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Actress Romola Garai makes a distinctive feature directorial debut with “Amulet,” even if this upscale horror drama is ultimately more impressive in the realm of style than substance. It’s some style, though: She hasn’t just created a stylish potboiler, but a densely textured piece that makes for a truly arresting viewing experience to a point. A shame then that the film succumbs somewhat to the more pretentious and silly aspects of Garai’s initially cryptic puzzle of a script.

“Amulet” is definitely the kind of joint that will irk mainstream genre fans for being too “arty,” and for not pouring on the kills or gore (though neither are entirely lacking). Still, more adventurous types will grok the distinctive vision on display in this split-level narrative of terrors bred by both war and more unearthly evils.

It takes a while before we get our basic bearings in the early going,...

‘Lambs of God’.

Lingo Pictures’ Lambs of God was the big winner at yesterday’s Aacta Industry Luncheon, taking home seven of a potential nine awards, while Rodd Rathjen’s debut feature Buoyancy was named Best Indie Film.

Sweeping the afternoon, Lambs of God’s various accolades included Best Direction in a Television Drama or Comedy for Jeffery Walker; Best Cinematography in Television for Don McAlpine; Best Original Score in Television for Bryony Marks (one of two awards for the composer during the event); Best Production Design in Television for Chris Kennedy; Best Costume Design in Television for Xanthe Heubel; Best Sound Sound in Television for Nick Emond, Stephen Smith, Paul Devescovi and Mia Stewart; and Best Hair and Makeup for Zeljka Stanin, Paul Pattison, Cheryl Williams and Anita Howell-Lowe.

The Foxtel mini-series was beaten only out for Best Screenplay in Television, which went to Niki Aken and Matthew Cormack for The Hunting,...

Patricia Neal ca. 1950. Patricia Neal movies: 'The Day the Earth Stood Still,' 'A Face in the Crowd' Back in 1949, few would have predicted that Gary Cooper's leading lady in King Vidor's The Fountainhead would go on to win a Best Actress Academy Award 15 years later. Patricia Neal was one of those performers – e.g., Jean Arthur, Anne Bancroft – whose film career didn't start out all that well, but who, by way of Broadway, managed to both revive and magnify their Hollywood stardom. As part of its “Summer Under the Stars” series, Turner Classic Movies is dedicating Sunday, Aug. 16, '15, to Patricia Neal. This evening, TCM is showing three of her best-known films, in addition to one TCM premiere and an unusual latter-day entry. 'The Day the Earth Stood Still' Robert Wise was hardly a genre director. A former editor (Citizen Kane, The Magnificent Ambersons...

W Stephen Gilbert writes: I first met Alastair Reid (obituary, 10 September) in 1972 when I was a trainee script editor at the BBC and shadowing a Penelope Mortimer play called Three's One under his direction. It was an awkward beast, centred on therapy sessions in which the analyst (the dapper Fulton Mackay) went unseen. Alastair got away with it – as I would now reckon – in the way he did much else, for he was he was fleet of foot, always pulling an eye-catching trick if he thought a script was flagging.

When later in the 70s I wrote about television, especially drama, in the London listings magazine Time Out, I would refer to Alastair in print as Flash Harry, which made him roar with laughter. I was thinking particularly of how he applied his inventiveness in his ghastly, lurid, modish feature Baby Love (1968).His later work matured into something lucid, judicious and humane.