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41 years after its release, there's not a lot to say about this movie.

I absolutely love it, since I saw it in a theater in 1982, when I was a student at the Graduate School of Theology of Oral Roberts University, and I loved it immediately!

Just a couple of notes:

Watching the play of emotions on James Garner's face is always a treat. How can one face show so much feeling, and so many feelings, that fast? The man was brilliant. I miss him.

Henry Mancini's music was always worth the price of admission. The song "Crazy World" is so beautiful it is almost heartbreaking.

"Victor's" first musical number, "Le Jazz Hot", is one of the most wonderful musical numbers in the history of movies.

Lesley Ann Warren EARNED the Academy Award nomination she got for this. Every word, every facial expression, every movement, is PERFECT!

Today is my birthday. I asked myself, "If I could watch any movie in the world, what would it be?" Going through what is available to me in the streaming services I have, I came on this and chose it. My favorite movie of all time? No. But a fine birthday treat.

A medical doctor who belonged to a local church was asked to join the committee whose job it was to evaluate the pastor. The doctor refused, explaining that no lay people, but only other doctors, are competent to judge a how doctors carry out their profession.

Competence in critiquing one genre does not necessarily mean the critic is competent to critique another. Musicals and science fiction have been areas of specialization of mine for nearly a half century, and I find many critiques of music or science fiction reveal not any defect in the subject, but the incompetence of the critic.

When Andrew Lloyd Webber decided to translate T. S. Eliot's "Old Possum's Guide to Practical Cats" into a musical, surely his friends told him he had finally lost his mind (As if "Jesus Christ Superstar" and "Evita" weren't proof enough of that). "Old Possum's" is not a story, it's a collection of silly poems about cats, not great literature, but fun to read to little children. There is no plot there, no story. "Cats", the resulting musical, is wondrous and magical, not because of the story, but because of the brilliant music, the supernatural dance moves, the scenery, the staging, and the orchestration. Somehow, they added a gossamer framework of a story, having the cats coming up before Old Deuteronomy to see who gets to go to the Heavyside Layer for a new jellicle life. Let's face it, going from cat to cat, poem to poem, is a bit tedious at moments. Personally, I found Bustopher Jones and Jennyanydots a bit boring. It feels as if we're enduring those to get to the beautifully satisfying emotional ending.

To translate the play into a movie, Tom Hooper has added another layer of gossamer: Macavity kidnapping (catnapping) other contestants for the prize hoping to have it himself. Having enlisted Judi Dench (Old Deuteronomy), Idris Elba (Macavity), Ian McKellen (Gus), Rebel Wilson (Jennyanydots), and James Corden (Bustopher Jones), he had to expand their parts at least a little. But he has had the advantage of CGI, which he uses brilliantly. I loved the CGI helping turning the characters into cats. It was excellent.

The brilliance of "Cats", as I said, is the musical performance, the staging, the dance. Hooper has given us a brilliant musical performance, brilliant staging, and amazing dancing. The story, alas! is inferior. But that's not what I paid to see.

Poor Judi Dench and Ian McKellan! When they're brilliant, I think, "Ho hum. Brilliant again." They handled their parts very well.

James Corden is always charming, always worth the price of admission. He is again.

Idris Elba, Rebel Wilson, Taylor Swift, none of them disappoint.

But Francesca Hayward was a revelation to me. A sweet face, a lovely silvery singing voice, and (to me, an amateur at critiquing dance) some brilliant ballet technique. She carries the movie as the abandoned kitten Victoria, and she carries it well.

Despite my fear of being stoned as a heretic, I daresay Jennifer Hudson was born to play Grizabella, and I would put her rendition of "Memories" against anyone's. Who but "Dreamgirl"'s Effie White could properly render that magnificent number? It has never been done better.

Final word: If you don't like musicals, don't go see "Cats". And if you don't like musicals and you go see "Cats", don't pass yourself off as a competent critic.

DISCLAIMER: I am head-over-heels in love with Emma Watson. I am predisposed to love anything she does because she does it.

DISCLAIMER: I am head-over-heels in love with Alan Menken. If he writes the music, I'm there.

DISCLAIMER: I love loving things. I hate hating things. It makes no sense to me to equate intelligence with the ability to find fault. Sometimes I see what they were going for and applaud the effort. Sometimes I see what they were going for and weep at how badly they missed it.

That being said, I LOVED the new "Beauty and the Beast". I was wiping tears from the corners of my eyes frequently for sheer beauty.

The original cartoon I loved. Even though there were holes in the plot you could drive a battleship through. They fixed all the plot holes! Go see it, if only for that!

Okay, okay, Emma Watson isn't a classically-trained coloratura soprano. She's no Paige O'Hara vocally. For that matter, I missed Jerry Orbach when Ewen MacGregor was singing "Be Our Guest" and I missed Angela Lansbury in Emma Thompson's "Beauty and the Beast". I understand Orbach is no longer available and the supernatural Ms. Lansbury, in her 90's, probably couldn't do the song the justice she did a quarter of a century ago. Guess what. I DON'T CARE! They did justice to the songs. They didn't do brilliance with the songs. I don't care.

Emma has a divinely expressive face that carries her emotions perfectly for the big screen. Her Belle was glorious.

Is it possible to miscast Kevin Kline? He is brilliant. And his Maurice is delicious. His singing, still not New York Metropolitan Opera quality, carries the song.

Luke Evans does just the lightest touch of camp in playing Gaston. I reveled in it! Once again, not the vocal quality of Richard White, and I did miss that amazing bass. But the baritone/tenor carried it off.

Now, let's get to Josh Gad.

Bill Condon did the lightest hat tip to the Gender Community with Josh Gad's Lefou. If you blink, you might miss it. If you're terrified your little ones might get gay cooties on them and grow up "perverts", by all means skip this show. But you'd probably better not let them watch any television, listen to any music, or attend any movies, because the portrayals there are not teensy hat-tips. They are full-body bows and curtsies.

Now for the real star of the show: The music.

Alan Menken is a living miracle. He does things with a musical score and songs that blow me through the wall! All the new songs are brilliant! Beast's song of pain over Belle is stunning. THOSE vocals are magnificent! I've always loved the opening number of "Beauty and the Beast". It is full-blown grand opera, and makes me wish Alan Menken would write a sure-enough opera.

This movie dazzled me visually, musically, and emotionally. Yes, there are some things that seemed to me flaws. Guess what. I don't care! You have my highest recommendation.

Some good friends of mine went Thursday evening, and only said, "Dark, we won't be taking our children to see this."

I add the word "Brilliant".

If you need fluffy fantasy space opera, you're not going to enjoy this. If you need Jedi masters and Sith lords doing the impossible, there's not much here for you.

If everything absolutely, positively has to be all right at the end credits, you probably should stay away.

If you're prepared to face the reality that evil sometimes becomes strong and the only way to fight it is to fight to the death, literally to the death, you may find this as good a movie as I did.

Right from the first, there is no blaring fanfare, no yellow letters running diagonally back, back, back into infinity. My first reaction was, "Hmm, that doesn't sound like John Williams music." And it wasn't. Michael Giacchino, who gave us the fine music for the latest Star Trek movies, scored this. There are the necessary referrals to John Williams' music, but no more than is necessary.

Then there is egregious murder and ruthless Imperial bullying. There is the gritty life of the underbelly of those who either resist, or at least don't cooperate with the great Empire.

So much has been made of the blind monk Chirrut Imwe, played by Donnie Yen. He's a great character. He's no Yoda, but he doesn't need to be. In fact, for this story he needs NOT to be.

The great revelation to me was K-2SO, a reprogrammed Imperial droid, whose voice is provided by Alan Tudyk. I wish that had been C-3PO's character! I can show his character in one line, spoken with that flat, almost-depressed tone: "I'll be there for you." (Jyn looks surprised) "The captain said I had to."

Most blessed of all, there is no one who has never had any training but who, suddenly, miraculously, is a master of the force, and no one is more surprised than she/he. There are none of the rabbit- out-of-a- hat surprises that Star Wars has done better than any other franchise. For instance, when suddenly the grim, grizzled veterans look to pretty young Jyn Erso (Felicity Jones) for leadership, it makes perfect sense.

Lastly, in order to defeat an almost-omnipotent Galactic Empire, somebody's going to have to die. And it may be somebody you love.

Be prepared.

This may be the best chapter in the Star Wars saga, because, beyond all hope, it is the most real.

Shuddery-camera fight scenes. That's what's wrong with modern action movies. Peter Jackson pioneered it, as far as I can tell. Apparently the director either doesn't know what he wants, or doesn't care. So he does the shuddery camera fight scene, with poor lighting, maybe flashes of light, so the poor audience doesn't know what's going on. And I guess there are people who go to movies for Boom, Smack, Pow for whom this is wonderful.

But I nearly walked out on "Civil War". I knew there was a fight, but the shuddery camera and lighting made it impossible for me to tell what was going on.

When one of the main characters is in an extended fight with one of the main villains, would you like to know which villain? I would.

The first big action scene, on the Enterprise, I can't tell you what happened. A lot of people got hurt, a lot of people got killed. After a while I realized it wasn't any of the main characters. (Apparently Jim Kirk is the only one allowed to have bruises and cuts on his face, by the way).

Movies are about storytelling. I actually appreciate dazzling special effects. But when the special effects don't advance the story, when they actually stop the flow of the story, that is bad, bad, BAD storytelling.

For me, if you would show the principals starting to fight, then cut to them binding their wounds and mourning their dead, I would be fine.

I was 10 when "Star Trek" started. I saw the premiere. I love "Star Trek". I am also very well educated and relatively intelligent. When I have trouble following a story (with all appropriate humility) that story has not been told well.

There are moments of wonder and brilliance here. I think there probably was a very good story there. But it's hard to tell.

George Lucas somehow never quite figured out that the reason we kept coming back to see the original "Star Wars" movies over and over is that we loved Luke and Han and Leia and Ben. The people who are bringing us the new "Star Trek" movies need to learn we love Jim and Spock and McCoy and Uhura and Scott and Sulu and (God rest his soul) Chekhov. Don't begin a movie with Kirk and Spock undergoing such existential angst that they are planning the leave the Enterprise, and then don't touch it again. We love whiz-bang effects, but we love those people.

Go see the movie. And may you find the fights less frustrating than I did.

The bad news about this movie? It goes a little slow in places. There is one obscene gesture that lasts quite a while. I don't remember any other vulgarity. The rest is good news.

The cast is 100% delight. I didn't mean to love Melissa McCarthy, but I do. She is hilarious. Her deliveries are hilarious, as is her acting.

Kristen Wiig brought a nice verisimilitude I didn't expect. She has a kind of sweetness, a familiarity, something approachable that makes you love her.

Where has Kate McKinnon been all my life? How is it possible to make over-the-top that believable? And that enjoyable? The word for Leslie Jones is "perfect". And that obscene gesture I talked about, that's what I want to express to the critics who say they shouldn't have made this movie with a cast of women.

And keep alert for how much fun Chris Hemsworth has lampooning his great good looks. It's joyous! The cast gives a great ensemble performance. The earlier two were star vehicles for Bill Murray with everybody else supporting him. This is a true ensemble, and every character is more interesting than any character in the originals. And I loved the originals! Watch for the cameos (You did expect cameos, didn't you?). They are delicious.

And be prepared for the feeling of ice water splashed down your back. There are some nice, surprising chills.

One a scale of 1-10, I would rate this between 6 and 7. It's not a great movie, nothing life-changing or epic. But it's fun, worth the price of admission.

By the good graces of Turner Classic Movies and Fathom Events, my wife, my daughter and I had a huge theater all to ourselves yesterday for the 2:00 p. m. big-screen viewing of the 1953 miracle of a movie, "Roman Holiday". Well, that's not 100% accurate. A couple of minutes before the movie started, two other people walked in. I feel so sorry for all the people who could have occupied all those seats and seen this overwhelming movie as it was intended to be seen.

Who remembers the supernatural charm of 23-year-old Audrey Hepburn? Who remembers the imperturbable, virile strength of Gregory Peck, just about to be perturbed to his limits? Who remembers how hapless Eddie Arnold could be as the sidekick? Who remembers the uncredited fourth brilliant member of this great cast: glorious Rome?

Princess Anne (Hepburn), from an undetermined country, is concluding a European tour in Rome. She has been decorous and dutiful (the first sounding of the theme of the movie), but she is just about exhausted. How brilliantly the great director William Wyler shows us her state: during another stultifying reception, the young princess, under the cover of her long dress, has slipped her left foot out of her shoe, and is scratching her right shin with it! Her face is unchanged, but we keep going back to that errant foot. Immediately we all know how she feels, and that night, in bed, when she can't take anymore and begins screaming at her attendants who are trying to go over her packed schedule for the next day, why, we are right there with her. In fact, we're thinking, "I'd've cracked long ago!" But she is Royal, without the luxury for hysterics. So they summon a doctor, who gives her a sedative, telling her it will make her feel very good, and then it will make her sleep. The attendants leave, and, under the influence of that happy drug, she dresses, slips out of the mansion, finds a delivery truck about to leaves, stows away, and makes her escape into the Rome of Common People.

Joe Bradley (Peck), an American journalist who is just barely getting by, is losing at poker to, among others, his photographer friend Irving Radovich (Albert). Bradley takes his last 5,000-lira note, puts it in his jacket pocket, and calls it a day. Walking home, he sees the princess asleep on a curbside. He tries to go past, but somehow can't, and he tries to put her in a cab. When she drunkenly insists she lives at The Coliseum, the cab driver will not take custody, and Mr. Bradley is stuck with her.

Who remembers a day when an intoxicated woman could stumble into a single man's apartment, drunkenly ask for help out of her clothes, and he NOT take advantage of her? And here the movie sounds the theme of duty again. Bradley gives her pajamas, points her to the bathroom, and leaves the apartment for a few minutes to allow her to arrange herself. He comes back and finds her asleep, almost comatose, in his bed.

At the office the next day, he picks up a newspaper and realizes he has the princess asleep in his apartment! He gets his editor to promise him $5,000 (not lira) for an exclusive interview with Her Royal Highness, calls Irving for help, and rushes home. There he finds her dressed, a little embarrassed, buy royally poised about what has happened. Gently, slowly, he tempts her to extend her hookey-playing for the rest of the day.

The rest of the movie is a luscious travelogue of Rome. You will forget almost immediately that you are watching in black and white, I promise! And the burgeoning relationship of the principals, Mr. Bradley and Her Incognito Highness, is nothing short of a delight.

(POSSIBLE MINOR SPOILER) In the last few decades, when "If it feels good do it" has become almost a religious mantra, to the ruination of literally millions of people, a sweet and simple comedy where all the people ultimately do their duty, do the right thing, even when it is hard, even when it is painful, is like the first rain after a long drought. There is a fabulous moral here, one desperately needed today. This is a beautiful movie, romantic, a little screwball here and there, heart-breakingly beautiful, and, if you pay attention, an underlying ode to duty.

You need to see this movie. Over and over.

My take on Peter Jackson is that he is an adolescent horror film maker, and that he thinks his audience is so stupid that they can't understand the good guys are in trouble unless he puts them in so deep they cannot get out without some kind of deus ex machina. That's why his "King Kong" is so bad. I have reconciled myself to his Lord of the Rings trilogy by thinking of it as PETER JACKSON's Lord of the Rings, and after all he put into it, he has the right to rewrite as he pleases.

The second installment of The Hobbit is painful, 'WAY too long, with many, many more contrived battle scenes than anybody needs, especially since the only battle in the book is with the spiders. The rest never happened, so to speak.

I did not go to the theater today expecting much. I left with a headache from crying.

I owe Peter Jackson an apology.

Yes, he changed things. Yes, his changes were unnecessary. But some of them are so good, I actually think I prefer his version to Tolkien's in places. I will not go into details, I will include no spoilers. Surely everyone knows he found a way to include Legolas (Orlando Bloom), and he created an elf-maid-warrior Tauriel (the luminous Evangeline Lilly). Furthermore, I believe everyone knows he contrived an unlikely romance between Tauriel and the dwarf Kili (Aidan Turner, who is almost as pretty as Ms. Lilly). Did you know he made the romance work cinematically? Watch for it. (They who have read the novel knows Kili does not make it out alive. Have a hanky ready) The additions, Gandalf's encounter with The Necromancer, and walk-ons by Galadriel (Cate Blanchett), Saruman (Christopher Lee), and Elrond (Hugo Weaving) is no secret either. Tolkien never fleshes out the story, so if Peter Jackson elects to portray it, good on him! He did good.

Oh, and I don't read all the pre-release stuff. When I recognized the voice of Billy Connolly as Dain, I was delighted! He is a wonderful addition! My opinion: this is the best of the trilogy by far. I may prefer it to the any of the original trilogy!

The point of movies is story-telling. If you have to ask the question I asked when I left the theater today, "Just what are you trying to say?" then you haven't told the story well. For all the fine music and excellent performances in "Into the Woods", they failed as storytellers.

First, I am not the traveler and sophisticate many of my friends are, sadly. I have never seen "Into the Woods" on stage. If I had, maybe my reaction to the movie would have been different.

Second, I LOVE Stephen Sondheim. There is something about his music that never fails to transport me. Well, almost never.

Third, Meryl Streep is the greatest. One of my favorite jokes ends, "Are you kidding? If they cast Meryl Streep as Batman it would be perfect casting!" I agree.

So I went to the theater expecting brilliance. I expected to be transported. Anything less was going to be a disappointment.

Very quickly I was asking myself if Sondheim hadn't phoned it in musically. Don't get me wrong: when SONDHEIM phones it in, it's still better than 99.9% could do at their very best. But I kept waiting for it to get brilliant. It never did.

Maybe I was expecting too much. I saw "Fried Green Tomatoes" after seeing "Driving Miss Daisy" and left disappointed. Years later when I saw "Tomatoes" without having seen "Miss Daisy" in such close proximity, I found I loved "Tomatoes" on its own.

Maybe if I go back and see "Into the Woods" a second time, I'll like it better. But this time I left confused.

One of the greatest and most important rules about storytelling is "Never pass up a good opportunity to shut up." It is one of the most important rules for preaching.

"Into the Woods" tries to weave together "Jack and the Beanstalk", "Little Red Riding Hood", "Cinderella", "Rapunzel", and another about a baker and his wife who can have no children. They do this fairly well. And that was when I thought the movie was over.

And that was when the movie, I began to suspect, really began, or was supposed to. It became apparent that all the Good Guys had lied, stolen, schemed, and basically done anything they thought they could get away with to get what they wanted. Jack's giant realized he had been robbed, and simply came to reclaim his stolen property. Jack killed him. The giant's wife came to avenge her husband. Red Riding Hood mused that killing people is wrong, and even a giant is a person. Then they killed the giantess, and nobody ever looked back, in regret or any other way.

There were hints of moral complexity, deep ethical questions, but only hints. If they were trying to make any point at all, I missed it. There are two possibilities: I am obtuse (not impossible), or they told their story badly.

To my friends who trust my opinion, I say to go see the movie. See it for the spectacle, for the amazing performances by an amazing cast. Meryl is, well, Meryl. When has Tracey Ullman ever missed? Chris Pine and Billy Magnussen are hilarious as the princes. James Cordon (the Baker) was a new one for me, one I'll be looking for again! Anna Kendrick is a delight. Emily Blunt sparkled. And they had Christine Baranski! She is the whole package, perfectly capable of doing it all, and she did it magnificently.

Sondheim's music and lyrics are delightful, even if they weren't as breathtaking as I expected. Well worth the price of admission.

But in the end, I think they storytellers let us all down. I ask them again, "Just what were you trying to say?" If your audience leaves still asking that question, how can you have succeeded in telling your story?

The perfect movie is not a huge, earth-swaddling epic. It is a simple thing, a small story, one that fits in a 1 1/2 to 2-hour span. "Casablanca" is the greatest, a perfectly polished little gem, the story of two former lovers who bump into each other again in the shadow of World War II. "The problems of two people doesn't matter a hill of beans..." But they make amazing movies. More is not better in movies. More is simply more.

In other words, to try to interweave more than a couple of stories together in one movie is idiotic.

Let's see. There's the new Prime Minister who gets a crush on a cute girl who works in 10 Downing Street. There's his sister and her husband, a respectable middle-aged couple with fairly typical behavior- problem kids, and a wicked secretary waiting in the wings to try and destroy it all. There is the writer whose lover jilts him with his brother, who goes to Portugal to write his next novel and becomes enchanted with his housekeeper. There's the cute couple who meet on the job--their stand-ins for a porn movie. There's the man whose wife has died recently and left him with a stepson going through his first crush. There's the aging rock star with the intoxicated leer who is looking for lasting love. There's the lovely young woman with the mentally ill brother. How many is that so far? That's not all the stories.

But not only do they work together in one movie, THEY WORK TOGETHER BRILLIANTLY!

My standing joke is somebody has to have sold his/her soul to the devil. In this case, it's writer/director Richard Curtis, who also gave us "Mr. Bean", "Notting Hill", and "Bridget Jones' Diary", to name a few.

If I haven't convinced you, maybe this will: Hugh Grant, Colin Firth, Emma Thompson, Alan Rickman, Liam Neeson, Martin Freeman (as the male porn movie stand-in!), Laura Linney, and (in a support role!) Keira Knightley.

What more do you need?

If you haven't seen it, see it. Prepare to fall in love with love again. All kinds of love.

Tears kept coming to my eyes as I watched this. I know everybody in this play. I see myself in several of them. A Southerner all my life, and born a good half century after this story is set, yet Grovers Corners could be my home. I know I went to school with George Gibbs and Emily Webb. Dr. Gibbs treated me when I got the measles at the age of six. Editor Webb attended the church where my earliest religious memories took place. And there is Simon Stimson, the town drunk, only none of us would ever have been so rude as to call him that; no one despised him, we all wished there were something we could do to help.

What makes this story so profound and earth-shattering is how incredibly ordinary it is. We know these people instinctively, because we all are related. "In the final analysis," President Kennedy said in his American University speech in 1963, "we are all mortal. We all breathe the same air, drink the same water; we all cherish the future of our children..."

This production is as self-consciously a movie as the play is self- consciously a play. And it hits home over and over.

The title is perfect: "Our Town". It is our town. It is our story.

...this show is awful. I like Geoff Stults. I loved "The Finder" and I was outraged when they took it away from me. The character he portrayed was intriguing, but the producers and the network couldn't figure out what to do with him. The pilot was outstanding, but they messed with it. They replaced Saffron Burrows (MISTAKE), gave his character an unbelievable relationship, never quite made enough use of his amazing abilities. The late Michael Clarke Duncan was wonderful in the series, and Maddie Hasson as Willow as spectacular. I'd say Fox wasted a tremendous property.

But "Enlisted"...

Geoff is the ONLY reason I sat all the way through the pilot, and I have no intention of wasting any more time on it. My wife said, "Don't they put their best stuff in the pilot? It's only going to get WORSE from this?"

I think that says it all.

Sad.

So the Money asked Peter Jackson if he could stretch The Hobbit out to three movies. And he did.

I enjoyed the Lord of the Rings movies, because I accept the fact that they are not J. R. R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings movies, they are Peter Jackson's. So, these movies are Peter Jackson's. He has the right to rewrite whatever he wants. And he and his staff have done their homework, and taken liberally from others of Tolkien's writings, and extrapolated well on things Tolkien hinted at and never really portrayed.

This second movie of the three has moments of magic and beauty. There were moments where I gasped and moments where I laughed in delight.

There were more moments where I drummed my fingers in frustration and tedium. The tedium was in the frequent (of course) and interminable fight scenes. The tedium was in all the special effects, all the CG. Technologically wonderful, though no more wonderful than many other movies that have come out lately.

Only one or two of the magic came from CG.

The best moments of the movie came when Peter Jackson lets the whiz-bang out step back from center stage and let his fine actors do what they do- -act.

Evangeline Lilly is wonderful as Tauriel. Tauriel is a non-royal sylvan elf who has caught the eye of King Thranduil's royal son Legolas (remember him?). She doesn't have the otherworldly beauty of Liv Tyler's Arwen from the previous series. She looks more this-worldly. But she is no less beautiful. In one extreme closeup, her famous freckles show, and she is stunning!

Tauriel is as good a warrior as any male. She is also a strong minded woman who cares deeply. So deeply, in fact, that she is willing to break rules and orders. And Ms. Lilly plays her to perfection. Watch her face when she converses, watch her reactions. Wonderful!

Worst of all is the near-total waste of the magically-talented Martin Freeman. Well have some more experienced and famed actors fumed with jealousy that Mr. Freeman can stand, wordless, and express three or four emotions silently with his common-as-mud Everyman's face. As I drove away from the theater, I whimsically said, "It's a shame Martin Freeman had only four lines." My daughter said, "He had more than four lines!" I said, "Okay, six. Eight, tops."

He has more lines than that, and, brilliant movie actor that he is, lines actually can get in the way of his acting. But so can a heavy- handed director who loves computer generated effects than he does actors.

Ultimately, the public enjoys spectacle and movie magic. But what we really want is good story-telling. Peter Jackson more or less tells one-third of the story of the novel The Hobbit. But he doesn't really do it all that well. Acceptably, but no more than acceptably.

You should see this movie for the beauty of Nicole Kidman, if for no other reason. I think her supernatural beauty reached its unprecedented peak in this movie. Her first appearance, a close-up of her face, is the most breathtaking show of female beauty since the violent eye of Elizabeth Taylor shocked us in the beginning of "The Taming of the Shrew".

You should see this movie for Jim Broadbent, if for no other reason. It is embarrassing to have to admit it, but I had no idea what this amazing actor could do until I saw this. I had seen him in "Bridget Jones", where he is spectacularly underused. I had seen him in "Iris", where he is heartbreakingly brilliant. Later, I would see him in the Harry Potter series, where, like all the other actors of note, he got paid for doing tragically little. He, Alan Rickman, Maggie Smith, Richard Harris, and on and on, lent their names, got well paid, and did little more than propping up younger actors. Broadbent sings, he mugs, he dances, he is hilarious, he is farcical, he is cynical, he is tragic. He is a one-man acting army in this.

You should see this movie for Ewan McGregor, if for no other reason. He's almost as pretty as Nicole. But who knew he could sing? And sing he does, wonderfully. And he will make you cry.

You should see this movie for the music, if for no other reason. Baz Lurhmann's cheerful anachronisms are hilarious and wonderful, starting with "The Sound of Music", going through a stellar medley of '60's hits, highlighted with Elton John's "Your Song", and reaching a farcical peak with a dance number to "Like a Virgin" which will leave you in pain with laughter. Listen for a grand operatic rendition of Sting's "Roxanne", which will knock your socks off! You should see this movie for Baz Luhrman, a writer and director who can pull off this improbable, impossible movie, make you swallow it, and make you love it.

You should see this movie!

Great beauty can bring tears to my eyes. Early on, my eyes were tearing just from the beauty of the music. Then the beauty of the love story took me. My 17-year-old daughter and I just held each other and cried, while my poor wife looked around for some way to deny knowing us.

Gaston Leroux's book is a horrible mishmash, poorly plotted and poorly written. But he created a compelling character which will not die, but keeps coming back in new incarnations. The play is a true miracle, at least it has been when I've been privileged to see it onstage.

This movie has a couple of problems. The Phantom just swishes his cape too much! It's a small thing, but it annoys me. That and a couple of continuity errors niggle at me.

But Schumacher's Phantom is visually brilliant, especially his gorgeous transition from the present to the past (ITTY BITTY TEENY TINY SPOILER: The present is always black and white. The past is always in color). He makes it possible to get over losing the magic of a live performance with the magical things cameras can do that theater cannot.

His casting is, in my opinion, well-nigh irreproachable. Gerard Butler's Phantom isn't a vocal tour-de-force, and I feel as if the director forced him to be a bit swishier than he would have liked (than I would have liked). But it carries it off, her carries it off nicely.

Emmy Rossum's Christine is flighty, a flibbertigibbit, as is the character in the novel. Vocally, she is just nice, mouth-wateringly nice.

Patrick Wilson as Raoul is naive, young, impetuous, vocally gorgeous, in short, perfect.

I can go on, but I won't, other than to say the changes from the play to the movie I approve and love.

Perfect? No. But fine, quite fine. If you love music, and Lloyd Webber's music covereth a multitude of sins, then you should enjoy this well. I did. I bought the DVD, and it is one of the most viewed and re-viewed in my collection.

What makes "Casablanca" the great movie it is is that it doesn't try to tell the history of the world; it is not an epic; it is a perfectly polished little gem, "the problems of three little people" told exquisitely.

"Shall We Dance" is such a polished gem. Set in the Japanese culture where all dancing is suspect, a middle-class middle-management man who has lost the luster of his life sees a beautiful young woman looking wistfully out the window of a dance studio and, eventually, goes looking for her. He finds much, much more.

Does infidelity ensue? You'll have to decide for yourself.

What does ensue is magic, not Harry Potter magic, the everyday ordinary kind of magic that makes the world of us common people so wonderfully worth living.

I've said enough. There is so much sparkle to this gem throughout I feel as if nearly everything I want to tell you is a spoiler.

See this movie. You owe it to yourself. You'll thank me.

I consider myself well educated, articulate, literate. So loving this movie is a bit embarrassing. It is silly, adolescent, a little creepy (How old all the "leading men" are! And how young and voluptuous and willing the women!) But I loved this movie. I laughed all through it.

Frank Sinatra is somehow simultaneously wide-eyed and leering as Dingus Magee. He never once gives any indication that he isn't taking this seriously. He plays it like a professional actor! And he does it well.

George Kennedy is as professional. He knows that when you play a clown, you must never, ever be clownish. He gives a good, solid, straight performance of a ridiculous character. And when he is sworn in as the sheriff, the oath he takes made me laugh so hard I couldn't breathe for a while! Anne Jackson is always worth watching. Her turn as the mayor(madam) of Yerkey's Hole is delightful. She comes as close as anyone to winking at the camera, but she manages to maintain professionalism, and gives the movie her inestimable good work.

Then there's the stunning Michelle Carey as (I am not making this up) Anna Hot Water. You now have her name. Need I say more? I have sometimes wondered if it was a law in Hollywood that you couldn't make a western comedy without Henry Jones and John Dehner. Throw Jack Elam in and you have a winner.

Suggestive? Throughout? Profane? Never. No blatant sex, no nudity, no gore, the only violence is comic.

Silly, stupid, a plot a 13-year-old boy would love.

Yep. I really enjoyed this movie!

If somebody doesn't teach the children, our society and our culture dies out in one generation. That makes teaching THE necessary profession. Without teachers, we have nothing, we can do nothing, we are nothing. And there is no profession more thankless, more under-compensated, more maligned, and more difficult. Why would anyone do it? For the best answer available, watch this version of "Goodbye, Mr. Chips".

First and foremost, a young (33 years old) plays a British boy's school master, from he first day at school, through decades of boys, through his retirement and his dotage. Donat brilliant captures Mr. Chippings' awkward beginning, his fumbling to find himself as a teacher, his growing comfort in his own skin, largely courtesy of Katherine, a lovely young woman whom he meets while lost in the mountains on a summer vacation hike; whom he marries, and loses to childbirth. Donat ages brilliantly and believably.

Greer Garson plays Katherine, with all the loveliness and grace that characterized her life and career. Paul Henried is the German teacher, Staefel, who persuades Chipping to take the vacation where he meets his Kathie, who must leave Britain for his home in Germany when the two countries get embroiled in World War I, whom Chipping, to the consternation of many, memorializes when Staefel dies fighting for Germany in the war.

But watch the boys. Little Terry Kilburn plays each of the Colley boys as little ones, with heart-breaking cuteness. Watch the boys grow, watch how they come to love Chipping, and how he loves them.

Keep the Kleenex box handy, and end up envying Chips his life, though we pity him almost throughout. He is the most blessed of human beings. He is a teacher! God bless them all.

Okay, okay. This is no life-changing deep, heavy, sob-your-guts-out movie. But it is very nearly perfectly fun! You want entertainment? This is it!

Arnold Schwarzenegger is just plain charming in all his comedies. Check out "Junior", "Twins", "Jingle All the Way" (less so), and, maybe best of all, "Kindergarten Cop". The man has serious comic chops! This was HIS role. And he did it perfectly. His dazed recital to his torturer of, step by step, how he was going to kill said torturer is worth the price of admission all by itself. So is his admonition to a horse which let him down ("What were you thinking?"). There are some brilliant comedy deliveries here, and they tell me comedy is the hardest thing of all.

Jamie Lee Curtis has never been better, never sexier, than she is here. Watch her odyssey from an ignorant housewife to a competent help-meet to a master spy. She pulls it off hilariously and totally believably.

My biggest surprise was Tom Arnold. Until I saw this, I thought he was Rosanne Barr's half-wit ex-husband who had used her celebrity to find his fifteen minutes of fame. But his performance here is STELLAR! Arnold and Jamie Lee are delightful, but the real sparkle in this comes largely from Tom. The biggest laughs in this movie are his. He takes good lines and delivers them to perfection.

As for the plot: okay, so it's totally unbelievable. It's an Arnold Schwarzenegger action movie. What do you expect? A nuclear explosion killed "Predator" and Arnold came striding out, sweat-soaked and filthy, but alive. Verisimilitude? What's that? And who cares? He's sliding down a snow-covered slope, on his back, firing his pistol as he goes. Yeah, right!

Remember "Hasta la vista, Baby"? Watch for "You're fired." Every bit as good.

Are you looking for some serious fun, a wonderful distraction from reality? It doesn't get better than this!

Robert Downey Jr. is one of the greatest actors out there. Watching his "Chaplin" rivals the feeling I had watching Dustin Hoffman's "Rain Man"--for the first few moments, I was marveling, "Dustin is doing some amazing work!" Then, for the rest of the movie, I totally forgot it was Dustin.

I made that mental transfer even faster with "Chaplin". It is no exaggeration to say "Robert Downey IS Chaplin." He totally inhabits the part. He absolutely earned his Best Actor Oscar nomination.

(By the way, Diane Lane IS Paulette Goddard, and Dan Aykroyd IS Mack Sennett. Diane is one of my favorite actresses of all time--when her name is attached to a movie, I know it deserves my serious consideration. As for Mr. Aykroyd, I think him one of the most underrated of talents. He can do it all. I've never seen a poor performance from him.)

Sadly, though, this is not a great movie. It did not garner a "Best Screenplay" nomination. It did not deserve one. Rather than a coherent movie, it is episodic. Unlike "Gandhi", which brilliantly tells one story, "Chaplin" tells several. It has no single theme to propel the story, beyond one man's ambition and drive. In short, it is a wonderful showcase, a series of wonderful showcases, for a brilliant actor's talent.

I consider myself a genius at finding problems. But usually I can't find the answer with two hands and a roadmap. I'm afraid there may have been no better way to make this movie.

To summarize: "Chaplin" is so very much worth watching, and re-watching. It's a movie I think serious movie lovers should buy and watch over and again.

I own "Lawrence of Arabia", "Doctor Zhivago", and "Gandhi", three great epics. Something deep in my mind insists that "Chaplin" should have, and could have, been sat on the shelf with them. It doesn't. It's a very good movie that misses greatness.

Superman is the reason I wanted to learn to read when I was a child. I just didn't want to have to wait for adults to find the time and the patience to read the comic books to me. I have loved Superman since the early 60's.

The problem is he's too perfect. He becomes boring! DC tried to get around it by concentrating on villains, or on his friends, or on preserving his Secret Identity (You almost have to capitalize that term). Eventually they just started over and recreated him, recast him, with weaknesses and flaws. But, like all the great characters of literature, Superman tends to write himself. And he grows back to omnipotence and invulnerability and to being boring! Deborah Joy Levine did a brilliant recasting. It was the first time, to my knowledge, that Clark's parents were still alive when he started his Metropolis career. And Eddie Jones and K Callan played the Kents delightfully! They were one of the great high points of the series.

Lane Smith created a Perry White who beat John Hamilton's, from the 1950's TV series, and Jackie Cooper's, from the 1970's movie series, all to pieces! Tracy Scoggins is hard not to ogle, but the character of Cat, I thought, was a mistake, and I was pleased to not to see her name in the credits the second season. Changing Jimmy Olson's in midstream wasn't so good an idea. Justin Whalen was no better at it then Michael Landes, and no worse.

The partnership of Dean Cain and Teri Hatcher crackled like the pairing of Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell in "His Girl Friday". Okay, not that much crackle, but crackle nonetheless. Dean Cain's Clark was human, fallible, mischievous, and fun. Teri Hatcher was, and is, one of my favorite actresses of all time. They "had chemistry". Did anyone ever NOT have chemistry with Teri Hatcher? But Cain's Clark was a wonderful, approachable character. And Teri Hatcher created a Lois we could love, reproach, laugh at, laugh with.

Too bad they couldn't keep it up. They couldn't keep the sexual tension going and keep the couple apart. As usually happens (David Addison and Maddie Hayes in "Moonlighting"), when the couple finally come together, the show comes apart.

I hoped, and sometimes I thought, they would make it work! They gave it a valiant effort. As much as I loved Teri Hatcher, and as much as I loved the series, I didn't watch the fourth season. They lost me. They lost everybody. They were on too long.

I hope nobody considers this a slam to the series' creators. They did brilliantly! They made it work in ways no one had envisioned before, and for three good seasons, if they were diminishing as they went on. They lapsed into silliness too much. They played it too much for laughs as time went on. It's so easy to point out where things went wrong. But they deserve a great deal of praise for all the wonderful things they did so wonderfully right. Every time I see the show rerunning somewhere, I watch or set things to record. I laugh and I love again.

I loved "Lois & Clark". I mourned its ending. Good job, all!

I fell in love with Anne Jackson in this movie--neurotic, insecure, wise and wonderful. She comes to meet the Movie Star, played by Walter Matthau, she touches through his celebrity to his humanity, and he finds something like real love. The movie is sexy, witty, wise, and enjoyable.

Another reviewer complains that nothing happens. Why should something happen? Do I take it my fellow review needs explosions and sex? Why can't a movie just show us what is without changing anything? Why can't a movie be about a middle-aged woman coming to know that not only is there nothing wrong with being a middle-aged housewife, but there is something absolutely wonderful about being a middle-aged housewife! Sorry, no nudity, no sex, no murders, no explosions, no CG, no FX. Just some wonderful acting and interacting, some great lines, some true wit, some real wisdom. I commend wisdom to all viewers. It's out there, it's worth finding! Watch this movie.

Narnia has been the site of mini-vacations I've taken for nearly 40 years. I never say "I'm reading The Chronicles"; I say, "I'm taking a mini-vacation in Narnia." I do the same thing at least once a year in Middle Earth, and, every few years, in Thomas Covenant's The Land. I have read all seven of these books to my daughter. I know these books intimately.

I told my daughter that I couldn't imagine a movie of The Dawn Treader. The book is not the unified novel the other six are. It is several stories rather loosely connected by the sea voyage. How do you make a movie out of that? By telling the story better than the original author, that's how! The movie begins with the younger brother Edmund trying to overcome his sense of inferiority to his brother, Narnia's High King Peter, by enlisting in the Army. It goes to the younger sister Lucy longingly looking at her face in the mirror, wishing she were as beautiful as her older sister Susan, well setting us up for what is to come. No such foreshadowing exists in the novel.

At the Lone Islands, the mist that kidnaps unsold slaves is not from the novel at all, nor from anything I have read in C. S. Lewis. But it forms the framework for a unified story.

From their first encounter, Reepicheep generously undertakes the correction and rehabilitation of Eustace, which is an unexpected side-effect of his Narnian adventures in the novel. In the novel, Reepicheep cares only for his honor, and only later shows kindness to Eustace.

The Lone Islands adventures, the Island of the Dufflpuds, Ramandu's Island, the Dark Island are rearranged, condensed, reinterpreted, changed, transformed into a fine single story. The screenwriters have outdone C. S. Lewis as a storyteller in this case.

I love C. S. Lewis. Sometimes, jokingly, I refer to him as St. Clive. But I don't think it's blasphemous to say somebody has found a way to tell his story better than he did. I am impressed, and I recommend this movie most highly.

The most terrifying bad guys in the world are not raving maniacs. They are not psychos. They are cold, calm, intelligent, brilliant killers. Anthony Hopkins' Hannibal Lecter. Next to him in my mind stands Bruce Willis in the title role in "The Jackal". What happened to David Addison? Where is the Jersey Goofball? If this guy wants you dead, you're going to be dead. He is in no hurry. He does his homework. He has a backup plan, and a plan C, and a plan D. And he thinks on his feet. And he can change his appearance in seconds. He blends in. He is a great actor--he BECOMES who he wants you to think he is--charming, obnoxious, smooth, bungling, whatever the occasion requires.

Watch him win the shootout with the FBI agent toward the end! She lies, writhing in pain, bleeding copiously. The killer strolls over: "Oh! that has got to hurt! The dark blood shows you've been shot through the liver. Take your hand and push it in hard right HERE and you can prolong your life maybe 20 minutes. Or don't, and your pain will end sooner." Have I said enough? Watch this movie! Get ready for chills. Richard Gere is excellent. Sidney Poitier, as always, excellent! But as for the actor in the title role, Who are you, and what have you done with Richard Gere?

An amazing morality tale! An elite squad or cops, with a license to kill, instructed to keep the city cleaned up, encounters a federal agencies, acting as if they had a license to kill.

Watching the period costumes actually gave me a nostalgia for the time. I think we've lost something of style and class since men don't wear coats, ties, and hats everywhere. Watching the characterizations made me nostalgic for the one-dimensional police we used to see in TV and movies.

But wait! What if the hero has feet of clay? What if he has slept around on his wife and there is movie footage of it? What if his ex-girlfriend turns up dead?

Most important, who is the good guy in this movie? What if there isn't one? What if they're ALL bad guys? What if some of the bad guys just arouse more of our sympathy than others? I'm amazed there weren't a few award nominations for this movie. Not the greatest, but powerful, thought-provoking, well thought out, well written, well done!