Director: Lewin Webb

Starring: Lauren Bacall, Claire Forlani, Henry Czerny, Pete Postlethwaite

Any film starring Lauren Bacall is worth a look, even one made today, in her 80th year and her 60th as a movie star. Her serene presence in "Gone Dark" - formerly entitled "The Limit" - is what persuades an audience to remain involved with the convoluted plot and the messy direction.

Lewin has chosen to shoot the film in a kaleidoscope of flashbacks - possibly a metaphor for the disjointed life of one of the characters - and a viewer may find the pause button on the remote useful while figuring out just where some scenes fit into the storyline.

Bacall plays May Markham, an elderly woman battling to retain her independence and living alone in a high-rise block of apartments alongside some nosy neighbours. In the movie, and especially in their scenes together, Bacall is well-matched by the young rising star, Claire Forlani playing an undercover detective named Monica Pierce.

Monica is trying to crack a narcotics operation run by Gale Carmody (Pete Postlethwaite), a manic gangster whose front is a bikers' club. Monica has managed to hook up with Gale by becoming his mistress and the strain of undercover work now has her hooked on heroin. The FBI is anxious to arrest Gale before he hooks up with a Russian crime syndicate and Monica is slowly buckling under the pressure.

The pressure increases when she commences a secret affair with Denny (Henry Czerny), a member of Gale's gang whom she discovers is also working undercover for the FBI. However, Denny is working against Gale to save his own criminal neck. He is going to betray Gale by turning state's evidence in return for immunity from prosecution and a new life.

In an early flashback, we see that Denny lives in the same apartment block as May and that occasionally their mail gets mixed up. Monica watches as May and Denny exchange the mail mistakenly placed in each other's letter box.

After Denny is shot dead (another early flashback) Monica really starts to unravel when she realizes that Denny has hidden evidence that could implicate her in a murder. How this arises is a bit too complicated to explain without giving away a lot more of the story but it leads Monica to remember the mix-ups Denny and May were having with their mail.

May is held prisoner in her own apartment while Monica searches for any of Denny's mail May may be hiding. This is when Monica finds that May is not "the sweet little old lady" she seems to be. Bacall deftly shows the steel beneath May's apparently respectable and vague exterior when she engages in a battle of wills and wits with the now desperate and despairing Monica.

To complicate the plot even further, May's physiotherapist re-enters the story and he is another character who is not what he seems to be. In the end, it is clear that one reason Monica may be using drugs is because everybody - the FBI, Denny, Gale and even May - is cynically using her.

As observed earlier, the movie comes to life whenever Bacall is on screen and fades somewhat when she is not - even despite a sometimes over-the-top performance by the always-interesting Pete Postlethwaite.

Looking back, it's exactly 60 years since Bacall was the ingenue leading lady of the Howard Hawks' drama "To Have and Have Not", co-starring her husband-to-be, Humphrey Bogart. The two went on to make three more great movies together - "The Big Sleep" (1946), "Dark Passage" (1947) and "Key Largo" (1948). That was all a long time ago and although Bacall has starred in scores of movies since and won several awards, they remain her most memorable. They put Lewin's "Gone Dark" in the shade.

Finally, in an interview that forms part of the DVD, Claire Forlani comes out with the extraordinarily honest remark that: "The movie has no real point - it's just a slice of life."

Well, be that as it may, but luckily for Forlani and Lewin, the cream on the "slice" is the ageless Lauren Bacall.

Barry Porter

Bubba Ho-Tep

Starring: Bruce Campbell, Ossie Davis, Ella Joyce

Even excellent English is unlikely to prevent local audiences being somewhat bemused by this preposterous - but unquestionably unique - spoof horror movie.

Standing as a further testament to America's fascination with the ambiguous culture of its "Deep South", the movie explains epigraphically that a "bubba" is a word akin to "cracker" or "red-neck", applicable to the adult white males of the old Confederacy. "Ho-Tep" - of course - refers to an ancient Egyptian monarch.

After this "helpful explanation" things only get more confusing.

Comic-horror superstar Bruce Campbell, of "Evil Dead" fame, plays Elvis Presley, now partially geriatric, having substituted himself for one of his doubles in order to escape the pressures of the spotlight, now residing anonymously in a nursing home with a damaged hip and an embarrassing genital complaint (never fully explained). When the other guests begin to die with abnormal rapidity, to the accompaniment of invading giant homicidal dung beetles, Elvis joins forces with ex-president John F. Kennedy (Ossie Davis) to investigate.

If the true identity of "Elvis" strains the credibility of those around him, "Jack Kennedy" is concealed even more thoroughly because (as he assures Presley) after surviving the Dallas assassination attempt, his political enemies transformed him into an African-American to hide their evil designs.

Like a modern Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, the pair dedicate themselves to a holy quest, that of vanquishing the occult predator, whose hieroglyphic signature is found inscribed on a toilet wall. Their opponent is in fact a re-animated mummy lost in a local river after a vehicle accident, now returned wearing shades, hat and cowboy boots to suck out the souls of the helpless nursing home inmates. If this sounds entirely ridiculous, don't worry: it is.

For anyone not expecting to be seriously scared, and tolerant of some serious silliness, the sheer wackiness of "Bubba Ho-Tep" is quite entertaining and it even has identity, aging, honour, purpose and dignity. Clearly a low-budget effort, the special effects won't knock anyone out, although there's a quite nice telepathic moment when Elvis travels back into the mummy's ancient Egyptian memories.

You can put this one confidently into the "bizarre" category, and if you like bizarre, you'll probably love it.

Nick Land