valued by us who live In these more up-tight times The only touch is the total cynicism everyone adopts towards everyone else That's the mark of Watergate world can you spare a they asked in the Depression Bra Nowadays the answer given by The impeccably dishonest cast would be Not while there's one left tosteaL" Too much choke BLOW OUT (La Grande Bouffe: Cert London 133 mins: Curzon from December 27) is like feeding on an endless turkey that never seems to grow a feeling many will be-carrying with them to the film If so watch Ulster-Irishman with a gammy of gold at the end of his tunnel vision he leg and with the gleam of i COLOUR pletely honest and all are on the graft it is the audience is the ultimate and logical tim of the con game But how Century Express Both parties cheat like ftu raging wallet picked as the final prick Clean up the office parly youll enjoy being taken in ways (or places) and the ending that sees Noiret the sole survivor tackling a blancmange the shape and colour of female breasts and then breathing his last on his mistress's own fleshy are symptoms is perversions so rewarding in infants but which Ferrari is totally unable to endow with anv significance bar the most obvious and hack Directed by George Roy Hill Jhe Sting Is patently an attempt to repeat the twinning of his feast of calorie-rich dishes on which In turn each of them chokes to death And just for starters The gourmandising is only interrupted for the womanising that goes on with two local whores and a fat schoolmarm (Andrea Ferreol) who have shut themselves in for the duration The Rabelaisian deUghts of mimgUng eating and fornicating are demoted with an attention to medical materialism that this out Blow-Out is a tableau of gluttony that for some viewers may well act like an emetic Four men-friends (Philippe Noiret Marcello Mastroianni Michel Piccoli Ugo Tugnazzi) for reasons never satisfactorily explained but attributed by director Marco Ferreii to the decadence of the West's consumer society shut themselves up in a suburban house in Paris and methodically prepare Tri- has the weight that makes the landing of him bv the baited hook all the he Is worth But everything is worth paying to see in The designer Edith wide-shouldered men's wear in which a shabby era concealed Its Imposture with a swagger the use of Scott Jop-dnight impudent bar-room piano music Henry Bumstead's production design that catches the to his pride explodes with fury it's to vow that cheat bigger and better next time Enter bouncy young Redford ostensibly as Newman's side-kick who proceeds to let Shaw into the secret of how to be lay bets on the horses at posh but of course only put your previous success Butch Oassidy and the Sundance Kid in the shape of Redford and Newman in line with the movies about male cameraderle Midnight Cowboy Scarecrow that make -engaging losers into box- i about CUff hanger column could hardly begin to spell out in words never mind detail However the specialities de la maison do need to be Indicated since it's a condition of licensing the film for screening in the GLC area that no member of the public should approach It unaware of the menu which runs to protracted wind-breaking an exploding loo (no wonder) a demonstration at how to build up a pastry case round the buttocks of the naked Miss Ferreol and an extraordinary misuse to which the manifold of a Bugatti sports car Is put by Uastroianni think me a hypocrite when I add that a lot of it indeed most of is not far removed from tedium once your Initial curiosity has been sated Ferrrri is no Bunuel and the petit-bourgeoisie he parades have no charm and indeed after a time no interest either What's more to the point is that the stunningly banal metaphor for decadence that the gluttony entails is the director's apparently unrecognised though latest view of how Immature all his characters are The amount of Infantile regression Involved In the anal detonations of constipated characters their collapse In their own excrement the mother attentions they demand from their women In far from motherly 1 never realised that nice MrSmithershad such pretty green TAKE ME HIGH (Cert-U 90 mins: ABC cinemas from December 26) is a pop musical in which big-busine3s whizz-kid Cliff Richard between the vocals synthesises the aims of capitalism (Hugh Griffith at a shoot and i open-shirted an ease that would make Willie Whiteiaw green with envy and -as a spin-off opens a posh hamburger Joint in Birmingham to sell meat patties to the Brummies Not a bad image of where the British film industry is at in the year 1973 Cliff shows little sign of the years but he is now allowed a chaste kiss with Debbie Watling and a haJMxfttle at' champagne of a non-sparkling Dumbf ounded by the dolphins when tlie critics get together and ask for illumination someone should be worried Nlrhols probably thought the plot so corny that he tried to tell it in the most oblique way conceivable so that the fact of tlie President being aboard the yacht depends (a) on a half line of frequently vileiy recorded dialogue and (b) on one's ability to recognise at a distance the Presidential (lag at the mast top Anyone Ignorant of the original best-seller will be baffled A pity for the early training sequences showing pool-side relationship with the breath takingly grareful pupil have the right manic lifeline between the obsessed man and the willing mammal even though Dolphin Alpha's squeaky baliytalk Fa like Ala and is ultimately as tiresome as any human infant's except to its proud parents A nice film to look at always with photographer William A Fruker's ddirate use of greys blues whites and eau de nil TIIE DAY OF TIIE DOLPHIN (Ort 113 mins: Leicester Square) looks as if director Alike Nichols loKt his head or lost control or maybe Just lost interest almost exactly half-way at the point when a' reasonably engrossing story about George Scott a marine biologist trying to achieve an Inter-spcries break-thrtugh by tearliing a dolphin Entlish turns Into rankest melodrama about a group or Right-wingers tryin to blow up the presidential varM by tearhinr the said dolphin to plant a limpet mine on its stem The (wo stories seem only tenuously a mammal hardly needs course In semantics to blow Nixon sky hlglii Anv old M'Jcrato from (he (iron eould have that Itut what Is stranger than this fiction is the botched Job a director of Nicholas finesse And reputation (Tlie Grudin tc Who's Afraid of Vlrgina Woolf?) lias made of tlie second story It con used so unintelligible that no rewer than five critics giiUicri'd round the of (ha liim asking if a reel liau licen show'll in the or entirely left out Head fin nr i we could not make of ij without lalwrious thought Drink the dean drink CossackVodka cossacK Vodka shades Itut Buck Henry's Delphic and having trielf to screenplay Is unspeakal fathom what the hell was going on half the lime in (lie last half-hour I know what It's like to lie a fish out of water COLOUR.