The Sunday Preview: Cinema

Saturday 15 August 1992 23:02 BST
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French Cinema of the Eighties (NFT, 071-928 3232, all month). More films that didn't cross the Channel at the time. This week's highlights: Patricia Bardon's black comedy The Man of Her Imagination (NFT2 today and Tues); Rene Feret's low-key family story Baptism (NFT1 Tues and Wed); Richard Bohringer as a German soldier befriending two runaways in After the War (NFT1 Thurs and Fri); and Belmondo in Claude Lelouch's The Itinerary of a Spoilt Child (NFT1 Sat and NFT2 23 Aug). Robin Buss

Oklahoma] (NFT, today, 3.10pm). The corn is as high as an elephant's eye . . . Sure is, honey, but hell that don't matter none with them wonderful toons an' all - 'Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin' ', 'People Will Say We're in Love'. Fred Zinnemann brought Rodgers and Hammerstein's musical to the screen with that sunshine-breakfast feel intact, but went a little heavy on shadow (Rod Steiger as a glowering Jud). This is Zinnemann's approved version, and is a reliable raising agent for the doughy of heart. Allison Pearson

The News Boys (PG; Odeon West End). A uniquely loathsome kids' musical from Disney (a studio once known to screenwriters as Mouseschwitz, although lately it is called Duckau) which finally breaks the old rule that any movie with Robert Duvall in it cannot be wholly bad. The news boys, or 'newsies', are newspaper pedlars, lovable urchins to a boy. When the wicked Mr Pulitzer (Duvall) decides to raise the price he charges them for their papers, they stop their vile singing and hideous formation dancing, and organise a revolt. King Herod was on to something, he just got a bad press.

Freddie as FRO7 (U; Odeon Mezzanine, MGMs West End). Freddie is a French prince who is still a Frog. The wicked snake-queen is stealing London's great monuments by wrapping them in green swhooshy stuff. Her reasons are a shade obscure - something to do with world domination - but Freddie, the greatest Frog secret agent who sounds like Ben Kingsley, saves the day. There is also a Brian Blessed lookalike villain and a nice French car which runs on kisses. The film is a bit short on some decent violence, and the breaks for a song are soppy, but it is all rather charming. As usual, it is the snake-queen who sets the heart racing, but I also rather fell for the Loch Ness monster, a shy lassie with long eyelashes.

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