Reviews

It's like a 90 minute pharmaceutical commercial, where everybody is happy and a little glassy-eyed, the sun is shining but not too brightly, and they do random things together like riding scooters or rummaging through racks of dresses or painting a room. Everyone is perfectly photogenic and well-mannered. Any hint of drama or conflict is immediately deflated in another round of smiles and hugs. A perfectly adorable young woman with flawless hair, skin and makeup plants herself next to him in his very first class and boom, they're BFFs on the spot. She hugs him, kisses him, whispers in his ear, makes googoo eyes at him, but it's all just good clean fun, they're besties, who could possibly get the wrong idea?

I concede that I didn't watch the whole thing. I was concerned I would do myself an injury with the severity of the involuntary eyerolling. If I'd been Hanks I would have been swimming back to that island.

This is part movie, part variety/comedy sketch show. The gags are all over the road, some funny, many falling flat on their faces. The Herb Alpert soundtrack sounds terribly dated, and the main theme becomes headache-inducing. Woody Allen is featured as a star but has the tiniest of cameo roles. But then William Holden's cameo is even smaller, and entirely pointless. The bit about John Huston flipping his wig was pretty funny.

The movie has its moments but seems almost perversely determined to keep reminding you that it's a loose collection of skits and gags. The funniest part of the movie is the first part ("doodle me, James!"); a fair amount of boredom after that. Peter Sellers, so brilliant in "Dr. Strangelove" just a few years before, is flat and uninspired. Plenty of women to ogle, but that's hardly a cinematic achievement.

A bizarre time capsule from the 1960's, something like "The Magic Christian." If you're not a cultural anthropologist or a fan of the absurd, it would be best to avoid. Bond buffs looking for a genuine parody will be disappointed.

A lively, bubbly production of one of Shakespeare's more difficult plays. It's hard to know just what Shakespeare was getting at with this story. The text doesn't always seem to make sense. That's reflected in this, as well as any other, production. At times, one wonders what the expressions on characters' faces are meant to indicate. Just after Feste has fooled Malvolio with his imitation of the curate, for instance, Maria has a perturbed look on her face. As if the joke that she herself so elaborately designed now troubles her. There's nothing in the text to indicate that her expression should show remorse; and yet Sir Toby soon after says that he's sick of the whole thing. Why? That's one example of the difficulty of the text (which may have been corrupted over the centuries), and how it is manifested in this particular production's choices. I don't know why Sir Toby remarks at this point that he's sick of the joke, nor do I know whether Maria should share his feelings.

Another difficulty is the role of Feste. Ben Kingsley fills this role, and because Ben Kingsley is a major star, he magnifies this character (in my opinion) out of all proportion. He becomes a sort of Zen master, pompous and oppressive. His jokes aren't funny (maybe we can't find Shakespeare's jokes funny today, but Kingsley's heavy delivery precludes humor), and his last confrontation with Malvolio comes off as a sort of thundering divine retribution. The entire play, the entire cast, stops dead and Feste takes over as if the whole point of the play has been his apotheosis at the expense of the degraded Malvolio. This surely cannot be what Shakespeare had in mind. Throughout the play he has a disconcerting habit of staring at other characters or the camera with what almost be described as a leer.

Maybe Shakespeare would have sighed and commiserated with the producer of this film, because the clowns in his day were also big stars who demanded a lot of meat in their roles. The trouble is that there just isn't much meat in Feste's role according to the text, so we're stuck with leers and thundering retribution and other inventions. Shakespeare had to accommodate his clowns with ever-more important roles, climaxing with characters like Touchstone and Lear's fool. Kingsley is just inventing his own character. At times his work is interesting, but his weight in the production is, as I said, oppressive.

Still, his screen time is relatively small, and much of the rest of the play is a joy, even if the point of the story isn't always clear. Bonham-Carter was never more alluring, Hawthorne is priceless as Malvolio (he was born for the role), and Smith and Grant are the perfect combination of Belch and Aguecheek. I suppose you might object that all four of them put their eyebrows to such prodigious use that their acting might be characterized as hamming. But I don't see how any of these characters can be played straight if the play is to work.

One thing is for sure, no one would ever accuse this production of bogging down. The pace is lively, the sets and the cinematography are always striking, the score is invigorating, and I suspect that I could watch this film dubbed in Swahili and it would still be a lot of fun. Visually arresting is perhaps the best description.

The storyline is flyweight here, even by musical comedy standards. The songs vary; to tell the truth, this is not a soundtrack I would buy. Some have clever lyrics, some are pure hokum. The female chorus backing many songs is of the horrid 1940's harmonized variety, and it sounds like a soap commercial. It's a pity that so many otherwise great recordings from the era were desecrated by such syrupy over-produced warbling.

But the dancing is excellent for the most part. The sets are bright and bold and imaginative, though not awe-inspiring. It's a bit jarring to see a 49-year-old Astaire paired with a 26-year-old Garland (even if she is already starting to look a bit ravaged), and their romance is never plausible. But they both tackled their roles with a lot of gusto and appeared to be enjoying themselves.

One really dazzling moment is when Ann Miller (who was never more alluring than in this movie) puts on her big dance routine and spins around so fast, and so many times, that it strains credulity that she didn't simply topple over and pass out. Rather odd that the single most striking bit of dancing (on one of the movie's most extravagant sets) came from her rather than the leads.

The Easter "parade" at the start of the movie is a real gem, a great example of 1940's Hollywood going completely over the top. The sequel at the end of the movie is curiously pale in comparison, even if it does feature Astaire wearing a silk top hat with a lavender silk bow. (One of the unresolved issues with the screenplay is the contrast between exotic Ann Miller and "plain" Judy Garland.)

But the movie's high point for me was the number featuring Astaire and Garland dressed as tramps. The lovable tramp schtick can result in dreary, tedious cliché ala Red Skelton, but it's carried off with great verve in this case and is a real treat to watch.

Suave ad man makes his biggest pitch...to himself. Or some such sappy nonsense.

OK, this movie is strictly a star vehicle (which must have rankled the author of the original novel, who was trying to make a serious point), and as a result it suffers from the usual limitations. But when the star is Clark Gable, and he's at the top of his form, the movie is bound to be worth watching. The story is ostensibly a drama, but except for the stifling "passionate" scenes with Deborah Kerr (who admittedly isn't given much in the script to work with), the tone is more comedy than drama. Lots of fine supporting performances from Menjou, Greenstreet, Gardner and a Keenan Wynn so young it's difficult to recognize him.

The storyline is pretty weak (as in, bowdlerized), and the premise about the annoying nature of entertainment and advertising, however accurate, is itself presented in an annoying way. (Although it is satisfying to see Ava Gardner snap off the radio in disgust.) But the storyline is of secondary importance in a movie like this. The heart of the movie is in Gable's interaction with the other stars, and he really shines. He gets a phone call early on from what is obviously last night's bedmate, and the one-sided conversation must have been pushing the bounds of movie-making respectability at the time. Maybe in the postwar years they were trying to loosen things up a bit.

Throw in a classic fancy nightclub scene, offices that featured those low two-foot-tall walls with little swinging doors (what was that all about?), a seaside resort that was obviously a philanderer's hideaway (shocking!), a boss with a New York City mansion and an Eleanor Roosevelt-ish wife, references to a sport jacket, tie, white shirt and slacks as "casual dress", a young man just out of the military and broke, but able to afford a swanky hotel with his own personal valet, and of course Sidney Greentstreet as a comic corporate villain in a silly ultra-high-backed chair that passed for a kind of throne, and I think you have just about every delightful 1940's Hollywood cliché ever dreamed up.

If you like the 1940's style of movie-making and you like star vehicles with lots of supporting stars, you're bound to get some jollies from this movie.

Pointy-bearded milquetoast schoolmaster is fired for his integrity and becomes an accidental titan of industry.

This is an adaptation of a French play (a pretty loose adaptation, I think) and the staginess shows. In my opinion, that can be either good or bad, and I think it works to the movie's advantage in this case. It feels like I'm watching a play, instead of watching a bungled attempt to push a play onto film. In spite of the staginess, however, the sets are very good. An extended shot of the schoolmaster in the classroom, with snow falling outside, is so effectively done that it's hard for me to stay focused on the characters, because I just want to watch the beautiful snow through the windows.

Even so, it must be admitted that the plot is rather thin here. Not a lot happens. This is strictly a John Barrymore vehicle. Even Myrna Loy isn't give a lot to do except be sweet and sympathetic. Any hint of romance between her and Barrymore is only that, the barest of hints. Albert Conti is mere bluster and a fake mole. Nevertheless, Barrymore shines and successfully carries the entire movie by himself. His flawless mastery of stage business--as a single small example, the way he removes his pince-nez--ensures that.

The ending is wickedly cynical, as indeed is the entire movie. But it seems like the movie will close on a villains-get-theirs, good-always-wins-in-the-end note. It's refreshing that this doesn't happen.

The movie clocks in at just under 90 minutes, which makes it just the right length for what is, after all, a fairly lightweight storyline.

Smalltown girl writes steamy novels under a pen name, is drawn out of her shell by a big-city playboy, and then returns the favor, to his horror.

The script may not have been the sharpest, but Dunne and Douglas are both terrific. Especially Dunne, who (if you ask me) showed how to do the Katherine Hepburn thing better than Katherine Hepburn. Of all the Hollywood movies I can think of in which the suave playboy goads the downhome gal only to find that he's seized a bear by the ears, this one is the best. An added virtue is that the makers of this movie understood that most important principle, i.e., romantic comedies should be short and sweet. At about 100 minutes, this movie doesn't drag.

The movie does have its oddities and annoyances, like the idea that out-of-tune whistling can ever be considered funny. Another shot that really irritated me was one in which they evidently closed a door on a cat's tail to get the "comical" reaction. That was definitely not funny.

But overall there's a lot of fun to be found in this movie. And the last line, a mere three words, are the single best ending to a romantic comedy that I've ever seen.

In brief, one of the most delightful musical comedies ever made. The original was of course terrific, but this one easily surpasses it, largely on the strength of the performances turned in by Matthew Broderick and Nathan Lane. Broderick touches on genius in this movie. Lane starts with genius and then leaps into some kind of interstellar supergenius. Uma Thurman, Will Ferrell, Gary Beach and Roger Bart are also all surprisingly funny in their roles as well. And the scene of Lane wooing the little old ladies is quite simply one of the all-time high points for Hollywood. Then the scene in the prison cell comes along and Lane single-handedly sets a new standard. The singing and dancing are all top-notch, and the whole thing tied together is one of the best ways to spend 90 minutes I can possibly imagine. This one climbs up to the ethereal heights of such Hollywood wonders as "Victor/Victoria" and "The Music Man" and "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum." This is probably the very last really funny, witty, entertaining musical Hollywood will ever produce. If it weren't for the determination of a rapidly-aging Mel Brooks, it wouldn't have happened. I'm glad I saw Hollywood's last hurrah before it sinks forever into the depths.

Few things are more amusing to me than the Hollywood myth that Joan Crawford, especially in middle age (she was 50 when this movie was made), was the most intensely sexy, desirable woman who ever lived. That myth finds no more fervent expression than in this movie. Wow. The story is all carefully crafted to rotate around the myth rather like a vast conglomeration of space debris and dust rotating around a giant, frozen planet.

And it works...if you like Joan Crawford melodramas. I've never seen a better one. The plot is absurd, which is to say that it's perfect. The supporting cast is also right on the money: the willowy niece, the bitter, alcoholic husband, the emotionally destroyed belle, the suave neighbor and his unstable sister. All of the actors (except maybe the children) easily outperform Crawford (in terms of creating genuine, believable characters), which is exactly what this kind of movie needs. She's the (tragi-)comic center; everyone else provides the contrast.

The plot is about as subtle as an atomic bomb, with explosions dropped in at regular intervals ("No, I'm going to shoot this dog") to move the plot forward in roughly the same way that a bulldozer shoves a house off its foundation. Which is perfect. This is melodrama. Subtlety is not of the essence. Keep the atomic bombs coming.

The movie's greatest strength, though, is the overall production. The costumes and the sets and the superb, creepy lighting are of the very highest caliber. Forceful but not completely ridiculous. Just when you think the stark, interior scenes with deep shadows have become too much, they switch to a bright, airy outdoor scene.

The ending is predictable and "tragic" and yet "happy" at the same time, which is to say, melodramatic and chuckle-inducing. But it didn't leave me feeling annoyed, as some of Crawford's movies do. Instead, it made me resolve to put this movie on my DVD wish list. I definitely want to see it again.

To be brief, the story is paper thin and you can see the ending coming from a mile away, but Gene Kelly, Rita Hayworth, and an impossibly young Phil Silvers keep the movie afloat throughout and at times lift it right up into the air. A few of the songs are terrible clunkers ("Poor John" is a train wreck) but most of them are great fun, and the scene of Hayworth performing on the absurdly huge set for Kelly's rival has to be seen to be believed. Another treat is the perfect faux-NYC sets in the best Hollywood tradition.

Another attraction, if you consider such things attractions, is the howlingly awful male "chivalry" toward women. The oily leering and transparent obsequiousness that passed for male charm back then (in the movies, at least) is presented in its most lurid form here. Some of the men are about like a cartoon wolf.

One minor disappointment is Eve Arden trapped in a role so minor that she barely has a chance to do anything. I can imagine a lot of potential comic interplay between her and Silvers--a missed opportunity.

I agree more or less with what Roger Ebert said about this movie: Depp's performance doesn't sink it. And I say that being, like Ebert, a big Depp fan. I was just marveling last night at his performance in "Ed Wood." I loved him in "What's Eating Gilbert Grape?", "The Pirates of the Caribbean" and a lot of other movies, too. But he goes off the rails in this one, and his Willy Wonka is just plain creepy and annoying.

Nevertheless, the movie has so many other treats that Depp's performance can't distract us for long. There's a boat, for instance--oh my, what a boat! I haven't laughed out loud that hard inside a theater for a long, long time. And Deep Roy as the Oompa Loompas is also memorable.

And then there are the squirrels. I have to say that the scene with the squirrels must be the single most imaginative, funniest idea Burton has ever come up with, and it is carried off perfectly.

And although Depp's character doesn't come off well, I don't want to make it sound like it's all bad. He is very funny at certain points. But he's funny in spite of his persona, not because of it.

So the movie has its flaws, but so did the original; that doesn't get in the way of it being enjoyable. To tell the truth, I think it would be impossible to make a movie of this story that didn't have its flaws. It's hard to be sure just what Dahl was getting at, if you ask me. So any interpretation will be open to question. The main thing is that it was fun for me, an adult, to watch.

I would have thought that certain scenes in the movie would have been too intense for very young children, but apparently very young children are all hardened these days, because not one of the toddlers in the audience made so much as a whimper at anything.

I found this movie interesting and moving, but in the end, unsatisfying. The story is essentially Greek tragedy, with characters who place themselves on inexorable, intersecting paths that will, the viewer knows, lead to tragedy, though the characters themselves are blithely unaware of it. The classic device of hubris is present in plenty. Colonel Bherani is moral and good but stiff-necked and unbending. Kathy is a simple and essentially kind-hearted person, but weak, unstable and impulsive. Lester is a warm-hearted man seeking love and affection, but he also is weak and impulsive, and over-confident in his own brutal sense of justice.

The characters are solid and believable; the plot resorts to no outrageous tricks; the dialog is straightforward and fairly free of clunkers.

So why was I unsatisfied? I wasn't even sure myself, until I began to ponder the movie and its clear echoes of dramatic tragedy. Then I realized that dramatic tragedy--Aeschylus, Sophocles, Shakespeare, Marlowe--rely as a matter of course on dialog to build the tragedy. Things don't really happen on a stage (even the violence is usually off-stage), and the playwrights didn't provide extensive production notes on how to create moods. It was all in the words, and that was where they put their heart and soul. Words reverberated, multiple meanings built upon multiple meanings, and the nature of the tragedy, and its catharsis, existed primarily in the viewer's head, who had to sort all of these things out for himself and come to his own resolution.

This movie, in contrast, relies mostly on mood to tell its story. Sound effects, music, visual images, like swirling fog and crimson sunsets, meaningful glances, vague gestures, silhouettes behind curtains: These are the things on which the story is built, rather than words. (In fact, there is strikingly little dialog in the movie.) It was done well, largely thanks to the very strong cast headed by Ben Kingsley. But in the end, the movie produced no sense of catharsis, as far as I was concerned. It was just a story of headstrong people who all insisted on their rights, until all of their lives were destroyed. Nothing could have been done to prevent it. There's nothing to be learned.

In that sense, it felt almost like a curiously impersonal documentary. And yet, ironically, this movie was far less impersonal, in one sense, than any of the dramatic tragedies, thanks to its extensive efforts to build moods and ominous foreshadowing. Again, Shakespeare left us no notes on creating elaborate visual effects. We have only bare words on paper. Yet--to me, anyway--those words, and the meanings they carry, are far more substantial and satisfying in the end.

A couple side-notes: I thought there was a point where the movie made a tactical error. Early on, when Kathy's relationship with Lester is beginning, I got the sense that she was ruthless, cold, and willing to push Lester into doing anything necessary to achieve her ends. A femme fatale straight out of a Coen brothers movie. Maybe it's her overly-aggressive eyebrows and her cold, piercing eyes. But this proved not to be true. It becomes clear later that she's more of a borderline schizophrenic, frantic to get her house back, but unable to use evil to do it. I found this startling change in her character to be jarring, and possibly a mistake from the editing room.

The other thing that I didn't like, and my reaction was much stronger this time, was the scene with Kathy on the pier, gazing out to sea, and the camera started spinning in a circle around her. That kind of trick is always phony, as far as I'm concerned. It was as if we were suddenly in a scene from "Law and Order," and including it was most definitely a mistake from the editing room. Editors should know when to rein in directors.

If ever there was a movie that seemed to be a deliberate statement by Hollywood that it despises the intelligence of the American moviegoer, this movie is it. And based on the colossal box office receipts the movie garnered, the studios are dead-on in their assessments. This summer's (2005) box-office slump clearly is more an indication of moviegoers finding other brainless amusements (like reality TV, I suppose) than their displeasure with the vile crap the studios feed them. This past weekend seems to confirm that, since the universally-panned "Fantastic Four" broke the slump.

Anyway.

The story in "I, Robot" has virtually nothing to do with Asimov's wonderful series of tales, which are actually more philosophy than science fiction. He was never better at pondering the human factor in a world of ever-increasing technology. I read the stories when I was a kid, and I've just recently listened to them on audio CD. It confirms what I was pretty sure I remembered: that the stories are genuine, warm, full of human insight, and wonderful.

All of that is entirely absent from this movie. It is an opportunity to worship at the altar of Will Smith, and nothing else. He struts around--and "struts" is far too weak of a word--clad in ultra-stylish leather from head to toe, with two gigantic guns in matching shoulder holsters. He lives with his grandmother, a plump, bespectacled caricature of Aunt Jemima. (Almost like Martin Lawrence in drag.) He's glib, garrulous and rude, but he keeps flashing his patented grin to excuse his crass personality. The dialog is banal to the point of incredulity. The movie is largely CGI, and Smith performed his role mostly wearing weird suits inside a small set and standing before a blue background. One can imagine what kind of soulful performance that coaxes from an actor. Considering that the actor is Smith, who is hardly Shakespearean-caliber to begin with, the result is about as convincing as a bunch of 8th-graders trying to act tough down at the maltshop.

The movie is so focused on Smith's "personality" to the exclusion of all else that one is almost surprised the editors didn't add in a sitcom laugh-track to punctuate his weak one-liners.

The only thing close to the irony of Asimov's tales that this movie achieves is purely unintentional. The rise of CGI technology in movie-making has made it possible, and even profitable, to make movies that are nearly purely eye-candy, with no story, no dialog, no ideas, no thoughts. Like a two-hour music video. Man uses technology to corrupt and debase an artistic medium that was once capable of beauty. That would elicit a wry smile from Asimov.

My first attempt to review this movie proved to be too long, according to IMDb. So, let's try to shorten it a bit.

Apes grope stone, learn to hammer, kill tiger in top of first, stranding three men on base. First ape pitch is wild, and mankind advances to outer space on passed ball. Floyd pinch-hits in second, flies, eats, poops, talks, line drive to deep right field in Sea of Tranquility. Bowman jogs and tans in shallow right, is thrown out attempting to steal home in high-tech Zamboni. Poole plays chess and loses, consoles self with bad sketches in dugout. HAL throws spitball, again wild, Poole advances to outer space on passed astronaut. Poole sucks vacuum, sends HAL to showers, flies into acid trip, grows old faster than Farrah Fawcett, shucks husk, switches teams and scores winning run by circumnavigating globe before learning to walk.

Aliens win 1-0, except that reality is inverted and final score in papers is listed as "bent doughnut."

Roll credits.

(Possibly best movie ever made.)

Dimpled Greek king leads his men to death and glory, while Persian tyrant fumes and stamps his feet.

First, let's get one thing straight: Historical accuracy is virtually non-existent in this movie, beyond adherence to the broadest narrative outline from Herodotus. The council in Corinth is particularly risible. (I'm fairly certain, for starters, that Greeks of the 5th century BC didn't wear togas.) And if I am hearing it correctly, the movie tells us that the second pass was defended by Thespians rather than Phocians. The contingent of Thespians actually volunteered to stand and fight with the Spartans.

The obligatory sappy romance is entirely forgettable, and of all the wooden dialog delivered in this movie, none is worse than that between the lovers Phylon and Ellas. Those scenes are like a high-school play that's gone off the rails. Even too much of the dialog given to the capable actors rolls off the tongue with all the grace and presence of a block of wood. One other thing that bothered me is that the name "Leonidas" was pronounced in just about every different way possible. Lay-OWN-i-dahs, LEE-oh-NYE-deez, Lee-OWN-i-dass, Lay-OWN-i-deez, and so on.

Nevertheless, this movie does have its moments. A nearly unrecognizable Ralph Richardson, his usual amiability well-hidden behind a bushy gray beard, delivers a fine performance, even if the role and dialog he's given to work with are fairly silly. But the man was a consummate professional, and that professionalism allowed him to breathe as much life and passion into his character as possible.

Richard Egan is more uneven. He was always more dimple than actor, but I have to admit that there were times when he rose above the absurd, contrived scenes and made his character believable. That infamous remark about fighting in the shade, for instance (one that came from Herodotus)--it came off well.

Finally, there is David Farrar as Xerxes, my favorite in the film. His performance is a curious and perfectly-balanced blend of passionate acting and ludicrous hamming. I can never be sure if he's playing it entirely straight, or if he's looking for a laugh. I don't take this as a mark of incompetence; I think the man knew exactly what he was doing. There's a scene where he's seducing a laughing Queen Aretemisia, to the accompaniment of harem dancers, and then he throws up his right arm from the couch and imperiously waves them away. That gesture, sublime and ridiculous, sums up his performance perfectly. (The Queen is played by Anne Wakefield, in perhaps the dullest and most wooden of all the performances in the film.) One wonders idly what kind of fun might have resulted by putting the leading characters from this movie into an episode of "Hollywood Squares." There can be no question that Farrar would have gotten the central square.

The battle scenes are the usual late-1950's Hollywood stuff. (Yes I know the movie was released in 1962, but it's a 50's movie if ever there was one.) When armies meet, they just sort of push against each other, like an overgrown rugby match. Then the camera cuts to tight shots of men swinging swords and stabbing lustily. Then back to a wide shot, and more rugby-pushing. I'm not necessarily saying that the hyper-realistic violence of movies like "Gladiator" is always necessary, but the scenes here are far from convincing. And whatever happened to that wall the Spartans were so furiously building? A lot of stress is put on it before the battle, but once the fighting starts, there is no wall to be seen anywhere.

I do have to give credit for some of the Persian deaths. I've seen them all, you know. The Germans in World War II movies, flapping their forearms like little stubby T-Rex arms as they're riddled with machine guns; the gritted-teeth grin of heroic death in the sword-and-sandals epics; the teary-eyed translations to heaven of young GIs pressing letters for the folks into their buddies' hands; the sneering, hollow laughter of the gangster when he gets what's coming to him from a G-man. But there are some top-notch kills here too. One of the Immortals in particular gets a spear through the gut, with his back to us, then spins around and tumbles forward with his arms flailed out in front of him, as if he's hailing a cab to the underworld. Really, really funny stuff.

In summary, this movie is not much more than a footnote of a forgotten Hollywood age of sword-and-sandal epics. Though mercifully free of the overbearing Christian themes of most such movies (one recalls, with particularly vivid horror, "Barabbas"), it nevertheless fails to strike any chord resolutely, and can offer only the limited pleasures of a few fine actors rising above this otherwise-mediocre production.

The endless barrage of 1960's cinematic clichés, sly asides and insider jokes make this movie hard to watch at points, but McGregor, Zellweger, Hyde Pierce and Paulson are all immensely likable characters. I would never have dreamed, for instance, that the same Hyde Pierce who became so tiresome (not to mention old-looking) on "Frasier" would have had such a warm and funny and youthful performance in him. And yet, at bottom, there is so little difference between his characters in the series and the movie. I'm not sure what makes the difference. Probably the absence of Kelsey Grammar and the presence of a script that was not generated by a TV sitcom-writing machine. (Or maybe it's a committee of machines.) Nevertheless, I have to say that there were moments in this movie that severely tried my patience. I remember reading a review of "The Graduate" once that compared the movie to a friend invited to dinner who is witty and engaging at the beginning of the evening, but as the party wears on, it becomes increasingly evident that his mind is unhinged. The same could be said for this movie, times ten. It just...won't...stop. Sure, it's funny when Hyde Pierce picks up the vermouth bottle and literally waves it above the martini shaker without so much as taking the cap off, and sure, like the sucker I am, I think to myself how wonderfully sharp I must be to pick up on a little touch like that. But somewhere around the fifteenth or twentieth little such trick, I conclude that, either I'm not nearly so sharp as the movie is trying to convince me I am, or else I am literally the only person on Earth who understands all of its little jokes. Since I am fairly certain that I didn't write the screenplay, I have to conclude that the movie is trying a little bit too hard, and has spun out of control. I begin to feel a bit like Vikki when she was flattened by Catcher Block's remote-control bed.

Add in the 1960's-TV-variety-show number while the credits roll, and it's just about enough to make me run from the theater, hands pressed to my temples, screaming incoherently about the Communists and fluoridation and soylent green is people.

Still, if you've ever had a soft spot in your heart for the 1950's and 1960's working-girl romantic comedies and dramas, you owe it to yourself to see this movie. Just...be prepared. Maybe keep a leather strap that you can clench between your teeth at appropriate moments.

Incidentally, to see a classic example of the kind of movie this one lampoons, see "The Best of Everything."

I saw a documentary on this aborted movie; it was included with the DVD edition of the "I, Claudius" series starring Jacobi.

Parts of it were nearly unwatchable, especially the interview with director Josef Sternberg. I got the sense that he was a hated man, at least on the set for this movie. During his interview, he sat on a theatrical stage, puffing on his pipe, and putting long (incredibly long), pompous pauses between his phrases. His body language and posture were aristocratic and haughty. He did not look at the camera, or an interviewer, but instead glared at the table in front of him. Then, at one point, he complained bitterly about how production on the movie was stopped because of "the actors." I don't remember exactly how he phrased it, but the gist of it was that the movie had been sabotaged by the sort of people one can't rely on.

That was the impression Emlyn Williams (who played Caligula) had too. He said that it sounded as if Mr. Sternberg ("oh, I beg his pardon--Mister VON Sternberg") was suggesting that Merle Oberon (Messalina) deliberately threw herself through the windshield of her car (though she wasn't driving and didn't cause the accident), ending up on the pavement with severe lacerations (but happily no worse injuries) simply to destroy the production of of Sternberg's movie.

One can't help but smile at Williams' obviously deliberate and very British dig at Sternberg by omitting the aristocratic "von" and then hastening to emend the error--thereby making only too clear what he thought of Sternberg's aristocratic pretensions.

It was also clear that Sternberg despised Laughton, and Laughton returned the hostility in full force. In fact, I think Sternberg may have despised everyone involved except himself. The actors interviewed had largely left acting behind them when the documentary was made (1965), and besides, Sternberg was a broken reed in the movie industry by that time anyway. So he represented no threat to them. Even so, they are muted in their criticisms of him, showing the kind of class and restraint that one can't imagine among today's blabber-mouth stars. But it's their very reticence that underscores all the more strongly how they felt. Oberon says not a single word that you can pin down as critical of Sternberg, but the exasperation at his remarks about her accident is plain on her face. Even more telling is the complete lack of praise or warmth toward him. They don't claw at him, but nobody has anything nice to say about him, either.

Leaving aside the enmities among the cast and crew, even some 28 years after filming, the rushes that have survived provide a fascinating picture. Laughton was clearly struggling with the role. The documentary narrator (an absurd Dirk Bogarde) pointed out that Laughton felt he'd finally gotten inside his character after listening to a recording of Edward VIII's abdication speech in 1936. Maybe. There are clearly aspects of Laughton's performance that are awe-inspiring. Yet nevertheless, he frequently looks as if he's still searching for the soul of the character. I don't want to make it sound as if I worship Jacobi's performance in the BBC series, because it has its flaws as well, but one thing that I thought Jacobi always carried off perfectly was the halting gait and the awkward stance of a man with one leg too short. Laughton looks like he's trying too hard; he almost looks like one of the characters in "The Holy Grail" riding along with a toy horse.

There's another scene where a laughing Messalina prances by, eyeing him mischievously. He looks back at her with a mooning, foppish grin. It doesn't really work. I have to say that this is partly because the scene itself doesn't make any sense. The beguiling 15-year-old Messalina wouldn't have made google-eyed passes at the 50-year-old lame Claudius. The scene was pure Hollywood invention, to give us our first long look at the laughing seductress. So I can't imagine just how Laughton should have played the scene to make it work. Nevertheless, Laughton's performance here almost reminds one of Curly Howard making eyes at a dame in a dentist's office.

But the scene in which he addresses the Senate is powerful and nearly perfect, and so is the scene when he is received by Caligula shortly after the latter has declared himself a god. Here, he knows exactly what he is about. Again, this probably has something to do with the fact that these scenes made sense and were an integral part of the story.

Also, the few scenes in which Williams (Caligula) and Flora Robson (Livia) appeared were astonishing. Mesmerizing. It's a real shame we can't see more of those two.

It's a shame this movie was never finished. It might have been flawed, but it certainly would have been memorable.

A petty gangster rats out his accomplices and goes into protective custody with his new-found penchant for books and thought, until one day retribution arrives in the form of two assassins. The gangster, now a philosopher who claims he is ready for death as just another step in the progression of life, is taken for a long ride across Spain so that the crime boss he ratted out can witness vengeance inflicted.

Talk about your minor masterpieces! This has long been one of my favorites ever since I stumbled across it on one of the premium cable movie channels many years ago.

It's hard to put my finger on just what it is, exactly, that makes this movie great. One can hardly point to substantial character development, because the characters (with one exception) never really become true flesh and blood to us. The plot meanders, truth be told. The dialog is clever but rarely brilliant. So what is it? Certainly the locations and the music, the general ambiance, add a lot to the movie. The car, the clouds of dust, the brilliant Spanish sun, the arc of azure sky, the arid hills, the sultry guitar: these things alone can turn a marginal movie into a good one. Exterior shots predominate, and with good reason. The director knew how to combine simple, pure elements--strong, bold colors, bright sunlight, stark images, and exactly the right sounds--in ways that seem to speak of things larger than themselves.

But I don't mean to make the rest of the movie sound marginal. The characters aren't terribly well fleshed-out, but they are interesting nevertheless. Hurt's character, the silent, wary predator, comes across as a bit stilted, but he makes it work with his craggy face, his angular body, his croaking voice, and especially his eternally weary eyes. (Few characters could have taken on this role without looking ridiculous.) Stamp is also stilted yet convincing as the amateur philosopher and erstwhile rogue at peace with himself and his fate. Roth, even more constricted in his role, also manages to put across a convincing if thoroughly unsavory persona. These actors don't have much to work with, and yet none of them ever slips into crudely cartoonish performances. They remain genuine, to the degree their characters allow.

The real surprise is the girl, Laura del Sol. Her obvious physical charms, barely stuffed into a very small dress, lead the viewer (the pop-eyed male viewer, anyway) into writing her off as mere eye candy, until the confrontation between her and Hurt, and the cruel, angry glow in her eyes, brings it home that here perhaps is the highest talent in this cast. It is she alone who stands out, at the end of the movie, as someone we can recognize and identify with; someone who isn't a mere cypher. What a pity that she has done so little else in English-speaking movies.

Whether you find the ending of this movie satisfying probably says something about your own personality, and how you view concepts like loyalty, crime, vengeance, and justice. I won't go into my own reactions. I'll only say that, when the movie is over, you'll find that, not only have you watched an absorbing movie, but you probably have things to think about.

In this curious film, the ridiculous clashes with the sublime. Robert Arden and Patricia Medina turn in two of the worst, cheesiest performances imaginable. They're both straight out of a Saturday morning cartoon. He's all lock-jawed and hard-boiled; she vacillates between wide-eyed fawning and witch-like threats. The tedium they engender is very difficult to get past, because you can't even watch them as campy.

That's partly because their performances are just that bad, and partly because there is so much else in this movie that works well, or at least strives for excellence. There are a variety of striking images placed before us. Welles' eye for distinctive camera angles and atmospheric lighting was working overtime in this picture. You might quibble with some of his choices as being a tad too melodramatic, but you can't fault him for careful attention to detail. His performance is the usual Welles stuff--overpowering, and perhaps at times almost cartoonish like that of Arden and Medina. But make no mistake: when Welles was cartoonish, it was because he meant to be. Not because that was the only way he knew how to "act." Paolo Mori was also wonderful as as Arkadin's daughter. There were other great characters along the way. Their performances also clash noisily with the wooden hamming from Arden.

And, as others have mentioned, the sound is problematic. Clearly, the movie was overdubbed, and badly, after the fact. In fact, when I first started watching it, I was convinced that it was originally filmed in a foreign language. Nope--something went wrong during filming, it appears, or Welles for reasons of his own decided to re-do all of the sound in the studio after filming. The result is pretty bad. Whether a scene is in a small room, a piazza, an open field, or a vaulted cathedral, the result is the same. Background noise sounds just like that: artificial background noise. The voices sound like they were recorded in a very small, very dead studio. Amateurish and clumsy.

The result is a movie that is, at times, interesting to watch, but it's hard to forget its weaknesses, even for a moment.

One wonders how many times the stagehands had to wrangle a raging Welles off of Arden, prying his hands from the actor's neck, convincing him that murder is illegal, even for a cinematic giant, feeding him rum punch and peanuts, and telling Arden to go hide for fifteen minutes until the anger has passed.