Reviews

If you're partial to the documentary approach to feature films, Dancing at the Blue Iguana is one you'll want to grab, possibly from your video store's for-sale rack or any bargain bin that it has tumbled into. It's interesting work and is considerably more than the soft-core porn for which it might be mistaken. The film was also an experiment on the part of the director Michael Radford, who began his film career as a documentary film maker. To remain true to his school, Mr. Radford allowed the principal actresses to map out their own back stories and interactions, then filmed the results. Many people seem to feel this process failed. I must disagree as I think it worked very well. The slight raggedness that resulted simply made the film more convincing to me. It's a thinking person's adult film. Viewers looking for a straight-up porn hit should pass. This film is more about people who have faced certain facts and settled into lives along the underbelly of Los Angeles. The fact that some of them happen to strip is merely coincidental.

Dancing at the Blue Iguana takes an MRI-like scan of life in an L.A.-area strip club, clinically sectioning the lives of the dancers and staff of the club, as well as providing interesting vantage points on the various types that patronize it. There's an elderly gentleman who watches the dancers from ten feet away through opera glasses, understanding that the devil is truly in the details, a Russian hit man who may be targeting one of the dancers. There's even a young woman regular, apparently in the same age bracket as the dancers. The overall slant is so detached, so transparent, that one comes away from the film feeling as though almost nothing has happened. A number of questions are asked but not really answered, but life is that way at times.

The entire cast turns in solid performances that simultaneously reveal both the surface and hidden aspects of their characters but the story really zeroes in on the various dancers, all of whom are portrayed with great conviction by several very fine actresses who have really taken the plunge into their roles; Daryl Hannah's wasted, self-deluding Angel and Jennifer Tilly's freaked and superfreaky Jo to mention just two off the top. There are more. But the real depth resides in Canadian actress Sandra Oh's Jasmine whose character, away from the pole, is a gifted poet in deep mourning for the dead end which her life, due to a lack of faith in her gift, is approaching. When Jasmine is finally persuaded to read at a local open-mike event by the owner of the bookstore where the reading takes place, she blows everyone out the door, including the headlining poetess who is touring behind her newly-published collection. But Jasmine can't be happy because her triumph is simply more proof of her, apparently, terminal weakness and lack of belief in herself, as well as the hate of what that lack has made her. It's a heart-rending performance. (You can catch a glimpse of this little-known actress in the beautifully-done Canadian production, The Red Violin, as the wealthy Asian lady who, with her husband, bids on the instrument near the film's climax.)

Dancing at the Blue Iguana also contains what may be the shortest 75-second sequence ever filmed in which Kristin Bauer's Nico, a touring professional stripper and porn star, whose anticipated guest performance comprises one the film's wispy back stories, takes the stage. The regular dancers all tend to mime various stages of sexual involvement as part of their individual routines; no such nonsense for Nico. When she confronts the hooting, cash-brandishing, SRO crowd, she operates behind a calm, Apsara smile that might have floated off a wall frieze at Angkor Wat. Nico is obviously the girl who really does this stuff for a living. If you were a fan of the great 80's group, Echo and the Bunnymen, as I was, you'll never hear their hit, 'Lips Like Sugar' quite the same way after Nico works with it. Hard to believe that Ms. Bauer is the same lady who played Jerry Seinfeld's entirely mainstream girl du jour in the 'Man Hands' episode, but it is. Her opening at the Blue Iguana is also set up by one of the most unexpected scene-to-scene jumps that I've ever witnessed. Nico's tough as nails but later, in a touching scene with Jasmine, the girl behind the woman comes out. If you find a VHS copy of this very engrossing movie, (It's probably available as a DVD.) you may want to have it duplicated to provide a backup when you finally wear out the tape under Nico's scene.

Fahrenheit 9/11 is a big, cinematic sour cream pie in the face of George W. Bush, his crew; a group that hijacked patriotism in the same way that the Taliban hijacked Islam, as well as the social sector he represents. Yeah, it's manipulative, and sometimes blatant. The sequence showing a kid flying his kite just before the bombs started falling made me wince a little. But Moore would probably say he's merely fighting fire with fire, pie with pie. The kite kid may have been having fun but the ground on which he ran was just a thin crust over an abyss of summary amputations, hydrochloric acid immersions, midnight disappearances, and very hard time in Abu Ghraib. This was Saddam's Iraq, remember; the nearest thing we had on Earth to the Klingon Empire. It's also periodically hilarious (Witness the incredulous Congressman when Moore asks him to consider sending his own kids into the service and to Iraq.) For viewers on the left, Fahrenheit 9/11 will certainly re-fan any waning flames of activism. It will make those on the right gnash teeth and cry foul. But for those not sure what to think it may supply a quite weather-resistant something to think about.

Despite its upside yo' head approach, Fahrenheit 9/11 actually let George Bush off more easily than it might have; certainly his cast of supporting characters: the comb-licking Paul Wolfowitz, the chilling and hypocritical Dick Cheney (5 Vietnam-related draft deferments yet an avowed war hawk), the simply strange Condoleezza Rice, and our own Othello, Colin Powell, to mention a few. There is more that the film could have said, as well as a few things that could have been said better; possibly an even closer look at the murky relationships that underpin the Bush family, especially its CIA connections. Let's not forget that one of the Agency's known modus operandi is the manipulation of elections, although historically in foreign countries… historically. Remember also that the CIA's mission is only tangentially to protect us here. Its real prime directive is optimizing conditions for American interests abroad, especially business interests. At least some reference to the repercussions of a post-Saddam power vacuum would have been good in this film's context, perhaps addressing the deluge of Iranian and Saudi cash in support of Iraqi Shiite and Sunni factions respectively. It only hints at the absolutely stunning lack of foresight on the part of the Bush Administration that has us and our stalwart service people up to our waists in the mire, regardless of how righteous the initial motives for invasion may have seemed. Too much was probably made by Moore of the Bin Laden family's hasty post-9/11 exit from the country, as these people were almost certainly innocent of any wrongdoing. Sure, they were tight with the Bushes, but that's not yet a crime. Too little was said about the administration's thinly-veiled, near-unprecedented arrogance toward the, albeit, lily-livered legislative branch of the government, on which our current unilateralism is founded. But, all considered, the film's main point has been made, or at least implied.

For many Hindus, everything is Karma; a word that translates most simply as Action, or possibly both action and its result. Nonaction is also a form of karma, because it too can generate results. That the Bush Administration is even possible reflects the karma of the sort of stall-inducing aerodynamic drag that results when a culture becomes, perhaps, too civilized; too complex, too disembodied, too abstracted by its own weight and momentum; a construct into which enormous quantities of energy must be channeled merely to hold it all together. Fahrenheit 9/11 is the Bush Administration's karma, the result of underestimating the intelligence of the majority of Americans and over-estimating its own charisma, as well as that of the presidential office. We're reminded that the real power in America tends to run at periscope depth, but under the cool Bush sparkle it has broken the surface, like a modern nuclear sub; conning tower out, most of the hull still submerged.

If the events surrounding the 2000 presidential election returns from Florida had transpired in France, much of the country's population would probably have been in the streets. In fact, they still might be there today. The French tend to be quite realistic about some things, such as sex, politics, and, of course, international relations; one of the main reasons Paris was not shelled into rubble by Hitler. But they do know how to be really p***ed off when that is called for; something we're still learning. The fact that, in a culture as politically demure as ours, Bush's inaugural motorcade was egged implies that America has not yet completely lost its cojones. The parallel fact that many media pundits denounced Fahrenheit 9/11 before it was ever screened should be reason enough for almost anyone to see it, aside from the fact that nothing like this film has ever been made for major release. It is something of a milestone. There's an old saying that has numerous variants: 'When among the wolves, howl.' In that light, Michael Moore, the current alpha coyote of the Left of Center pack, definitely be howlin'. That a film like this can be made and seen is a testament to how cool, and hot, America still is. Word is that an anti-Michael Moore film is slated for release. I'm sure Moore would say, 'Bring it on.'

I'll almost always have something better to do than watch a prime time soap. But I gave North Shore a shot because I wanted to spot locations. My rationale: if I can't currently be in the islands, in my opinion that only place on Earth where a sane person could want to be, I could maybe catch glimpses of some of the places I've been. Oahu is certainly nice enough but boasts only a few areas that would be sufficiently tropical and frameworthy for filming. Sure enough, I did recognize some of them. However, despite the fact that I'm not remotely in the series' target demographic, I'm still sort of watching.

Apparently North Shore is a solid go for season one and will probably get the green for a second season. However, I suspect that the show will run out of believable story ideas before season three, if it lives that long, and be forced to start recycling. There are only so many ways to shuffle the show's sun-splashed but limited deck, just a finite number of credible high-end guests to run past the Grand Waimea Hotel's front desk, and a limited number of romantic permutations. The length of time that contrivance can be disguised by complexity is also finite. The recent episode involving the Vice President's spirited daughter already stressed the believability envelope just a tad. (However, it did give Kristoffer Polaha the opportunity to deliver some beautiful Stink Eye to a thuggish Secret Service agent who tried to coerce him into helping cover up the visiting Veep's intimate indiscretions.)

Although North Shore's characters are somewhat formulaic, they're not entirely without appeal and all handle their chores more than adequately. Kristoffer Polaha's Jason Matthews, the hotel's General Manager, transmits a lot of believable humanity. Jason is respected and liked, qualities that are not often found together in the high-end workplace. The Jason character is very comfortable in his own skin and easy to root for. Brooke Burns, who plays the Grand Waimea's 'Guest Relations' Manager and Jason's former flame, Nicole Booth, has been dinged for her lack of range, but as the emotionally-planed corporate princess, who has been groomed from birth to excel for Daddy, she's just fine in the role. I completely bought her anguish when, in a recent episode she walked in on Jason while he was working it out with Tessa. Nicole had just left her fiancé at the altar to reconnect with Jason. In fact, the sequence made me wince; soapy but so nasty… Corey Sevier's Gabriel Miller, a talented surfer, who longs to turn pro while struggling to outgrow his adolescent goofiness, also works well. Anyone who feels that he or she has a gift but cannot quite find the way to get it across, to make it work, will relate to Gabriel. He's hormonal but still too much of a waterman to forget to tie down a borrowed jet ski, which subsequently rolls off its trailer and lands him in one-finger poi with a local bad boy from whom he borrowed the machine. But it seems that every script contains at least one moment when credibility must go on stand-by. The hotel's concierge from the dark side, Tessa, played with edge by Amanda Righetti, is a girl who could make a guy seriously consider giving up women, perhaps appropriate as Tessa has pretty much given up on men, although she's still up for making a meal of one now and then. It'll be Tessa vs. Nicole in upcoming episodes. I think I know who'll win but the war should be amusing. I've always liked James Remar, who built a career playing borderline personalities. His hotel owner, Vincent Colville, is an interesting against-type play. Colville gives the impression that he already knows everything that will happen and that the Grand Waimea, although dear to his heart, is also just a stepping stone. Still, he's the sort of boss almost anyone would like to have; tough, smart, but always fair.

The thing is, Hawaii is actually a far more interesting place than the environs of the Grand Waimea, and on several levels. But one has to be willing, and sufficiently patient, to see beneath the obvious surface to get at what I'm talking about. Young local (although not necessarily Hawaiian) men with bad attitudes are certainly a part of island life and have always been, right from Captain Cook on, but there's more. Unfortunately, North Shore, whose target audience will, presumably, begin to nod off just past tan lines, will probably not permit the series to mine the real mana and remain happily fixated on who's screwing whom, literally and figuratively. If you were in the islands on 9/11, as I was, sitting beneath the sheltering trees on 'Anini Beach, you may know what I mean. The islands are another place, out of time, almost not of this earth. Viewing televised coverage of the attack on the Towers from there, it seemed that an act of such stunning and precise brutality was simply impossible; the baddest of bad dreams. Against this essential, ancient, fleeting, and fading quality, even the Grand Waimea, ostensibly a perfect hotel in a perfect place, feels a bit like the Pentagon.

Television from the mid '50's to the mid '60's, probably due to its roots in the theater, was far more stylized than today's fare. Most of us who watched it then, certainly as kids growing up, were probably not really aware of this aspect. We just watched and enjoyed. But in retrospect, or through seeing various classic shows on disc or tape, this stylistic aspect becomes very clear. Also lacking then was today's bottomless well of technological possibility, giving most productions of the time a rather cut-and-dried feel that might seem hopelessly lacking in dimensionality to the young viewer of this time. But there were true gems lying about in this older, rougher ground. It was this era, lest we forget, that spawned the peerless, original Twilight Zone, a series that perfectly sampled the over and undercurrents of its time as no other ever has, and which owed much of its power to the stark realities of low-tech TV. Also produced in this era was the superb Have Gun Will Travel with its perfect blend of psychological and physical intensity, one of several excellent western series that aired then.

But in terms of pure style, no TV series of that time, of any genre, could match the half-hour crime drama Peter Gunn, a production so stylized and stylistically detailed, and so measured, that it almost resembled Japanese Kabuki. Every aspect of this Blake Edwards-produced series was meticulously detailed and managed, from the near-blank style of its acting to even the visuals that preceded and terminated breaks for commercials. In fact, it was the pre-commercial segue that became my favorite. In the sequence, a musical G-clef unwound itself and morphed into a Giacommeti-like human figure, all against a slowly-arpeggiated, extremely cool jazz guitar chord. This very slick sequence got past me the first time around, when the show was in its network run and I was too young to really appreciate it. But years later, when the series was in local syndication and airing at midnight, I stayed up just to watch and listen to it. It was that cool.

Most Peter Gunn episodes were cut from a similar template: the caper to be addressed transpired in a pre-credit sequence (Peter Gunn was one of the first shows to jump directly to story before rolling opening creds.) Then Craig Steven's almost impossibly urbane private eye, Peter Gunn, would step onto the case, always bending the law just enough to keep Herschel Bernardi's way dour NYPD detective, Lt. Jacobi, unsure of whom to arrest first: Gunn or the perps in question. The often-repeated sight of Jacobi arriving on the scene, snub .38 drawn, ready to arrest the suspect, only to find Gunn already there and in control, never failed to amuse. When Gunn was not effortlessly staying two steps ahead of Jacobi, he was lizarding at Mother's, a waterfront jazz club, and getting his flirt on with its sultry headlining singer, blonde neutron bombshell Edie Hart, played by Lola Albright, a type of lady that might be defined as Marilyn Monroe's far more experienced sister. The show's sense of cool was almost too much, but not quite, a fact that made it eminently watchable then, and has allowed it to live on even now in syndication.

Underpinning and significantly defining the series was Henry Mancini's superb music. Mancini passed away in the mid 90's and is just now getting his due, including a postage stamp in his memory. His Peter Gunn theme is still being covered today but it was his incidental music for the series that I loved best, especially the stuff that played as the pre-credit story opened. Mancini took the then-popular West Coast, cool jazz sound and further iced it down, doing things like blending flute and tremoloed vibraphones to sustain a menacing, ever-darkening cloud behind the plot. Mancini was a master of all moods, which he crafted with lush harmonies and gliding melodies (The ageless Days of Wine and Roses and Moon River are his; lyrics by Johnny Mercer.) Mancini was very prolific and did many great things that sort of slid by while no one was really looking, probably because he never tried to acquire the spotlight himself, as himself. He mainly let his work do the walking and talking. His soundtrack to the movie Hatari (an intermittently very entertaining action flick with John Wayne as an African big game capture expert) remains worthy and remarkable to this day. As a freshman at the University of Idaho, I watched Mancini guest-conduct the university orchestra; the Maestro forbearing graciously as his `Baby Elephant Walk', an incidental piece from the Hatari soundtrack that became an international hit, was butchered by the inept flute section. It was heart-rending. Mancini also did the music for another similar but unsuccessful TV series, Mr. Lucky, based on the Cary Grant movie character from the mid-forties. Mr. Lucky died fairly quickly, but its theme music, featuring the squishiest, most liquid Hammond organ voice ever recorded, lives on, in my memory at least.

Quick… Name one reason why TV is cool. Ok… How about this? It lets you see movies like The Patriot without having to buy a ticket. Sure, you'll miss a bit of the R-rated carnage, but hey, that's why we have imagination. It's why Quentin Tarantino released the pull-way version of the ear-ectomy in Reservoir Dogs instead of the alternate version that actually showed Michael Madsen's razor work. The mind is the real stage, the real screen.

The Revolutionary War will probably never work well on the Hollywood screen. There are several reasons for this, all of which would require more space to properly examine than is available here. Suffice it to say that, despite its crucial role in the history of America, the Revolutionary War is simply too quaint to sell major tickets; best to leave it to PBS, maybe. Pigtailed men running around in knee breeches, marching in rigorous order and firing flintlock rifles that require minutes to load between shots doesn't exactly put us on the edge of our seats. But neither does the scowling, bellowing Mel Gibson, even as he hacks his way through a platoon of Redcoats like Toshiro Mifune with a tomahawk, avenging the rather brutal and unnecessary death (in terms of the story) of his youngest son at the hands of the British. The Patriot will, and probably should, irritate anyone with a reasonable knowledge of history, the references to which, in this film, skip off reality like a flat stone across water. The War of Independence really does deserve better. It was far, far more interesting than its pro-forma representation here.

So, is there nothing good to say? Well, damn near. However, The Patriot did render a superb villain in Jason Isaacs' Colonel William Tavington and it is around this somewhat trumped up spirit of darkness that the film really orbits. The Tavington character radiates the same cold light that emanated from what is possibly one of the very greatest portraits of nastiness ever brought to the screen: Jack Palance's gunfighter Jack Wilson in Shane. The fact that Tavington was forced by the powers to act more like an equestrian Reinhard Heydrich than an English gentleman of the era betrays the film's lack of confidence in its own historical foundation. The Brits pulled some funky stuff during the Revolution. Armed conflict tends to bring such things out in us. But atrocities as heinous as were ascribed to the British in The Patriot never occurred. Director Roland Emmerich is German. Perhaps he has residual issues over the outcome of World War Two. The historical person on which the Tavington character was obviously based, Colonel Banastre Tarleton, actually did command British forces in the Carolinas during the War of Independence, and was certainly interesting enough to warrant a film of his own. Tarleton was not the near-satanic presence that Tavington embodies, in fact quite the opposite. It's safe to say that if the boyish Tarleton, and not Jeb Stuart, had been commanding Lee's cavalry at Gettysburg, he would not have been dashing about stealing wagons instead of shadowing the Union army. The outcome of the battle, not to mention history, might well have been different. Still, the Tavington character is the one element in the film that really resonates. Maybe The Patriot should be re-released under the title, Bad Dragoon.

Rene Auberjonois, whose alienated, unflinching Constable Odo was probably the best thing about the otherwise moribund Babylon Five rip, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, and who played the courageous reverend in The Patriot, also played the young George Washington in a 1974 episode of PBS' N.E.T. Playhouse, "Portrait of the Hero as a Young Man" depicting Washington's participation in the opening actions of the French and Indian War, when he commanded colonial militia under the British. For those wondering why Mel Gibson's Benjamin Martin refused to answer his son's (Heath Ledger) repeated question: `What happened at Fort Wilderness?', I may have an answer. There was, of course, no such historical place. If the definitive authority on such matters, the eminent 19th century historian Francis Parkman fails to reference it, then, it was never there. However, there is a Disney resort of that name in Orlando. Mel was probably embarrassed to admit that he overpaid for his cabin.

The Western never quite seems to die, despite repeated pronouncements to that effect. Westerns are not cool, although their heroes can certainly be. But so what? Cool is far too transient to be taken seriously by anyone but marketers and adolescents. For the latter, knowing what's cool is merely practice for knowing something but without the burden of actual knowledge. It's a place to be for people who, in essence, know almost nothing and need something to grip. So, instead of dying, the Western seems merely to periodically cop some Z's than awaken again to take a currently acceptable shape. Witness HBO's critically well-received new series, Deadwood. What's the secret here? I think it's simple. The Western is simply too innately and indelibly cinematic to completely die. Also, if one has a knack for location shooting, westerns can be relatively easy to make - at least as easy as any feature film can be, although they can be hard to make well. For example, Lawrence Kasdan's Silverado, despite its excellent cast, top-shelf production values, and sprinkling of good moments, never quite managed to escape a certain perfunctoriness. Compare it to a similar ensemble work in the genre: Clint Eastwood's superb Unforgiven, and you can begin to get the almost indefinable sense of what makes a Western right. The Western requires a certain element of restraint to really work; restraint on all levels, behind and in front of the camera. The made-for-TV, The Tracker, also screened as Dead or Alive, is a blueprint for that restraint.

The Tracker is a simple manhunt story set in the canyon country of southern Utah. If you've ever spent time in the high country, especially when autumn is drawing its final breaths, with the first major snowfall just a hair-trigger pull away, you'll know how beautiful that time of the season is. A buttery light seems to glow out from everywhere: rocks, dust, the explosion of golden Cottonwood leaves. Into this beautiful and unforgiving world Kris Kristofferson's almost supernaturally tough Marshal Noble Adams pursues his quarry. And what a great quarry it is. The under-sung Scott Wilson plays Jack Stillwell, a bible-quoting maniac, kidnapper, and murderer; a cross between Donald Pleasance's vicious lay preacher in Will Penny and the Wild Bill character in The Green Mile. Stillwell is on the loose, out of his gourd, and loving every minute of his headlong ride to perdition. Marshal Adams, his longtime friend and deputy (the ursine David Huddleston), and Adams's son, on leave from school `in the East', whom the Marshal deputizes to give him some real work to do, set out in pursuit of Stillwell, and they're not coming back without him.

The story swings between Jack Stillwell's fever-pitch lunacy and Marshal Adams' granitic resolve. Kris Kristofferson was born to be a western lead; always displaying the entire palette of mood required for the work. His Billy the Kid is, essentially, definitive although I remain very fond of Emilio Estevez' wild-eyed embodiment in Young Guns. Despite the relatively unknown status of this film, Kristofferson's Noble Adams is one of the finest western characters ever portayed: American Gothic from the Dark Side in service of The Light and is also some of this actor's best work ever. Trailing Stillwell into country where, as a younger man, Adams lost his wife, whom it is clear that he dearly loved, pulls the the Marshal across hallowed ground to boot. Tragi-comic relief occurs in the form of grim humor when a pack of bounty hunters, knockabout cowpokes also tracking Stillwell and completely out of their collective depth, cross Adams's trail. They get one warning to drop their act which, of course, they ignore in a manner entirely consistent with a group intelligence just a notch or two above the pathetics who rode with Robert Ryan's Deke Thornton in the Wild Bunch.

Adams' weapon of choice is a long-barreled Sharps. The Marshal shoots well and the outcome is somewhat foregone, yet one still emerges with a certain compassion for the dull-witted.

And there you have it. And it's all you need. As a film, The Tracker is a very solid B movie; a perfectly good place for a western to be. But as a genre piece, once the action departs the somewhat too-manicured 1880's railhead set, it's right down the pipe: compact, credible, nonsense-free, poignant, and engrossing. Any fan of the genre should collect it.

I've been thankful for many things during the strange journey that has been my life. Among them was that I had never seen nor heard of Gwyneth Paltrow before seeing Steven Kloves' unsung, too-often trashed work, Flesh and Bone. Although this film has been deemed unwatchable by some; primarily, I suspect, by those who simply cannot deal with Meg Ryan in any form, Flesh and Bone is entirely watchable and often engrossing.

I stumbled onto it by accident one afternoon, when the film I had paid to see suffered a projector crash, leaving me to wander the nearly empty multiplex at my leisure. Flesh and Bone, said the sign over the door. Hmm. supernatural thriller with voodoo elements? Well, not really, although the scene that greeted me as I entered: a very scary-looking James Caan, with shotgun, skulking through a shadowy interior, made me think my initial assessment had been close (I had entered its theater a few minutes after the film had started.) Just a few more minutes passed before I realized that I was in the presence of something, at the least, unusual. First, considerable time elapsed without Dennis Quaid flashing his '55 DeSoto grille grin even once. In fact, he was scowling like all getout. Meg Ryan barely smiled either and it was well into the film before she first flipped her hair (while talking about pickles). Very strange. Being something of a sucker for films that cast against type, I was getting pulled in. But WHO was the spooky chick who kept walking in and out of various scenes, shoplifting something in almost each case?

That was Gwyneth, of course. If she had played the role of the deeply alienated Ginnie later in her career, she certainly could have pulled it off, but the mystery of her character, the thing that made you try to imagine the circumstances that had created such a creature, would never have manifested. It just would have been Gwynnie playing Ginnie. I'll be honest, I've remained immune to the whole Gwyneth thing. To me, she's something like Gouda cheese; certainly edible, but best if you're in the mood for a snack with somewhat more aroma than flavor. I admit that I've always dug her Mom, Blythe Danner, among the most delicately fair of all cinematic flowers. But I loved Gwyneth Paltrow in this film, still do, and always will. I don't think she stole the show, as some seem to, but her perfectly-played Ginnie was absolutely essential to it.

The rather default brutality that lurks in Flesh and Bone could seem artificial, but against the historical backdrop of Texas, where it is set, the film's slant makes sense. Texas history has been drenched in blood and tragedy from the start; Cabeza De Vaca, the lonely, ignominous demise of the LaSalle expedition, which foundered and was swallowed up on its Gulf Coast in an attempt to navigate the Mississippi northward, conflict with Spain and Mexico, the Comanche terror, the slaughter of its vast buffalo herds, its rape by oil and cattle culture, Texas politicians (just hitting a few high spots). Merely passing through the state can give one the sense that a loose black hole is about, not a massive one, but big enough.

Flesh and Bone is a promenade of the gravitationally doomed. Everyone in the film seems to be drifting toward the event horizon of an unseen singularity, just beginning to be stretched out of shape. Closest to oblivion is James Caan's chilling Roy Sweeney, a character in the mold of Christopher Walken's very bad dad in At Close Range but chicken-fried to the brink of carbonization; a man for whom conscience is no longer even a concept. Plunging close behind is his son Arliss (Quaid), someone who, after matriculating under his father's brutal tutelage, has become an exile to his own life. His flickering soul is not quite dead yet, but give it time. Meg Ryan's Kay Davies, the unknowing survivor, as an infant, of the film's opening horror, is a type of gently tragic heroine one can see anywhere, but most often in the South, the most culturally monolithic and unforgiving region of an unforgiving America. (Texas is the West but also, most certainly, the South.) Free-form and fundamentally cheerful personalities like Kay's may not always fare well there, unless legitimized by kids and a ring; something her character is beginning to understand as she pops, drunk, out of a paper cake at a roadhouse hoo-rah. Paltrow's Ginnie is possibly the most recent gravitational captive, but she has entered the plunge with cryogenic conviction, forming a binary dark star with Caan's character.

I liked this little film enough to collect it and have never regretted it. There is real psychological texture, a noiresque sense of doom, convincing intimacy set against a vast West Texas backdrop, a house haunted by ghosts living and dead, a brief, poignant performance by the never-failing Scott Wilson, a great score by the brilliant Thomas Newman (I started watching the TV series Boston Public just to hear its opening theme music, which he composed) and a closing scene as mythic as that of any cowboy classic. The film's conclusion flirts a bit with improbability but still works because, dear friends, karma does exist. It's not just a hippie word. Leave the Anti-Megs to their own gravitational plunge and enjoy.

This Yale University-produced French-language telecourse, which pendulums back and forth between the prosaic and the surreal, gets my vote for the most mellow TV show ever. Yes, it even beats Mr. Rogers because the late and lamented Mister R. always tries to engage you, however gently. You feel obligated to pay attention. French in Action seems not to care if you're even watching. It simply pursues its merry course, almost entirely in suave, Parisian French. You are left alone to either comprehend or not and, unless you already have a bit of Francais under your belt, it will be largely not. The series' philosophy is to immerse you in French, inviting you to pick up what you can. There will not be a quiz. Tres jolie, non? The series probably works best as a classroom adjunct and, indeed, each episode does include a bit of classroom simulation, all in French of course. Watching it cold, you may pick up a few snippets but the series' true value possibly lies in showing you exactly how hard it will be for you to communicate effectively in French if you are not fluent, and to be cool and do your best. According to travel writer/TV host Rick Steves, your brave attempts to speak French will usually be rewarded with good will, at least so it was before the Iraq War. Now, who knows? You could go to Montreal but, in truth, many Canadians dislike Les Americains just as much as the French, for many of the same reasons. Just go and don't speak to anyone. You'll be fine.

The series boasts a semblance of story line. A young `American tourist', equipped with a perfect command of French (because the actor who plays him is, in fact, French), arrives in Paris and eventually crosses paths with the, evidently, prosperous middle-class Belleau family and their circle of friends. Sights are seen, excursions are taken, dinners eaten, gentle angst is released now and then, and we, presumably, learn something. French is a lovely wind-chime of a language and just to hear it spoken so beautifully, as it is in this series, especially when proffered with a feminine lilt, is worth the watching, even though barely a word is understandable because the French is spoken with native inflection and rhythm (however, you should soon be able to comprehend the word, Merde!). The conversation and narration forges ahead, swallowing Rs and packing mysterious French usage into sonorous sausages of incomprehensibility. Periodically, key phrases are extracted and repeated but, as there is no comparative context with everything being in French, you still probably won't understand much.

But hey. there are things to see as well, especially for Les Boys, primarily in the form of the Belleau ladies if you're straight, and the pretty Charles Mayer (as Robert the tourist) if you're not. From the sleek Madame Belleau through the youngest, future-jailbait daughter, Marie-Laure, all are tres charmant. Most of the action centers on the middle daughter Mireille, played by the bounteous, walking vanilla sundae, Valerie Allain, a girl who really knows how not to wear a bra. Mireille simultaneously chaperones and participates in a chaste relationship with Robert (they obviously have the mutual hots, but this is a telecourse.) Marie-Laure frequently tags along. (There is also, from what I have been able to gather, a French porn star also named Valerie Allain who, purportedly, is not this same lady. I have tried but have never succeeded in confirming this duplicity one way or the other. The Ms. Allain of this series, who, it is rumored, perished in a motorcycle accident, is/was an actor of moderate note in France, who starred once with Claude Chabrol. Hopefully she is still with us.) Several of the players have fairly stout French film and TV resumes.

Even if you are not actively trying to learn French, you will pick up a bit here and there, especially if you watch regularly and really pay attention. You'll also get a lot of exposure to the high-end French accent. I'm not a regular, yet still managed to eventually grasp that the Cecile character is actually Mireille's older sister, not just a family friend as I had previously thought. Although produced under the auspices of Yale University, the series is French in origin and is as quirkily Gallic as a Citroen 2CV. It even offers a strange trenchcoat type with a major facial tic who seems to be stalking (in a benign, Chaplinesque way) Mireille and Marie-Laure for, apparently, entirely French reasons. Just when you may be drifting off, comes the scene in which Mireille, out for a stroll with Robert, gets a passing comment from a young soldier. We don't hear it but she does. Mirielle decks the soldier with a girlie right, then plants her boot toe where the sun seldom shines. Mon Dieu. If French in Action airs in your locale (in the Frisco Bay Area it's on KCSM, channel 60), check it out, It's fun in its own way; a great show to watch when burned out, if nothing else, and certainly easy on the ears.

ATTENTION: All women shall wear a Versace gown and sling-back pumps when using the toilet.

Ok… Let's move on.

While watching Eyes Wide Shut, I found myself repeatedly asking what I would have thought of this film had it not been Mr. Kubrick's work, and I think I might have liked it more than I did. Would he have made this film if he had known that it would be his last? With the master's name not in the credits, Eyes Wide Shut might have been an interesting art house effort, perhaps by a young director with a definite eye, and a future. Quite possibly, Nicole and Tom would still have been in the cast, perhaps working for scale and some points, for the fun of being in such a production, as both actors possess discernible integrity. But Eyes Wide Shut was a Kubrick, and I came away with a clear sense that this great artist of the cinema had possibly been running on fumes while directing it. Despite the seductive beauty of many of its set pieces, the film overall seemed to be walking under water. But Kubrick out of breath is still Kubrick and he still managed to give us an often fascinating piece of work, one that dripped the dark juices of life that he may have sensed were, for him, finally drying up.

Although the aforementioned integrity is a good thing in any artist, that quality alone may not always be enough. An actor must still be right for the role and when Tom Cruise is wrong, no one is wrong quite like him. But this seldom, if ever, has anything to do with his skill as an actor. Like Cary Grant, Gary Cooper, or Clint Eastwood, Tom Cruise is a Movie Star and movie stars have indelible personalities that percolate up through every role. In Mr. Cruise's case, it's the shrewd, early post-adolescent we first encountered in Risky Business. Regardless of how sophisticated his subsequent characters have been, this personality has always been there and is something that Mr. Cruise will simply have to outgrow. As he seems to be aging gracefully, it may take a while.

While brilliant in Born on the Fourth of July, Rain Man, and Jerry McGuire, where his core adolescence was perfect, in Eyes Wide Shut, he's a college boy playing doctor in a tent-like white coat. In the first Mission Impossible, when Cruise's whizbang Ethan Hunt told Ving Rhames' Luther that `We're GOING to do it', referring to the planned burglary at CIA Langley, he simply came off like a frat boy planning to heist the Phi Delt bell. In that film, as in Eyes Wide Shut, Cruise never really acted badly. He was just wrong for the roles. In Eyes, during the orgy scene, when the spectacular courtesan under black feathers asks Dr. Bill (Cruise) what he thinks he is doing, the veracity of the question resonates on several levels. Nicole Kidman, a humanoid blend of fox and white-tailed deer, was almost equally unconvincing as his wife. I tried, but could not buy into this glittering and now-sundered couple. Lesser-known actors of the same age would have brought more authenticity, but both roles really called out for more mature actors with more cerebral styles. The Cruise-Kidman duet were never able to gain sufficient distance from their real selves because their character-set, a young fairy-tale couple, was too much like we perceive them in real life. The real Tom Cruise would never be seen ricocheting off a homophobic boy on a late-night city sidewalk, yet there he was, despite the Dr. Bill disguise. Given this, no matter how hard the pair tried, or over-acted, I could never escape the feeling that both were often faxing it in. Thomas Gibson, the briefly-visible, young college professor, would actually have made a more believable Dr. Bill. Eyes Wide Shut is a dark film and the sparkly Mr. And Mrs. Cruise simply shed too much of the wrong sort of light on it.

But not all of this film's casting choices were mistakes. The supporting cast took very good care of business, some of whom seemed to be poking their heads into the film from a parallel universe, even if given just a few lines, like Carmela Marner's smart waitress. Sidney Pollack was a great save when Harvey Keitel, due to scheduling conflicts, was unable to finish out as Victor Ziegler. Todd Field's Nick Nightingale worked beautifully. But the real coup d'etat was Vinessa Shaw's hooker, and walking billboard for the legalization of prostitution, Domino, who stepped out of the film's urbane murk and owned everything. Her scene is my absolute favorite. You don't want to merely bang a lady of such sweet and intelligent self-possession. You want to get her off the street, buy her a drink, and just watch her talk. She has everyone's number. Resistance is futile.

We will probably never know what Kubrick (David Lean's evil twin) really wanted to accomplish with Eyes Wide Shut (the title was probably borrowed from dialog in the superlative BBC production of John LeCarre's Smiley's People: Connie Sachs to Smiley during their great scene; Kubrick certainly would have seen it); We do know that it was messed with (Gee, isn't that surprising). Director's Cut, please, asap. I'm just sorry he's gone. We won't get to see him bounce back and pull off something brilliant ever again. What must it have been like to be him and be so burdened by the relentless expectations of so many after the monumental 2001: A Space Odyssey? I think he handled it. If you doubt him, or me, just watch his The Shining then follow it up with the not-bad TV version. There you will have the explicit and implicit difference between art and artifice.

Even today, as a writer, having been through J.R.R. Tolkien's Ring Trilogy twice, once for the journey and the second time somewhat more analytically, I can barely comprehend how Tolkien did it; how he managed to fashion a world of such minute detail, and with scope that was at once physical, temporal and emotional. Is the Trilogy literature? Maybe not by strict definition; its concern is not so much with ideas as with pure language, English specifically, and what can be done with this amazing tool. The tale itself seems, at times, to exist only as a hanger for Tolkien's aesthetic experiments with the evocative aspect of language, how words sound, and how that quality can be made to resonate in the mind of the tuned-in reader: Galadriel, Celeborn, Umbar, Forlindon, Dimrill Dale, Withywindle, Rivendell, Mordor; words that often sound more like wind chimes or gonging bells than words, all strung together with equally melodious text.

When I learned that Tolkien was coming seriously to the big screen, I was stoked, although memories of David Lynch's adaptation of Frank Herbert's similarly monumental novel, Dune, had me a bit worried. One feature-length film, despite the great beauty of many of its elements, had not been enough to properly set up and display Dune's particular richness of detail and the movie tended to stumble about trying to hit a sufficient number of the book's high spots (though I still love the sequence in which House Atreides departs Caladan for Arrakis; the stately embarkation into the Guild Heighliners). It was a film that could only really work for those who had read and loved the novel. But Tolkien was to be served up in three (count 'em!) parts. Having seen the first two of the three, I have not been disappointed.

When the first installment bypassed Tom Bombadil and the Barrow Downs, the choices Peter Jackson had been forced to make were obvious. I'm sure they weren't always easy ones. Many of the Trilogy's more subtle elements had to be bypassed. For example, the book's spooky view of the Black Rider on the Buckleberry Ferry stage, seen by lantern light from across the river as the Hobbits flee the Shire - a favorite interlude of mine - was really more effective and evocative than the film's narrow escape of screeching hooves. But the gorgeous pursuit of Arwen and Frodo from Weathertop by the Ringwraiths, with its breathtaking overhead cut to the full-gallop chase, put everything back in balance. The Fellowship of The Rings was so good that it may not have been necessary to have read the Trilogy first. But in the case of The Two Towers, reading first is highly recommended. This done, the second film which must, to some degree, only imply its particular book, will play all the more richly.

In the Two Towers, both in print and on screen, the story's U-shaped arc reaches its low-point before starting its climb to the end. It is the Trilogy's most challenging phase, for both reader and viewer. There was no way that the contemporary narrative cinema, with its rather rigid constraints, could have rendered it faithfully. Peter Jackson, a director of great skill and intelligence, obviously knew this as well. He taketh away but he also giveth back: eye-candy scenery, an FX for the ages in Gollum (underpinned by actor Andy Serkis' excellent performance; he blue-suited the part in real time to optimize the digital Gollum's relationships with the living actors), great Ents, and action that makes the clashes in Braveheart seem like square dances. The battle at Helm's Deep is riveting. Staged in the rain, like Kurosawa's climatic battle in the Seven Samurai, you can almost forget to breathe as the sequence unfolds.

To bring a written work like the Ring Trilogy to the screen; one with which readers had already formed deep connections, took guts, not to mention great movie-making skill. Because Tolkien's characters are so vividly drawn, great sensitivity and precision in casting was also required. In that light, all main characters are spot-on, often exactly as I envisioned them in the books. Frodo is just a bit too pretty, yet still authentically portrayed by Elijah Woods, who fans out the full deck of Frodo's emotions, from grit through fright, with great clarity. But with Frodo accompanied by Sean Astin's letter-perfect Sam Gamgee, all remains well. The memory of Ian Holm's equally-perfect Bilbo makes it even better. Karl Urban's coiled, wild-eyed Julius Caesar was my favorite recurring character in the Xena: Warrior Princess TV series and I enjoyed seeing him in the Two Towers as the equally-coiled Eomer. Cate Blanchett was probably born to play Galadriel but the real, possibly unexpected, thermonuclear casting-event was Craig Parker's elf-captain Haldir. A little make up and some blonde tresses morphed the pleasant-looking Parker into a presence of mythic nobility, as opposed to Orlando Bloom's more intense, wolf-like Legolas. Much of the innate beauty that infuses the entire Trilogy is compressed into Parker's character and I'm not alone here. Haldir websites are sprouting like mushrooms in Fangorn Forest as we speak.

It's hard to say anything bad about a production into which so much intelligence, sensitivity, courage, and labor has been poured. What would be the point? There's plenty of cotton candy out there to pull apart. Any film should be judged first in terms of its respective genre. Very few films are truly great across the entire spectrum. At this point, Lord of The Rings is a magnificent achievement, magically pulling together so much of what the cinema can be at this stage in its evolution. The Two Towers is a discrete film but also a necessary and difficult chapter of a larger work. Not all films will be Tolkienesque fantasies. But when such films are made, Lord of The Rings will be the absolute benchmark.

Although more schematic than its marvelous sequel, Smiley's People, and carrying less emotional weight, the BBC adaptation of John LeCarre's Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, which aired in the colonies on PBS, is still superb. As purely a suspense piece, Tinker, Tailor actually wins by a nose. Although hints are dropped throughout, and are fun to see after the initial viewing, the outcome remains up in the air until the climax. This was never quite the case in Smiley's People. There, the suspense was delivered by other means and played a lesser role in the overall plot. One requirement for really appreciating Tinker,Tailor might be having lived through at least some of the Cold War. This will allow one to read more between the lines as it is there that the story really lives and breathes. Barring that, even post-Cold War mystery fans will relate well to Tinker,Tailor, Soldier, Spy.

As in Smiley's People, George Smiley, now and forever in the minds of most John Le Carre aficionados Sir Alec Guiness, is no longer with British Intelligence, termed by Le Carre `The Circus', although the plot periodically flashes back to times when he was still active. Smiley did not actually retire but was sacked from his post as head of personnel, despite his long and meritorious service. Smiley's dismissal had nothing to do with the performance of his duties but was the result of a manipulation of truly remarkable elegance, orchestrated by the Dracula of espionage, the Soviet spy master, Karla. The Soviets may have failed to produce a viable nation but could they ever spy. They punched so many holes in the American nuclear weapons program that it ended up looking like a screen door. In this vein, Le Carre fashioned an espionage that almost takes the breath away with its beauty and scope.

Spying is, apparently, like playing the stock market. To profit, one must usually be in for the long term. On the eve of WW II, while still a junior intelligence officer, Karla recruited an Oxford student who eventually became one of the half-dozen senior officers in the Cold War-era Circus. Once in place, Karla's recruit, Soviet code-name Gerald, proceeded to eat the organization alive from the inside out. The head of the Circus, known only by the designation `Control' (played wonderfully by Alexander Knox) was subjected to a particularly cruel manipulation; a ploy driven by a profoundly cynical understanding of human nature. Even more sphinx-like than Smiley himself, Control had been detecting markers of Karla's intricate scheme for months and had narrowed the mole's identity to five senior officers. To stop him, Karla fashioned a set-up in the form of an offer that Control could simply not refuse. Control's necessarily unsanctioned operation to exploit the offer failed catastrophically. Of course, it never had a chance. Control, disgraced, was forced out, taking with him Smiley who, as Control's most trusted ally, was found guilty by association and also banished.

When the dust settled, Karla had the West's two most effective intelligence services, The British, and through them, the American, working for him. Anyone who might have put the pieces together is either out or dead. The Circus is gutted but does not really know what has hit it. Control is replaced by a politcally astute but otherwise incompetent functionary whom Karla had been priming as a superstar by providing him with bogus intelligence lightly salted with just enough real value to make it stick. But when a resourceful, low-level field agent (Hywel Bennet), thought to have defected, turns up in Britain with solid evidence pointing to the existence of the mole, thereby validating Control's long-term suspicions, Smiley, the sole remanent of the old order who can be trusted, is called in to `spy on the spies'.

Here, the incomparable, dialog-driven, Le Carre plot engine begins its juggernaut roll as Smiley goes to work. Like Smiley's People, the story proceeds as a series of superbly written and acted one-on-one encounters. Included in these is a fascinating flashback in which Karla (Patrick Stewart, yes the Jean-Luc Picard guy) and Smiley actually meet. Tinker, Tailor doesn't wear its heart as much on its sleeve as does Smiley's People and has an almost clinical quality, at least on the surface. Once Smiley understands that the mole is real, he seems to know that he will eventually unmask him. Smiley simply connects the dots, moving ahead like a snowplow. The beauty resides in his meticulous process. For Smiley, the truth is absolutely out there, just out of sequence. The acting, set against the production's shadowy, gray-scale backgrounds, is flawless. The two tragic figures, Control, and the agent Jim Prideaux, the other pawn in Karla's game (Ian Bannen; his final role was the leprous Scottish nobleman in Braveheart) are especially good and provide this very cool production with its beating heart. Tinker, Tailor is not a Whodunit but rather a Whoisit; a classic mystery with the added cachet of espionage and is one of the very best things to have ever appeared on television. It's bloody good stuff, old chap, like the best single-malt you ever sipped.

Among the least known of the Hammer Studios horror output, Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter is also one of its most interesting and unusual productions. As opposed to the more in-your-face Dracula series that immortalized Christopher Lee, CK:VH knows that it is just a cinematic comic book and works with itself in a restrained, somewhat lighthearted way that is, off and on, quite effective. This film never really tries to outright scare you which, I think, is extremely cool. Instead, it sets an atmospheric table at which your imagination is invited to partake. This suave slant is the work of Director Brian Clemens who was largely responsible for the legendary '60's British TV series, The Avengers; the original, with Patrick Macnee and Diana Rigg. If you remember that series, you'll recognize some of its essential look and feel in this film. Viewed from one azimuth, CK:VH is nonsense but, if you lighten up a bit and just get into the story, the movie takes on a dreamy quality against which its more `horrific' elements play in a most interesting way.

The setting, never precisely defined, seems to be central Europe during or just after the Napoleonic Wars (from the clothes). Let's call it early 19th century. Captain Kronos himself appears to be a former officer of Dragoons, separated from service although still in uniform. The implication is that, while away in the wars, he lost his wife, and possibly his child, to vampires. Now, in the company of his good friend, a hunchbacked academic and authority on vampire lore who drives a wagon loaded with tools of the vampire-killing trade, the Captain roams the region hunting the undead.

Captain Kronos is played by the German actor Horst Janson who, with his grave, nearly too-nordic features, balanced by eyes that seem to constantly smile, brings a nice sense of mystery to the role. Kronos is aloof and taciturn, though never unpleasant. He smokes long cheroots and carries a Samurai sword that he, evidently, did not acquire at a flea market. We don't learn the history of the sword, but we see that he can definitely wield it, as does a trio of toughs fronted by the local alpha-blade (the late Ian Hendry, a prominent British character actor of the period who, interestingly, was a regular during the Avengers' first season.) Actually, they don't really see the sword. They just feel it, sort of, before collapsing in a heap. Janson plays the Captain with a certain Playboy Magazine, lady's man sense of cool, echoing a time when people were just finishing up talking about sex and beginning to actually do it. If you were around then, you'll recognize the spin. It's a nostalgia hit, for sure. You might even recognize Janson's face, which was seen in full page ads in American magazines during that period; men's apparel, liquor, etc.

The Captain and his trusty companion have arrived in the film's locale in response to rumors of bad happenings. Young women of the area are undergoing drastic reverse-makeovers, emerging from them as exsanguinated centenarians. The locals, rather superstitious rural types, are in a tizzy. Could the recently-deceased head of the local, reclusive aristocratic family, whom some suspect of not being completely dead, be involved? It's an angle definitely worth investigating. The Captain makes contact with the only person in the area still in possession of his wits - the local physician - and the hunt begins.

If most Hammer films tend to be hissing fastballs down the middle, CK:VH is an off-speed slider on the corner. There's nothing fancy here, no baroque sets or sophisticated effects. In fact, the film overall has a sparse look and feel that enhances its credibility. The hunt for the vampire proceeds as a believable combination of scientific method and lore. Much of what transpires does so in daylight which, to me, carries significant implications. Evil that does not fear sunlight carries a big stick. We, as its prey, have no real hiding place. The film balances its occasionally goofy moments by never sacrificing its dignity and, at times, is quite poignant. It also features one of the most brilliantly effective sequences ever seen in this genre, illustrating how much can be accomplished with the simplest of cinematic means. I think you'll know it when you see it. This film was produced as the first in what was hoped to be a series of Captain Kronos adventures but the concept failed to grab the required audience. Pity, but at least we have this one. It's fun, stylish, and a perfect rainy-day diversion.

Now that Steven Soderbergh's engrossing big-screen adaptation of the superb made-for-the-tube production, Traffik, has been logged in, it would be almost impossible not to compare the two. Traffic, the movie, is certainly some very good work by a true artist of the cinema. But to achieve the maximum appreciation of both, see Traffic before you see Traffik. With its mere 147-minute running time, as well as the often-unavoidable dilution of reality that can be the karma of films that feature big-name stars, the deck is somewhat stacked against the movie. It simply has to much to do, although it tries bravely. Traffik, at nearly five hours in length, has the time to construct an intimate, highly detailed world as coherent as a length of wire rope. Once you have been through the mini-series, the movie, despite the excellence of many of its elements, seems almost like a trailer at times.

In Traffik, we're talking heroin, not cocaine, and from the very ground up; opium poppies in full bud, swaying gently in the breeze, ripe for slitting, looking like powder-blue-gray visitors from another world. The innocuous resin oozes and, collected, makes its surprisingly simple transition into heroin. From there, the finished product makes its own journey into a world filled with indubitable people. Only three `names' populate the cast of Traffik. The always-excellent Bill Paterson is the British Minister Jack Lithgow, struggling with his conscience on the cusp of signing an aid deal with almost laughably corrupt Pakistani opposite numbers. (John Le Carre fans can see Paterson, and appreciate his range, as the obsequious Lauder Strickland in the BBC/PBS production of `Smiley's People'.) Julia Ormond, in one of her first roles, plays the Minister's spoiled, smacked-out daughter. Scottish character actress Lindsay Duncan, more well-known on the continent than here, embodies the wife of the busted drug importer (the Zeta-Jones role in the movie). She's a former Olympic Medalist in swimming who, with hubby on serious ice, finds her true calling. (In Traffik the husband is a smooth German construction contractor.) From then on we, certainly we in America, know no one, although many of Traffik's actors have significant careers in their own zones. This, and the terse direction give Traffik an almost documentary feel. The strange, slightly howling music track adds just the right amount of the sinister and we are locked in. (Director Alistair Reid also directed the charming adaptation of Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City, which ran as a serial for several years in the San Francisco Chronicle during the paper's Herb Caen era.)

Both Traffic, and Traffik, have very distinct beating hearts. On the big screen, it's Benicio Del Toro's Mexican cop, a man of definite parts, who has learned to walk the crumbling walls of a culture whose floor has collapsed into a corrupt and poverty-stricken basement. In Traffik, it's the beautifully-drawn relationship between the poppy farmer, Fazal (Jamal Shah), and the Pakistani heroin kingpin, Tariq Butt (Talat Hussain). Fazal, driven from his fields by the Pakistani Army's faux crackdown on drugs, hitches to Karachi in search of work. There, he eventually becomes ensnared by Butt, the Sauron of traffickers. The slightly adrogynous Talat Hussain, a major star in Pakistan, has an unusual and powerful speaking voice, like polished mahogany with a Brit accent. When he sneeringly refers to Fazal as `Farm Boy', it actually hurts. (He is also well-known in Pakistan for his recordings of the Quran in Urdu.) Hussain creates a villain of suave, almost hypnotic evil. It's a great and effortless performance, in the very front rank of all bad guys ever portrayed. Against it is Jamal Shah's noble, almost angelic man of the soil whose innocence allows him to draw too near to the harsh flame of Tariq Butt's power. The entire cast of Traffik is excellent but the powerful interaction between the two Pakistani characters has the effect of almost resetting the story each time they are on-screen. (Jamal Shah is also a noteworthy artist in his own right (painting, writing, music) and even has a website which, I trust, will be finished some day (jamalshah.com). I'll look forward to it.)

I could go on for pages, citing one great element after another of this excellent production. It's that good. But I have only 1000 words to use on this forum and, at the risk of sounding like the late, lamented Chris Farley (as in `Remember the scene where…'), I'll exit here at 799. The proof will be in the pudding. Have no doubts. Seeing Traffik is like taking a submarine voyage through one of the nastier thermoclines of human existence. Listen well to Minister Lithgow's speech near the end. It's more than just a screenplay. Drugs can be a problem but they are not really THE problem, are they?

I've been fortunate to have spent some time living in the South and getting to know southerners, including many in Charlie Rose' home state of North Carolina. The South is a singular region and contributes significantly to the American mosaic. I'm not talking about the `Big South'; Atlanta, Charlotte, etc. but the South of small to mid-sized towns where traces of authentic regionality still remain. Once you get past the almost inescapable, low-grade xenophobia that southerners often exhibit, they can be amazingly good-natured and generous. People everywhere have this capacity, of course, but southerners have a certain, unique way of doing it, a certain style. They also can, if one steps over lines that are often invisible to all except the natives, be quite judgmental and unforgiving. But again, it's all done with that certain style. Because I appreciate southerners, I appreciate Charlie Rose who is nothing if not southern. A product of the granitic Americana that still lives below the Mason-Dixon, and further polished by matriculation at Duke, the Stanford of the East, or Yale of the South, whichever works for you, Charlie Rose has enough suave for an entire ballroom of people and is slicker than snot on a glass doorknob.

This is one reason why his show works so well. Another is that Mr. Rose is a lawyer by training (Duke Law, of course), and he does not interview guests as much as cross-examines them. But he does it with such riveting savoir faire that his guests seldom know what has hit them; no need for anyone to be under oath. We are reminded that it's not what one does so much as how one does it; an understanding that must absolutely be grasped for successful navigation of the bayous of southern society. Rose's interviews of relevant figures in diplomatic and political circles, as well as his timely foci on other critical current affairs are often real public services, more than worthy of our time and attention. In the days following 9/11, there was seldom a better place to be on the tube than the Charlie Show. Mr. Rose has certainly paid his dues and established his well-deserved niche. But why is he such an unabashed Celebrity Hag?

Watching Charlie Rose fawn over someone like, for example, Tom Cruise, actually seeming to care what he thinks, is highly embarrassing. Sure Mr. Cruise is a competent actor. I admire his integrity and lack of obvious vanity in such films as Born On The Fourth Of July. Hell, I didn't even mind him in Legend. But let's keep it real. There's something about getting paid cyclopean amounts of money that tends to bring out the best in many of us. I certainly appreciate film, but if I find myself even slightly concerned about the details of Tom Cruise's thought process, or that of almost any actor, so many of whom are remarkably uninteresting `in person', I'll know that I no longer have a life. I mean, do Julianne Moore or Nicole Kidman, both undeniably luminous, really have anything to tell us, especially now? Tom Hanks? For the entire hour? (If only Charlie and I were both black so I could say, `N****r, please.' ) Sure, Tom's a nice guy, but so am I, despite my lack of millions, and I have had more than a few reasons not to keep the nice going.

We, and Charlie, genuflect to such people because we are becoming a society of actors; unauthentic, psychologically-truncated role players and poseurs. We just don't get paid big bucks for it; the dubious index by which we almost all measure our worth. We want to be someone else but without ever having discovered our true selves. Charlie Rose may not quite understand this, but he definitely knows how to use it. Sorry, Charlie, but when I see a Hollywood mug at the oak table, I'm gone, especially when said mug belongs to the astonishingly successful Michael Crichton, the person whom, I suspect, Charlie himself really wants to be. Crichton, ever gracious, as someone with his cash reserves can be, seems almost embarrassed at times by Charlie's slightly goggled-eyed supplication. You're cool too, C.R. Trust me. We all are, if you know how to see it. But, when the dust settles, I'll keep my Confederate money on you, Charlie, even if Benjamin Netanyahu rather snoidily rejected your offer to bear diplomatic communications to Hosni Mubarak. (Hey, Bibi's on the bench. You're still out there, plus you had to leave something for him to do, right?) You're still ok, even when your impatience at not being allowed to define international policy on the air nearly gets the better of you. Thanks for the many good moments. Keep up the good work.

If you have a love of history and the wilderness, and adhere to a certain code, the Lewis and Clark saga can get way under your skin. It certainly got under mine. In fact, it's still there although it doesn't itch quite as much as it once did. If you doubt me, watch writer/commenter Dayton Duncan fight back tears as he recounts Meriwether Lewis' heartbreaking demise in Ken Burns' PBS special on Lewis and Clark. The journey of the Corps of Discovery, as the expedition was entitled, occupies the emotional center of the history of the West in the same way that the Civil War occupies the specific history of the South. More than a few people now living would be tempted to sell their souls for the chance to jump back to 1804 and push off up the Missouri River with the Corps. Only the infected will understand.

Actually, I have Dayton Duncan to blame for my infection. I picked up his book, `Out West', a chronicle of his attempt to retrace some of the Lewis and Clark Trail (in a VW bus) at a yard sale and acquired the bug. From then on, any Lewis and Clark site had to be seriously out of the way from me to not attempt a visit. When I stood at Lewis' grave in rural Tennessee, reputedly on the spot where he died, I can't lie. I was moved. (I still want to see the site of the Two Medicine Fight, in which Lewis and his detachment, which had split off from the main party on the return journey, had been forced to kill two Blackfoot warriors; the only two Native Americans to die at the expedition's hands. It was an act for which the stratospherically-principled Lewis paid in kind (he was accidentally shot and severly wounded by one of his own men while hunting not long after the fight (unmentioned in the series); a pity as this sub-expedition was largely unnecessary.)

Despite its suave production, enchanting music track and heartfelt commentary by various historians including the late Stephen Ambrose, Ken Burns' rendering of the Lewis and Clark tale is just adequate historically. This is not to say I didn't like it. I thoroughly enjoyed it, both my initial viewing and a recent repeat broadcast. But there is so much more meat on the bones of this great adventure than the series was able to bite off. Anyone coming away from it with a case of the bug should definitely learn more. Allow me to suggest a course of action.

Much information resides on the Web but will often not tell you much more than the PBS production. Still, these sites can be fun. But don't be afraid to go analog as well. Find a good book or two on the subject.They're out there and will serve up more details. My favorite (out of print but still findable in a good bookstore or library) is `Lewis and Clark: Partners in Discovery' by John Bakeless. Here, you'll acquire a detailed, sensitive account of not only the expedition itself, but of the childhood and coming of age of Lewis and Clark, their experience as army officers on the frontier (then in Ohio) that laid their foundation as incomparable woodsmen, how the expedition was planned and outfitted, and what became of the many of its members after the return. Bakeless also makes a haunting and persuasive case for the possibility that Lewis did not commit suicide but may have been murdered; something I have always thought possible, certainly along the Natchez Trace, which in 1809 was probably the most dangerous place in North America. (This excellent book really should be re-printed for the bicentennial.)

Another interesting book (also out of print) is `Two Captains West' by Albert and Jane Salisbury. Not as scholarly as the Bakeless, it's still a worthy read and filled with photos of many actual Lewis and Clark sites, including some that are less well-known and, thereby, even more interesting to buffs. Once you've acquired a workable overview of the expedition, take the plunge into the actual journals that were compiled along the way by the Captains. At least two editions are extant, the most accessible being the abridged version by Bernard DeVoto, based on the original, complete journals (seven volumes and maps) published by Reuben Gold Thwaites in the early 1900's. At first, you may find the language challenging but eventually it will charm you. Then, go back to the PBS production for dessert. However, if you have not visited at least a couple of sites, I'm not sure we can call you a true buff. But once you're through DeVoto, your application for membership will be considered. And don't forget the aforementioned Dayton Duncan book.You'll like it.

A few months back, some soulless MBA-type did an article for the equally soulless e-zine, Slate, in which he disclaimed the importance of Lewis and Clark because they failed to find the Northwest Passage. This is rubbish, of course. The Passage was never there. How could the expedition have failed by not finding it? The importance of the Corps of Discovery lies not what it did, (which is still remarkable, Lexus Boy), but in what it symbolizes, what it says about the enormous promise that America once embodied, and the tough, resourceful people we once were. It speaks to a time when it was still not too late to rationally and humanely inhabit a world of profound beauty and natural harmony; a world in which the civil and hospitable Mandans, the incredibly noble Nez Perce, and even those pesky Teton Sioux and Blackfeet, all with knowledge to impart, had a place. We have actually fallen far, only to make temporary soft landings in our Lincoln Navigators. Lewis and Clark were geniuses, not of academia but in how they, and their command, manifested intelligence, compassion, and courage, often in the face of hardship we can barely imagine.

Why are we hated by so many? Well. Let's start with the fact that, despite our unmatched wealth and power, we are, for the most part, clueless. By this I do not mean that we lack intelligence or information. It's just that in our headlong pursuit of whatever, we have almost completely forgotten how to authentically embody our own innate humanity. Not only do we do not know what this really means but, quite possibly, we may no longer care. People around the globe, many of whom have nothing else going for them but their humanity, cannot be blamed for feeling cranky when they see us squandering our own, trading it in for the hyper-acquisitive, relentlessly-territorial role-playing and posing that, increasingly, passes for life in America. To confirm this, don't tune into outpatient-fests like Jerry Springer. Instead, mosey on over to Dr. Phil's place. There, you can see how the 'real' Americans, the dishwasher-safe people who hire and fire us, handle their stuff. Is it just me, or could most of these folks not work their way out from under a wet Kleenex unless they were motivated by unexpensed stock options? There's no doubt that Dr. McGraw, with his FDNY style and ready Texas-isms, is an appealing and intelligent fellow. I mean, he has a Ph.D. and as everyone knows, you don't question the high-end paper. But, from another azimuth, the Doc is becoming the jocular Billy Graham for a moribund, self-congratulatory value system that is in absolutely dire need of a reboot. Perceived from the midst of screaming glare of mainstream American life, such an attitude might sound like the sourest of grapes, but if you have the resolve to step outside the noise for a while and keep your eyes open, and you'll see precisely how helpless, how paralyzed, how totally bought, and sold, we have become. In the midst of the drama, the Doctor reminds us to 'Get Real'. But what does that really mean? Well, it can mean almost anything. That's the beauty of such a platitude. To the Doc it largely means to do what he tells you to do and the pain will stop, at least for a while. As we culturally spiral down to God knows what outcome, Dr. Phil urges us to be nice about it all, to be adults, not to screw over our loved ones, not be afraid to tell our teenagers that they periodically behave like idiots. Good advice, but why doesn't the pain go away? Here's one reason: America was founded on the principle of enlightened self-interest but over time that concept has devolved into plain selfishness, at any cost, and we are driving ourselves insane trying to rationalize the choices we are coerced into making, exhausted from trying to be comfortable in an artificial, emotionally-desiccated psychological landscape. Dr. Phil isn't evil. Actually, he seems like a nice guy and I'm sure he means well. But behind the academic façade, he's just as clueless as everyone else. But his cluelessness is credentialed and heavily-reinforced by the fact that he's making a ton of money by holding his particular pose. He operates on a dubious and equally well-reinforced premise: that when things go wrong, WE are always the culprits; that when things don't work it's US that are not working hard enough. But there's never the slightest mention that what we are working FOR may be problematic. Take a look around and consider waking up. We are all dancing to a tune played by just a relative few, very powerful individuals who stand to lose big-time if we stop our mindless consumption and destruction. Do you think the film, The Matrix, is just fantasy? I assure you it's not. But it is metaphor. The truth, like magma, is always seeking the surface and often gets there in spite of us. The Doctor and his ilk have hijacked the authentic self-awareness from which we have sheepishly abdicated. He's willing to sell it back to us, but only after he has placed his complex condom over it; safe sex, safer thinking. Merely reupholstering our antique, threadbare inner furniture is not going to get the job done. A revolution of consciousness is called for at this juncture. We must phase out our fundamentally juvenile relationship with existence and understand that our 'way of life' is merely one particular view from one particular hilltop. The Dr. Phils of the world want us to follow them submissively back into the very orientation that we need to seriously question if we want to survive as a race. But it's family values, right? Sure, but the family is devo too, obviously among those to whom the Good Doctor ministers. What was once a place where we were basically prepared for life is becoming a stressed-out, insular, mindlessly-competitive, goal-obsessed guild of apprentices to the family name, as potentially fertile a breeding ground for tyranny and worse as it once was for love and support; turning out reactionary, tunnel-visioned kids who slavishly pass the whole mess on to the next generation, or go wack when confronted with the shrinking collection of acceptable futures currently available. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing but a little understanding is even more dangerous. Understanding is to knowledge like plutonium is to uranium, a higher order of fissionability. Look into your own hearts. Don't fear what you may see. Much of it is not really you. It's just what you've dutifully acquired. Much of what we need to know, and understand, is inside us but we must hold our breath and dive more deeply into ourselves than we're accustomed to diving in order to get beneath the accumulated surface scum. Life is more than just a career opportunity. Don't be afraid to provide your own answers to your own questions, to fashion your own sustainable and humane solutions to your own individual problems. You can do it. You have all the tools. It's simply a matter of using them.

Most films require some suspension of our relationship with perceived reality. Even `realistic' films ask this, perhaps just for a moment, as the plot hinges on some convenient, manufactured circumstance in order to move in the necessary direction. Other films simply demand that our notions of the credible either be left entirely at home, or at least checked at the box office. But that's part of the fun, right? No film has ever made this type of demand with such insistent grace as John Boorman's Excalibur. Boorman certainly has no trouble creating believable cinematic worlds. Witness his charming Hope and Glory or, diametrically, Deliverance, both founded on an innocent vantage point, the latter's brought forward into manhood to break on the granite of the Chatooga River gorge. But it is his `unbelievable' worlds that resonate on a very special frequency; spacious, seductive, and organic, whether removed to a distant yet mythic future as in Zardoz, or a distant past as in Excalibur.

Not an epic in the sense of the magnificent Fellowship of The Rings, the more compact Excalibur still feels like one. It's definitely gorgeous, so much so that it's easy to overlook knights lumbering around in, ostensibly, early post-Roman Britain wearing Renaissance-era armor. Such things are simply elements of the film's intensely poetic style. Excalibur has a breathless quality as it leaps forward, giving the sense that it's being recited as well as screened. Never has living by torchlight seemed so inviting and the film's mossy glow can make you wish to never see asphalt or concrete again. Set against this lush, sanguine backdrop is what makes Excalibur so much fun, its vivid characterizations. No introspection here, please. All lead and principal supporting players seem poised to leap out of their skins merely from being alive. To really appreciate this quality, stand on any street corner and watch people pass morosely by for a while, then pop Excalibur into the VCR. You'll see what I mean.

At Excalibur's heart is Nicol Williamson's intense, quirky Merlin. The Merlin of our minds is probably a more wizened, Disneyesque figure; long beard, pointy hat. Although Ian McKellan's Gandalf was wonderfully portrayed in Fellowship of the Rings, Williamson's Merlin would have him sliced and diced before the old boy could get his staff pointed; something like the final duel in Sanjuro. His Merlin is the natural world focused like a laser into humanoid form, a fact revealed in a poignant moment about midway through the film. Williamson brilliantly embodies a Merlin who seems to know everything, and nothing, simultaneously. At the point where these two opposites intersect, something primordial and unsettlingly neutral seems to well up. Merlin strides from scene to scene, seeing near and far, speaking as much to himself as he speaks to others. One moment he is at Arthur's side as Excalibur is drawn from its stone. The next, as Arthur turns to him for counsel, Merlin is already almost out of sight, striding toward the next moment of his agenda. Nature waits for no man, even a king. Merlin's world of the old gods, of pure water and primeval forest is on the brink of religion and Merlin is trying to expose the innate, natural goodness in man that might render Jehovah irrelevant. But only Arthur's heart is sufficiently pure to carry that weight.

The Round Table may seem invincible but just two women, not even working together, are more than powerful enough to splinter it. Merlin cautions Arthur against the profound charms of Cherie Lunghi's Guinevere. She lacks Merlin's future-vision but knows so completely what is happening at any moment that she does not really need it. Arthur has no chances. Their initial meeting is one of the film's best moments. Arthur has led a small group of knights to relieve the siege of Guinevere's father's castle. He hurls himself into the melee with abandon while Guinevere, dead calm in the midst of the hack-fest, watches him with quizzical detachment: Who or WHAT is this? When she applies a post-battle poultice to Arthur's wound, her possession of him is complete. Guinevere is certainly impressed by Arthur. She likes him. He is the king. But he is not the one. When her affair with Lancelot is confirmed, the heart of the Round Table is mortally wounded.

Merlin gets a girl too, in a manner of speaking: the relentless Morgana (the ultimate Helen Mirren), whose mother's rape, which produced Arthur, was reluctantly engineered by Merlin. Morgana wants Merlin's magick before taking her revenge. She is the edge along which no man should walk but Merlin is not really a man and rolls the dice: snake-eyes. Morgana, an amateur sorceress with real promise, graduates cum laude from eye of newt by cajoling from Merlin his most powerful spell, then places him on ice with it. But she is just warming up. Morgana assumes Guinevere's form and conceives a son on the heartbroken Arthur. The king may know that the woman writhing on him is not really his wife but is past caring. The tryst spawns Mordred, the wormy apple of his mother's eye. He morphs quickly into a vicious, gangly adolescent who sits his horse like a metallic spider in bizarre gold armor (the good guys wear chrome) and brings Camelot down into bloody chaos.

Excalibur the film is not a literal reading of Malory and Sir Perceval, not Bedivere, who is not in the cast, is tasked with hurling Arthur's sword back to the powers that wrought it. When the waiting hand draws Excalibur into the lake, it does so with striking finality. If you've allowed yourself to fall under the film's spell, you'll feel a pang of regret here. Chivalry may not be entirely dead but it is left in critical condition. The opportunity for a just but pagan world has passed. Humanity has cast off an irretrievable kind of happiness and the Christians are coming.

Fans of motor racing will appreciate this semi-documentary film based on the legendary 24-hour French road race. The film is set during a period in motor sports just prior to its almost total usurpation by corporate culture, in this case 1970, when there was still a tolerable balance between sponsorship and the particular form of nobility that pervaded racing. As a film, LeMans is remarkable for a sense of restraint that is so unwavering that even the incomparable Steve McQueen seems almost normal inside its cool envelope. No movie on the subject has ever equaled its transparency and authenticity. Motor sports have become so sophisticated and big-time that if you cut the average driver with a knife he might bleed only contact cleaner, or Mello Yello. Modern drivers are still courageous and skilled, but something essential has been lost to the hype and the inevitability of high technology. In LeMans, you can almost smell the 100 octane Supershell and the hot Castrol. People look at one another, not at computer displays. They converse directly over the rasp of tightly-wound 12-cylinder engines, not through headsets and mikes. It's a human thing. Overwrought genre siblings like Days of Thunder are ludicrous and crass compared to LeMans' pure, almost ascetic spirit. Tom Cruise's Cole Trickle could not buy a pit pass into its world.

LeMans is, essentially, about racing. But as a film in the American narrative style, it must have at least some back story and, in this case, that story is romantic. As a safeguard against terminal mushiness, the back story is duplexed into a pair of similar boy/girl situations, thereby keeping each from acquiring excessive density while satisfying the needs of the form. In one, a European driver and his tres charmant, preternaturally understanding wife, work through to a conclusion that it is time for him to walk away while he is still able. The other focuses on the hesitating and mutual attraction between McQueen's American racing star and the widow of an Italian driver who died in the previous year's LeMans race. The night-time accident that claimed her husband also involved McQueen's character; a no-fault event. It was just racing. The lady, who still misses her late husband but is ready to move on, desperately needs someone to talk to, someone who fully understands the nature of her loss and who might possibly, to some discernible degree, justify it. Steve McQueen thrived on characters who required no external validation, from women or men, but who were never arrogant about it. He was the real deal. Few of us have the courage or motivation to be as authentic, or to weather the storms that can result from being so, though I think we should still try. McQueen's racing driver carries this same authenticity and he sutures the widow's aching heart with it during a meal break (LeMans cars were driven around the clock by two-driver teams) while sitting across the table from the lady. She is resisting a strong desire to run and protect herself from her own feelings. But McQueen's character is so self-effacing and contained, yet so completely and unthreateningly there, that she cannot pull away from him. Only part of the dialog is audible. The rest of the scene is viewed from outside the dining area as the camera pulls back through its window. It's a brief scene but excellently acted, adding itself into the film's humanity, a quality that is never lost against the backdrop of hurtling cars and screaming engines.

The racing sequences are beautifully staged. The final seconds before the race starts, drivers in the cars, fidgeting with shifters, one by one switching ignitions on as the countdown closes against a stethoscopic heartbeat sound, puts you right in the cockpits. At-speed scenes were driven by actual racing luminaries of the time, including McQueen himself, and they go as fast camera mounts will allow. A couple of spectacular crashes take place, both filmed in an interwoven stop-action style that lets you watch every rivet pop as the cars unpeel like grapes. Near the end, entirely plausible circumstance pits McQueen and his main rival, a great German driver in a gripping last-lap duel. (the German driver, played by Sigfried Rauch, also played the wily Wehrmacht Sergeant in Sam Fuller's The Big Red One.) These two characters meet briefly during mutual down-time early in the race and establish the obvious respect and fraternal affection they hold for one another. The camaraderie established here underpins the entire film from that point and also transforms their last-lap duel into pure contest. And the cars. open-class LeMans machines of this period still sourced much of the sinuous design style of the preceding decade and they are gorgeous to the appreciative eye, especially McQueen's ride, the Gulf Porsche 917, possibly the most charismatic car ever raced. Interestingly, one of the cars used in the film (a Lola as I recall) was recently discovered languishing in a German barn, sans motor and transmission. Both had been loaned by Porsche for the production.

Fire up LeMans on a system with decent audio capabilities, EQ a bit toward the bass to compensate for accurate but slightly raspy 70's recording technology, and crank it up. You may not feel the burn, but you'll definitely hear it. Only the somewhat too Rat-Pack score detracts from this super little film and that only slightly. Otherwise it's as time-proof as one of those molded spoons you get in Chinese restaurants. Any true fan of the sport, certainly as it was in the film's time-set, should collect it. If you appreciate the compact, character-driven, semi-documentary style, try Downhill Racer. Released the year before LeMans, it's about skiing. Robert Redford's Kiss-My-Ass ski god isn't remotely noble but is entirely believable, as are Gene Hackman and Dabney Coleman as his coaches. It was one of the late John Simon's favorite films, and for good reason.

Whether or not Shane is, in fact, a great film is open to at least some discussion. But it is certainly among the most cinematic. One could set a documentary on garbage-collection in the Grand Tetons and elevate its stature by that fact alone. Put a film of real substance in such a setting and the table is definitely set. Shane is beautiful to watch, at times like a moving oil painting. In fact, the film's setting sometimes overpowers its characters, diffusing them into the vast scenery. It's easy to picture just planting signs in the ground that say `Town', `Homestead', `Cemetery' and foregoing set-design altogether.

Shane never completely worked for me until I was able to stop seeing it purely as a western. Alan Ladd's title character is almost a total non-sequitur, more like a State Farm agent from 1950's Des Moines horsebacking through the Snake River valley of Wyoming, perhaps as part of a dude ranch outing. He's just all wrong. But there it is. Must the improbable Ladd, in his improbable fringed buckskins, be human at all? In the later Clint Eastwood films, High Plains Drifter and Pale Rider, both of which reference Shane wholeheartedly (all three films draw on the same fundamental myth) Clint Eastwood's characters, though certainly interesting and implicitly mysterious, remain rather superficially so (as though both wear signs that say `Supernatural'). Shane is truly mysterious, and perhaps even more unreal, because he is so completely incongruous. Just look past the costume. When Shane was made, The Twilight Zone had not yet appeared. But Rod Serling did not invent The Strange. He simply had the genius to recognize and tap into what was already percolating up into the general consciousness. As a possibly supernatural guardian of a vast landscape, Ladd's near-flatline characterization begins to make real sense.

As was the case with the Eastwood characters, the disharmony required to call the supernatural guardian into human form has manifested and he has appeared. Shane comes from `nowhere' and eventually returns to that no-place, where even the innocent Brandon DeWilde may not follow. He resembles no one and exhibits few human traits aside from the most superficial. No one, neither sodbuster nor cowpuncher, knows quite what to make of him. He seems friendly but this may be just the side-effect of a complete absence of the reactionism displayed by many of the film's other characters, an entirely different orientation from the merely friendly. Shane is part of no relationship with man or woman and never will be, even though Jean Arthur's homestead wife, an orchid of womanhood transplanted into the high plains, chastely throws herself at him. Shane clearly returns her love, but from a place as remote and still as the summit of Everest on a calm morning. There are wisps of implication that Shane may have a past but they vanish quickly; subatomic resonances of Shane's transient human form. Shane is there. But in many ways he is not. Of course, director George Stevens probably did not ascribe to any paranormal vision when making the film. But things often happen even when they are not intended, certainly in art.

The film proceeds somewhat formulaically until its chief villains, the cattle-ranching Ryker brothers call up a dark force to oppose Shane's angel of light. The Rykers pioneered the vast valley for open range, against nature and its indigenous inhabitants and are ready to kill to keep their range from being homesteaded. They summon the gunfighter, Jack Wilson, played definitively by the young Jack Palance. Palance's Wilson is a killer of such distilled lethality that just looking at him might kill you. Whenever Wilson is on screen, time seems to slow down as it is refracted by his menacing gravity (Almost all subsequent tv/movie gunslingers are his bitches). Wilson is, allegedly, from Cheyenne but that assertion is never confirmed by hard evidence. He simply appears. The first meeting of Shane and Wilson, at the homestead of alpha-sodbuster Joe Starrett ( Van Heflin), is riveting. The Rykers are making the rounds, issuing their final warning to the farmers, accompanied for maximum effect by the recently-arrived Wilson. Not a word is exchanged as the two entities unblinkingly size each other up. Dialog continues in the background but you barely hear it as Wilson, who has dismounted for a drink of water, places a foot in a stirrup then almost levitates back into the saddle, grinning like death, having never taken his eyes off Shane from the first moment, finally backing his horse out of Starrett's yard in order to keep Shane in focus. A later sequence where Wilson meticulously executes Elisha Cook Jr.'s homesteader, a punched-out Civil War veteran with exponentially more pride than sense, must rank as one of the most powerful ever filmed, western or otherwise. Rolling thunder clouds open for a moment and bathe the homesteader in bright light as he almost turns back on the way to his doom, then they close and roll on as he rejects his last chance.

Shane, the film, owes much to its beautifully-rendered bad guys, who confront a rather bland, uni-dimensional good, giving it texture and motivation. Without them, the film might have remained just a western movie. Shane, the character, enters as something of a poster-boy cowboy hero. But, bathed in Jack Wilson's black light, he glows beyond that status. The Taoists assert that emptiness lies at the heart of all things; the wheel turns because the center of the hub is empty. Shane turns, to no little degree, because its hub is almost equally empty, the film moving in stately rotation around Ladd's near-blank, avenging angel. If Shane is a great film it is, possibly, as much by accident as design. It was meant to be a big, studio western in the style of that period. However, unforeseen chemical reactions occurred and the result transcended certain stylistic bindings, including its swelling, 'Big Sky' score, to become more than the sum of its parts.

As far as I know, neither `Smiley's People', nor its prequel, `Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy', is available in the US in BBC packaging (the current distributor) so you'll have to use your initiative if you want them. I acquired my copies of `Smiley's People' and `Tinker, Tailor' through my video guy, who makes a couple of trips every year to London to shop for Euro-only products. I then had them re-coded to the U.S. playback standard. I would urge collectors to definitely acquire both titles. Having both really gives you something to sink into. Although either title can easily stand alone, they dovetail beautifully. Only the re-casting of a couple of principal supporting roles detracts slightly from the otherwise airtight continuity between the two. If you've read the book, you know the plot. If you have not read it (admittedly, LeCarré is not for everyone), here's an appetizer:

Retired British counter-intelligence operative George Smiley (Sir Alec Guinness in a remarkably nuanced performance) becomes aware, through events linked to the murder of a former colleague, that his seemingly invulnerable arch-rival in Soviet counter-intelligence, known to the western intelligence fraternity as `Karla', may have finally exposed an Achilles heel. (Some years earlier, as recounted in the more episodic yet excellent `Tinker, Tailor', Karla nearly destroyed British counter-intelligence, wrecking Smiley's marriage in the process). Going on an initial hunch and a fragment of evidence, turned up in a beautiful sequence reminiscent of a similar scene in Antonioni's `Blow Up', Smiley methodically begins to put the pieces together, despite the fact that almost everyone he knows is advising him to go home and don his robe and slippers. At the same time Karla, realizing that he has probably jeopardized himself by bending his own rigidly-enforced rules, is ruthlessly trying to cover his own tracks. Karla (introduced in a fascinating, wordless performance by Patrick Stewart in `Tinker, Tailor') is no comic book villain but a brilliant, almost monumental adversary who survived Stalin's purges, rising through the labyrinth of Soviet socio-politics to the pinnacle of power.

`Smiley's People' is a tale of revenge. If, as the saying goes, revenge is a dish best served cold, or at least cool, Smiley's is the coolest possible variety, barely visible through a professionalism honed by years in the Cold War trenches. Moving resolutely around or through all obstacles, he eventually collects the evidence needed to secure the support of Sir Saul Enderby, current chief of the revamped, cynical British counter-intelligence service (termed by LeCarré `The Circus'). Barry Foster, the eerily incandescent serial killer in Alfred Hitchcock's `Frenzy', portrays the suave, power-loving Enderby, an arch-bureaucrat with more clout than credibility, whose vanity will not let him begrudge Smiley any acknowledgement of his brilliant and courageous work. Their scene together, in which Enderby tries and fails to push Smiley's buttons, all of which have been hermetically sealed by decades of experience, is a delight. `Smiley's People' operates largely on this sort of intimate, interpersonal level. Some of its greatest pleasures are found in scenes that center on the unflinching Smiley and his elegant, slightly honest, former master of spy-tradecraft, Toby Esterhaze (Bernard Hepton). Smiley recruited Esterhaze from the Vienna gutters at the end of the World War II and to open a line of fire on Karla, reactivates him to compromise and turn one of the Soviet spymaster's European operatives. (If Toby had been Nixon's Chief of Staff during the Watergate crisis, the Nixster would probably still be president.) The initial meeting between Smiley and Esterhaze, their first since a rather unfriendly encounter in `Tinker, Tailor', is masterful, almost poetic.

Even in its somewhat streamlined, screen version `Smiley's People' is complex and dimensional, requiring full attention at all times. Crucial elements of dialog dart past while you blink (you'll become an adept rewinder). LeCarré's novel is screened as a series of beautifully-wrought set pieces; for the most part quiet interactions between detailed, believable characters who are driven by equally believable motivations, from the petty through the desperate. The settings jump from London to Paris to Hamburg to Berne and back as Smiley whittles each lead to heartwood. Not a shot is fired during the entire film, but the background menace against which Smiley operates is unmistakable. The very lethal Karla has known, almost from the start, that he has acquired a bogey. But he does not know that it is Smiley, whom Karla thought retired and out of the game, who is now on his tail. Smiley must work quickly and precisely while staying hidden, knowing that if he is discovered, he and anyone with whom he is currently associated, will almost certainly be eliminated. Karla's nickname in the west is `The Sandman'. Anyone, anywhere, who has ever threatened him has been permanently put to sleep. Karla will be especially responsive to Smiley, for it was he who unmasked Karla's highly-placed and destructive double-agent in `Tinker, Tailor', through whom Karla had been manipulating the entire western intelligence community for decades.

As events proceed in their intimate, quiet way, the suspense builds like layers of paint, one thin coat at a time. It's hard to resist, even after numerous screenings. Although `Smiley's People' is a serious thriller, in some places exhibiting an almost documentary realism, it is also poignant. Many of its characters, some decent, some less so, their lives all but car-baled by Stalinism, are now living out tenuous gray-scale existences, still under the cornice of Soviet power, despite the fact that they now reside in the west. The restrained, mournful score further accentuates the film's underlying emotionality. The acting is superb down through the smallest role. Even the editing, skillfully introducing and interweaving the corollary plot lines is first-rate. I screen `Smiley's People' every few months and never tire of it. If you appreciate LeCarré, espionage-based drama, or are simply looking for a temporary antidote to rampant ageism, you should see or collect this masterpiece. It's a gourmet meal for the mind.

`Can I touch it?' asks Barbara Stanwyck's cattle queen, presumably referring to Marshal Barry Sullivan's gun. `It might go off in your face', replies the Marshal. In this brief interchange lies the implicit heart of Sam Fuller's somewhat surreal and operatic western, `Forty Guns'. Fans of more mainstream western movies moseying in from great but chaste works like `My Darling Clementine' or more contemporary cheroot-grinders like `Silverado' will find their expectations seriously challenged.

`Forty Guns' gets your attention immediately with a thunderous opening-credit ride-by. Ms. Stanwyck is astride a pure white stallion leading her Forty `guns' in a column of twos, like a female Custer on her way to a last stand that only she might be able to imagine. As the riders flow, without breaking stride, around a buckboard carrying the three Bonnell brothers, of whom Barry Sullivan's Griff is the eldest, each bro registers the proceedings with a facial expression consistent with his age and experience. It is, perhaps, with the exception of the previously-quoted sequence, the best moment in the film. The dust having settled, much of it on the Bonnells, 164 hooves fading into silence, the brothers repair to a nearby town for a rollicking bath. Thus it begins. Eventually it ends. You may or may not be quite sure what happened in between. But this is not necessarily a bad thing.

In terms of fundamental style, `Forty Guns' is really a 50's TV western jumped up the big board, complete with that genre's trademark, clothes-make-the-hombre ambience. The 50's TV western was a highly stylized form in which anyone having the correct attire could be a cowboy, even Gene Barry, who plays the middle Bonnell brother. Mr. Barry went on to a successful TV career, launched by the series `Bat Masterson', in which his undeniable urbanity percolated up through his character for several seasons, forcing out a Masterson who was rather too smirky, and overburdened by savoir faire. (The real Bat, born in rural Kansas, was a colleague of Wyatt Earp, and cut from the trans-outlaw cloth. He had polish, compared to many contemporaries, but was not a fop). A form as stylized and libidinously constrained as the 50's TV western then falls into the hands of Samuel Fuller, one of Hollywood's most intense and emotional directors; a man who would have shoved a submarine through a soda straw if he had felt the cinematic need. In the case of `Forty Guns', the result is a movie that struggles to proceed, straining in one direction while constantly implying that it would love to go in any number of others, like a big dog on a short leash. But it is this quality that gives the film much of its cult appeal. I'd be hard pressed to call it a good film, although many would. But it is absolutely interesting.

`Forty Guns' should probably not be anyone's first Western (It's really film noir, podnuh). Said person might not ever want to see another. Still, it's worthy of appreciation, if for no other reason than for what it tried to be. Westerns of the 60's and 70's (of which I remain a die-hard fan) often did service by examining sensitive social issues, mainly racism, buffering them with the remove of a century or so. Why not a western that attempts, in its own unusual way, to examine sexuality? Post-feminist womanhood will not be thrilled with the somewhat perfunctory, testosterone-uber-alles ending. But, given the rather startling preceding scene, the ending is entirely consistent with the film's innate strangeness, and its apparent message: love may be over-rated and should probably be avoided whenever possible. I can honestly say that I have never seen anything quite like `Forty Guns', at least under a Stetson, though certainly under a snap-brim fedora. `Johnny Guitar' is in the same angst-arama zone but it's a girl-fight. In `Forty Guns', Barbara Stanwyck, though certainly a presence, is more the May Pole around which the boys gyrate, or on which they hang. The only films I can recall hitting me in quite the same way were some 60's products of the Kuchar Brothers (George and/or Mike). Kuchar films were works of droll, satirical, goofiness that happened to have assumed cinematic form (try keeping a straight face while just reading a list of their titles). `Forty Guns' felt much the same at times but was, apparently, being serious.

`Forty Guns' might stand up quite well to a remake, now that most audiences and studio suits have accepted that sex exists; preserve the stylistic essence of the original but let it be as tumescent as it needs to be. There is actually nothing wrong with the fundamental plot, which I won't reveal so you can project your own understanding. It simply lacks a certain level of on-screen flow. Story elements sort of roil in and out of view in this nearly over-full cauldron. But they're all in the same film, which helps. `Forty Guns' has a slightly messed-with feel to me and may not be entirely what the late Mr. Fuller had in mind. But, unfortunately, we probably won't be seeing a director's cut. The song, `High-riding Lady with a Whip', should certainly be preserved in any remake. It's a piece of music that is as hilariously strange as the rest of the film; one that seems to take itself entirely seriously while making you wonder, `Can this really be happening?'

Don't get off the Sam Fuller train at this outlying station. Fuller's the real deal, an artist who wielded a very distinct brush. Reboard and move on to the `The Steel Helmet', his gritty Korean War drama. If this one works for you, consider hanging out in Fullerville for a while. Anyone who appreciates film should become familiar with his work. And, if you thought the device of looking at one's target through the bore of a gun originated with the James Bond films, `Forty Guns' will set you straight, right down to the lands and grooves.

I had the good fortune to have seen `The Haunting of M' during its brief theatrical run. It was on an appropriately atmospheric, drizzly Berkeley evening in the now defunct Northside Theatre, a great little two-screen house that could probably have been shoehorned into an average-sized garage. I‘ve never forgotten this remarkable film. Unfortunately for me, and for all fans of the supernatural/ghost story film, it's unavailable, in video or any other medium, a fact that I confirmed during a very pleasant e-mail exchange, some months back, with Anna Thomas, the director (and wife of cinematographer Gregory Nava, who shot this film). Apparently even Ms. Thomas herself no longer has a copy. Having seen many films of this genre, I can say, without the slightest reservation, that `The Haunting of M' stands firmly in its front rank. Sadly, it will probably never be seen again. Given the demands of the stunned-by-overload market that drives much of the film industry's output, films like this may never even be made again. Although years have passed since I saw it, I can remember moments from the film vividly, as though I had seen them just a few days ago. `The Haunting of M' is a compact monument to what can be accomplished when a good story is handled with sensitivity and solid cinematic mechanics.

In `The Haunting of M', a 19th family is stalked by the ghost of a former resident of the area, a young man who died, in some tragic way as I recall, before he was able to marry. The young man's spirit has become enamored of one of the family's daughters, whose first name begins with the letter M. The ghost is first discovered hovering just visibly in a family photograph that was taken in an earlier scene, gazing longingly at the object of his affection. His outdated attire signals that, although he might be `there', he is probably not from then. The deceased presence is recognized by someone who knew him in life and speculation begins. At first, the family plays down this incident but their maid knows better. She has been aware for some time that `something walks the night'. Gradually, the ghost makes its presence and plans more evident.

As this film is now out of circulation, it's safe to share one stunning scene. A sibling of the haunted daughter hears the sister moaning, apparently during a nightmare, and enters her room to find the ghost seated in a rocking chair at the foot of her bed, staring at the sleeping girl. The sibling recoils in fright and the ghost vanishes, leaving the chair rocking gently. The scene was shot in very low light (the film is in color), at the edge of the film's ability to capture images. Not many film makers would take the risk of shooting a scene in which the central characters in the scene were almost invisible. Some parts of `The Godfather' were shot in quite muted light, using basically ambient lighting, giving the visuals an evocative sepia tone. This was considered something of a breakthrough in lighting design for the time. But the rocking chair scene in `The Haunting of M' was almost pitch black in comparison, and in this aspect lay its chilling impact. If you've ever been afraid of the dark, maybe one of those times during childhood when you were awake, but afraid to even open your eyes, this scene had the power to hurl you back to that place in an instant. There were no special effects, no fright masks leaping out, yet the scene resonated with relentless, supernatural intent. The spirit of the young man had entered the bedroom of the maiden. There was no turning back.

The film makers used another very effective device to excellent effect: the appearance of the entity in daylight. They were not the first to employ this approach, but they put a fascinating spin on their version. This approach can make powerful statement as it implies that the spirit's motivations are so coherent that they resist even the light of day. In one of the early scenes in `Night of the Living Dead', a classic in its own way, but primitive compared to `The Haunting of M', it is still daylight when the first zombie of many lurches into the visible background in a rural cemetery. The protagonists are engaged in a trivial spat as the zombie approaches unseen. It's possibly the best and most frightening scene in the entire movie.

Ms. Thomas and Mr. Nava went on to make the heart-rending `El Norte', which examines the lives of a teenaged brother and sister, undocumented refugees from a disintegrating Central American country, whose lacerated innocence meets its own disintegration in present-day Southern California. `The Haunting of M' is certainly not `El Norte'. It's an entirely different type of movie. But inside its particular and elegantly spooky envelope, its quality is unimpeachable. Its humanity is more stylized, as it must be in a period piece, but no less real. The film was beautifully photographed, in a natural, Vermeer-esque light. This, coupled with the restrained performances of its cast, gave `The Haunting of M' an unadorned quality, like an Amish hat. Films of this type will never appeal to adrenaline junkies, but this calm approach also throws up the most minimal of barriers between the screen and the viewer. One is gently drawn in. Everything becomes that much more real by implication. So it was with this modest yet excellent film. But when the time came for the scaries to begin, `The Haunting of M' absolutely delivered the goods.

In Fraser Heston's production of Robert Louis Stevenson's masterpiece, an obvious labor of love by all involved, the classic tale sidesteps another excessively kid-friendly incarnation to live and breathe as Stevenson meant it to. Although its made-for-TV scale pokes through now and then, it does so only momentarily in each case. These little blinks aside, this heartfelt reading of the classic adventure is a worthy piece of work. It's still family-safe but this time there's real menace interwoven with the book's more genteel sensibilities.

How a film begins is often crucial and this `Treasure Island' begins so beautifully, and correctly. A mournful pennywhistle solo ushers in an opening credit sequence that could have been filmed by the painter N.C. Wyeth, whose vision infuses many of the film's frames. I replay this sequence several times whenever I screen this film because it is so evocative. It also perfectly sets the tone for the entire movie; beautifully done. But if they had just held the rousing, though excellent, music back a bit longer and let the sequence walk through on its own legs, it would have been one of the most perfect opening sequences ever filmed.

Charlton Heston as Long John Silver? Don't laugh. His now-familiar voice occasionally surfaces through his 18th century pirate patois, but never detracts. Heston's portrayal is completely effective and is handled with restraint and relish, a fact that is evident the moment his Silver first appears. Silver emerges from the back room of his waterfront Bristol grog shop to confront Christian Bale's uneasy Jim Hawkins who, having walked into Silver's lair, is realizing that he may, quite possibly, not be walking out. Assessing Hawkins through a world-weary expression that has seen it all several times, Silver weighs his options: hear the boy out or drag him into the kitchen and slice him into the salt pork stew, at least.

Heston's Silver is no buffoon. Instead, he is a dangerous man, not unlike the Deke Thornton character in Sam Peckinpah's `The Wild Bunch'; an intelligent person who is forced to endure, and make use of, the human dregs of his time, the best of whom can hold only a dim candle to him. Cunning, quietly remorseless, always several moves ahead of everyone in sight, yet patient in the face of relentless idiocy, this Silver is also a man whose soul has not been completely flogged out of him, by circumstance or the whip. His sincere respect for the innocent courage of Jim Hawkins gives this `Treasure Island' much of its humanity. If you don't feel a pang as Heston's Long John gazes chagrined at the loot, which, for the lack of more far-sighted colleagues, would have been his, you may have the proverbial hole in your soul. `Ah bucko', says Silver to Jim Hawkins near the film's end, after Jim rebuffs Silver's last gentle attempt to manipulate him, `what a pair we would have made'. Oh yeah, absolutely.

All of the book's heroes are portrayed with heartfelt competence; the blustering Squire Trelawney (Richard Johnson), the tack-sharp, impeccably-mannered Doctor Livesey (Julian Glover), the unflinching Captain Smollet (Clive Wood), and Jim Hawkins' arch-boy (Christian Bale in his mid-teens, filled out a bit post `Empire of the Sun', bearing no resemblance to his homicidal yuppie in `American Psycho'). Arrayed against them are the scurviest sea dogs who ever weighed anchor, complete with terrifying teeth and fierce, implied body odor: Oliver Reed's tragic Billy Bones, Christopher Lee's festering Blind Pew, Israel Hands (what a great name), Silver's murderous, cobra-like shipmate, (Michael Halsey), who provides a taste of what Silver himself may have been like in his younger days, and a most convincing Ben Gunn (Nicholas Amer). Peter Postlethwaite, the super-cool big-game hunter in the first sequel to `Jurassic Park', plays the bewildered George Merry, a man who should always flee from even the slightest ambition; someone who makes you happy to still be you, even if your 401K was riding entirely on Enron.

When the time comes for action, it's delivered with conviction. Early on, the tense, hateful confrontation in the Admiral Benbow inn, between the rum-soaked Billy Bones and his scary former shipmate, Black Dog (John Benfield), is beautifully rendered, as is the berserk fight at the island stockade later in the film. To its great credit, the film never tries to be funny, or even light-hearted. It simply forges ahead, telling Stevenson's great story. But near the end comes a scene in which Squire Trelawney confronts Silver, whose schemes are now hopelessly foiled, and attempts to call the old pirate to account. What briefly transpires is the film's only real yuk, but it's a peach.

It's easy to over-romanticize the period in which `Treasure Island' is set; swashbuckling as it may now seem, it was a time before widespread bathing (the future George III's German fiancé had to be told to please take a bath after arriving in England), flush toilets, anesthesia, toothpaste, germ theory, and any notion of social justice. But it was also a time when unbroken forests still covered most of North America, when Pittsburgh was just a rough-hewn, barely defensible French fort in the midst of a trackless wilderness (near the present site of the Pirates baseball stadium; Pirates?, hmmm), a time when, given the courage, adventurous spirits still had real room to move. The slate was still largely clean. Many irreversible mistakes had yet to be made. Anyone with a taste for history and, perhaps, a discernible distaste for certain aspects of our own `advanced' age will relate well to this forthright `Treasure Island'. If you've appreciated Charlton Heston as a movie star, you'll appreciate him even more as an actor. This `Treasure Island' is probably the best that will ever be made. A more `updated' version could certainly be produced; one that spurts more blood and exchanges more bodily fluids, with much of the book's period style and manner stripped out, but it would no longer be Stevenson, just Hollywood.