shrine-2

"Waiting for Exhale" was a marvelous title to give a book about women (in this case, black women) waiting for the right man to mosy on their way, but it didn't seem to touch on anything that white women haven't been encountering in much the same way. This is probably what made it a best seller--the common ground women from different races tread in search of love and happiness. It's still the same for women from generations past, waiting to get got, hoping and, more than not, settling for something less than the dream. The young black college girls in the new movie "Love Song" seem to be suffering some of the same problem. One of them has no boyfriend; the second contends with the good sex and black-activist provocations of her lover; and the third has a fairy-princess future mapped out for her. Camille Livingston (singer Monica Arnold) doesn't know when she's got a good thing, but it's just not her thing. She wants to do what makes her parents happy--if only it made her just as happy. And it doesn't. She doesn't want to follow in the footsteps of her physician father; social work with inner-city girls from broken families is more to her liking. She has a med-student boyfriend who models himself after her father, but who doesn't really understand her needs or aspirations. And she doesn't have the courage to be honest with any of them about where she wants to go in her life.

It's the common problem of children who have been doted over too much. They don't feel they have any say in the matter of their lives when they reach adulthood, because their parents are too busy choosing one for them. And they become miserably obliging appendages of Mom and Dad, living and breathing dutifully for Poppy and Mommy's smiles and approbation. I guess the fact that black people can indulge themselves with this age-old theme may seem encouraging, but I don't think "Love Song" brings anything fresh to the formula. Director Julie Dash is too evenhanded about the romance when a dirty white-boy mechanic steps into the fray, and touches things in Camille that no one has before. You'd like it to fly, but Dash pretty much keeps it in the hangar. The dirty white boy washes up for his blues band sessions with top musicians in the New Orleans area. Christian Kane as Billy Ryan lets the fire in his eyes and singing (I'd swear it was Richard Marx standing in for him.) provide the necessary heat and momentum to move the story along. He plays Billy's interest in Camille with restraint and shrewdness. He's courtly, attentive, and available--like a paid escort. Not that I have anything against manners, deliberation, or cleaning up, but, in spirit, this movie comes across as a tentative, pasteurized version of "The Bodyguard." (And that movie was pretty tentative and sanitized itself.) I'm not sure it really has all that much passion for interracial interaction. It likes flirting with the idea as if it suspected that racial separatists were right, like the title of the movie should be "Flirting With Disaster."

I don't know how well black-and-white couples do when compared with same-race matches, but being of mixed racial background myself, I'd like to think they have a future. But "Love Song" is much too unsure of where it's going. What it needs is a healthy dose of raw courage and audacity about the subject, when what we get are the same juvenile MTV platitudes about following your heart. Maybe that's why Monica sings the closing song at such a low register. Perhaps she doesn't want anyone to notice that she doesn't believe the story's message for a second.

Did anyone watching this movie wonder if President McKinley got assassinated, because of his secret attempt to unmask one of his confidantes as the kingpin of a crime syndicate? It's a question that was left unexplored here, because, I take it, Americans of the thirties never saw the event as anything but the act of a lone fanatic instead of as a conspiracy. After all, audiences were still recovering from the aftermath of a Depression, and the movies of the time were more concerned with stamping out the Little Caesars and Duke Santees of the day than uncovering political corruption. Allan Rivkin ("The Farmer's Daughter") wrote an interesting story about a naval officer (Robert Taylor) who, in secret correspondence with McKinley, uncovers the linchpin behind a wave of bank robberies in the upper Midwest centered in, of all places, St. Paul, Minnesota. The screenplay gets sanctimonious in the hands of Lamar Trotti, and the script did not inspire William Seiter to more imaginative heights. Brian Donlevy plays the crime boss with his usual menace, while Barbara Stanwyck (of all people) as his half-sister is made to sing (She's barely on-key, like Marlene Dietrich in "The Blue Angel.") and wear big, floppy hats--even in her stage act. The only one I've ever seen on screen who could pull off wearing headgear like these is Mae West, and she was at least in on the joke. Stanwyck, on the other hand, is forced to be unswervingly sincere throughout. Her character Lil and the officer idle on Lake Como and get serious about each other, much to the dismay of Victor MacLaglen who's Donlevy's sidekick, prone to playing practical jokes, and thinks he has it in with her. The acting is uniformly bad; I guess Stanwyck and Taylor were too much in love at the time to care. The story deserved better than this. A secret only you and the President share you would think should take precedence over run-of-the mill movie romance. Unless it involves a cigar and a stained dress...

Gregory Ratoff's idea of a Parisian restauranteur with debts that drive his bookkeeper to thoughts of suicide became a vehicle for rising star Tyrone Power. He's handed what can be coyly referred to as an ingenue role (the kind that does not demand much more than standing straight and looking pretty), more specifically, an American dilettante with scarcely any money to live on and no way to get home. Owing a rather tidy sum to the restaurant owner (played by wily Adolphe Menjou), he is blackmailed into passing himself off as Russian royalty to charm a Yankee heiress. And in walks the breathtaking Loretta Young under a white lace mantilla, aware from the start that he's a fake, and working her own little scheme to land him. Young is as assured as Katharine Hepburn was in "Holiday," although you get the feeling, when she's throwing fits and tossing heavy objects at her millionaire father (Charles Winninger), the people in charge wanted to invest her performance with a little of the spirit of Carole Lombard. It's all over Tyrone Power, and considering how dapper he looks in his tie and tails (His hair has the high-gloss, Art-Deco sheen of a baby grand piano.), who could blame her? There's a funny sequence in a haberdashery with his accent waxing and waning like the phases of the moon. It's blithe, and loony, and lovely all at once, and ends with Ratoff (as the real Cossack) spouting indignantly at Power's pitiful imposture. Duplicity abounds, and everyone is wise to it including Helen Westley as Winninger's canny sister whom the mock Russian aristocrat at one point coyly slips a bodice boutonniere.

You have to have a gift for the kind of cocksure buffoonery that's unleashed in "Zorro, the Gay Blade." But you also have to have a special kind of gift to enjoy how wild and cockeyed it can be. Hal Dresner and the rest of the writing team let loose with every conceivable bit of absurdity surrounding the Zorro legend, and succeeded in giving what looks to be George Hamilton's most engaging work. It was Hamilton's talk show with his ex-wife Alana that made me trust his essential good will. He may have been a cheating, good-time charlie to Alana, but it's just this willingness to let her at him over his own personal foibles that won me over. It's there in spades in "Zorro the Gay Blade." Hamilton's not afraid to go all out, playing the fool. He grins, and you can't help but grin back. His tan may be legendary, but it's that blinding-pearl-white smile that equals it. It's what carries his performance; I haven't seen a smirk this sardonic, since John William Sublett flashed his in the number "Shine" from "The Cabin In The Sky." And Hamilton's mugging and playfulness is as masterful as Cary Grant's was in "Gunga Din." It isn't only talented actresses who get wasted in Hollywood. Hamilton is an example of the actors who watched opportunities dry up, their best years flit away, and obscurity meet them head-on in their old age. It was nice seeing him on the Halloween edition of "Talk Soup;" the face may be a little jowly, and his hair grayer, but that tan is still there, and so is that trademark wantonness. I hope it never dies.

It would not have been very good for Hamilton to be playing at the height of his comic talents without a supporting cast meeting him jab for jab. There are some who think Ron Leibman's performance is too much, but I'm not among them. Leibman knew he would have to chew a lot of scenery to make the humor built into his role work; it takes a very astute actor to know when overacting, overdoing is the right pitch at which to carry a scene or a part. And I don't think Leibman ever misjudges the moment. I can remember myself enthralled over Nehemiah Persoff's El Presidente on one episode of "Gilligan's Island," and Leibman's performance matches it, accent for accent, outburst for outburst. It'll be a long time before I forget either.

I've always thought Brenda Vaccaro a very funny actress. It's hard to find actresses whose vibe puts you in a happy mood. She's always reminded me of a primmer Susan Tyrell with her button eyes, sharp profile (the prim part), and extra husky voice (the Tyrell part). As the Alcalde's wife, Vaccaro has some smart lines, and you wish director Peter Medak had let her go as far as Leibman had in his role. And she seems wrong for the part that requires her to be vain, self-absorbed, and sex-starved. With Vaccaro, you get the feeling that the woman she plays would be aware of how empty her existence was; how to resolve her sexual frustrations (She's accorded her husband's favor twelve times a year; not once every month, but twelve times in one night, and then nothing for the rest of the year.); how to pool her resources and become a foxy champion of the downtrodden herself.

The movie is full of little surprises from the gap in Lauren Hutton's front teeth (It's like an emblem of the absurdity this movie loves.) to Donovan Scott's shaggy-dog costume (or was he a bear?) to Hamilton's alter-ego, Don Diego's brother Ramon who throws off his Spanish heritage for a freer, more suitable, more "English" estate as Bunny Wiglesworth (A name with a built-in come-on, if ever there were one). The fact that Ramon is better at wielding a whip than a sword points to how knowing the writers are; it's things like this that make you beam at what Dresner and Bob Randall and others had cooked up. Their efforts returned the word "gay" to what it used to mean, and gave its new meaning, well, new meaning. It's undiluted joviality, and even that doesn't cover it.

The spirit of the pristine countryside out of which Paul Haggis' contemporary vision of the stalwart Mountie emerges was summoned to an unlikely place--downtown Chicago--and from it, "Due South" was born. My cynical side gave in to the sense of snow and suggestion of rarefied air, and the crisp figure of Paul Gross against them, as the character he plays--Constable Benton Fraser--greets the squalor and disorder of the big city with uncommon graciousness. Haggis must have intuited this gallantry would soon trigger the gag reflex of people like me, and mercifully introduced a comic turn, so his conception wouldn't turn insufferably "noble." Enter David Marciano as Chicago detective Ray Vecchio, and this vehicle burns rubber. You don't mind Haggis turning your disbelief on its head with Ray around. He's the lever that balances our doubts against the heroics that ensue. That is to say, if Ray doesn't mind being the butt of Haggis' jokes, why should we? And the laughs make the unwelcome moral at the end of each episode stick in a way it wouldn't with a graver approach.

I'm a sucker for themes where fathers try to redeem themselves in the eyes of their children, but if it's mawkish, I head for the remote control. There are at least two episodes like these that I can remember, both handled well. The one with the ex-con (and his partners-in-crime) soaked in gasoline contemplating suicide with a lit match in his hand, so his son can be set for life with the booty he's collected made my heart stop. The way Fraser talks him out of it had me swallowing hard. It was spellbinding.

I regret this series leaving the air. Gross and Marciano make for smashing buddy-buddy interplay--and I usually hate this kind of stuff. But Haggis turned me around, and had me feeling that good things were at stake, that with every day lay an opportunity to save it, that there was something to this zeal for justice and pursuit of love and self-respect, that when Haggis headed south, he was really aiming for Heaven. "Due South" was my favorite TV series from the 90's.

The dead spots and picture-postcard superficiality of "Out of Africa" just about buried any interest I might have had to read Isak Dinesen. So when my brother bought me "Babette's Feast," and knowing it was based on a Dinesen story, I didn't exactly race to the VCR. But as the titles rolled, it became clear that this was no ordinary movie. Jutland (where it's set) is not Africa; the chill mist that collects on the camera shots is not inviting. The cold, forbidding sea; the heavy, gray clouds; the pale, icy green cliffs--translate to hardships that show on the faces over which director Gabriel Axel draws the curtain. The craggiest is Bodil Kjer's as Philippa; amid the myriad merits of this movie, the most memorable is that face. It stands like a map laying before us the cherished wonder of her minister father's apostolate; like a maze of long-overlooked fjords where the complications of her congregation's perseverance and commitment hang like gleaming escutcheons.

I gather it's Dinesen's point how the world is drawn inexplicably to Christian dedication, when Philippa is rejected by her only serious suitor (because he fears he'll never measure up to the rules and rigors of her small religious clique), and he returns to find her mistress of whom he regards as the greatest chef on the continent. I figure it's also her point that Christ answers the doubts and regrets of those who give up worldly success (Philippa's sister Martina rebuffs efforts by a visiting baritone (Jean-Philippe Lafont whose jolliness creates an uplifting counterpoint to the sparsity of spirit that surrounds his discovery) to turn her into an opera star; the title character leaves France and an enviable reputation and seeks sanctuary as the servant of two spinster sisters) to pursue artistic triumphs for only God and those closest to Him to witness. But it's Axel who weaves the asperity of these people's lives with the richness of Martina's voice and Babette Hersant's table and effects a sumptuousness you'd never expect from a movie about sacrifice, faith, and religious conviction.

What sets this movie apart from other religious movies is its sly humor. "Babette's Feast," that is, the banquet itself--a posthumous commemoration of the minister's 100th birthday--is a beautifully orchestrated clash of sensibilities that delivers comic moments by an ensemble of actors that are unparalleled in their subtlety. It's just this deft comedy that enriches the solemn sentiments at closing. Together they do something pious movies seldom do. They leave a believer tremulously hopeful and unexpectedly resolute and humbled.

William Dear has a gift for quaint humor. In "Harry and the Hendersons" he shaped the scenes as if he were seeing them through a convex lens. He seemed to be delighting in the glimmers of absurdity he brought out in the characters. Of course, with the considerable talents of leads John Lithgow and Melinda Dillon at his disposal, it was hard not to pull off the capricious meeting of Bigfoot and friends.

With "If Looks Could Kill," he faces the problem of matching this lightness of touch and tone (the mark of something mature and adult) with the sentiments of teen rock-loving audiences. These kind of fans take no prisoners. It's either all or nothing with them, like a religion, even if their ideals don't seem much different from garden-variety churchgoers. The humor that is likely to come out of this is more often darkly self-deprecating, unremittingly desperate, and garishly self-immolating or self-pitying. Hardly fertile ground for lighthearted laughs.

Plus the point of this movie is as part encouragement and part reprimand for highschoolers who have not taken study (in this case, French class) seriously enough. Dear and crew succeed at poking fun at the mindatory tone of the script embodied by the outraged father (Gerry Mendecino) but fail with the vigilant French teacher (Robin Bartlett's Mrs. Grober comes across like fingernails on a blackboard.) The hero (Richard Grieco) runs bemused (He's mistaken for a renowned secret agent.) through unexpected adventures, only one of which has anything to do with speaking French, which only reinforces the incorrigible's assertion that learning a foreign language is a waste of time.

The movie is a little long on espionage gadgetry, and short on erudition. It might as well be saying "Be a spy; have fun. Be bilingual; so what?" As the antagonists Augustus Steranko and Ilsa Grunt, Roger Rees and Linda Hunt deliver their lines with enough skill and style that the moral of the movie should be "Forget French; amuse yourself with English!" Unfortunately, they are overwhelmed by the violence the script requires of them. We are forced to look back on its cheap sentiment for its mock hero and cherub-faced heroine (Gabrielle Anwar). But again the girl speaks English, so who needs French?

If this movie is a failure at what it sets out to accomplish, what's left of it--the plans of a power-hungry madman to rule a unified Europe uncovered and foiled--zips past us without too much pain, and the casting of Richard Grieco as the dupe who learns his lesson just in time feels right. His pointed eyebrows add just the right touch of perversity to a movie that revels in its rebel pose. With Michael Sidberry, Geraldine James, and as Anwar's father, a nod to real rock heroes, Roger Daltrey.

Diana Rigg made a peerlessly suave secret agent. For the 60's British TV series "The Avengers," she never won a single Emmy (They always went to Martin Landau's wife-at-the-time Barbara Bain for "Mission Impossible.), but there was no one who matched the simmering confidence and shimmering elegance of Mrs. Emma Peel. No matter what the challenge put before her, Rigg remained unshaken.

"In This House of Brede" posed a much different challenge than the ones to which Rigg was accustomed: doffing the miniskirts and knee-length boots and playing a woman who had lost both husband and daughter and decides to leave her successes in the workplace for life as a Benedictine nun. Her Dame Philippa is well-schooled (She already knows Latin before entering the convent.); experienced in the business world (So she intimidates Dame Agnes (Pamela Brown), one of the senior nuns who feels her advanced age poses a serious problem at being settled in the cloister.), and very determined (although she has barely recovered from the loss of her daughter in a car accident). The superior of Brede who encouraged Philippa to consider religious life dies as she enters the postulancy. She's lucky, however, that the congregation has the good sense to elect a kind, fair-minded woman (Gwen Watford) to lead them, and help Philippa through the most trying times of her novitiate. It's the challenge to form a loving, but disinterested life at Brede that threatens to capsize Philippa's hard-earned equanimity, when a beautiful, young prospect (Judy Bowker who was equally as captivating in "The Shooting Party") arrives. Memories of her daughter well up to recall feelings she thought she had put behind her years ago.

It's easy to become impatient with this movie's prudence; the in-fighting and petulance among the nuns are dispelled without much fuss. "In This House of Brede" never makes much of these women's triumphs. To find any dramatic tension, you need to look to Rigg's pale, drawn face or Brown's wide, but tired and stricken eyes. Yet the combination of this even mindedness and struggle is simultaneously calming and tonic. The gaggle of giggling novices Dame Philippa ushers back to their native Japan bring a sense of renewed hope to the order. Even Dame Agnes with her rankled nerves, and hurt feelings, and petty jealousies finds peace in the end. It gives the rest of us cause for celebration: that, with God's help, any of us can conquer ourselves--and, we hope, as these women do--elegantly.

This Oscar-laden movie version of Baroness Karen Blixen's account of her experiences running a plantation in Kenya should have set off some interest to read her Isak Dinesen books, but it left me uninterested. As a romance, "Out of Africa" is staid and conventional. The chemistry that might have sparked the commonplace flirtatiousness of its star Meryl Streep and have transformed it into full-blown movie rapture over love interest Robert Redford never materialized. Streep--the darling of Hollywood's nobility (considered by too many the best actress working at the time)--failed to bring Blixen to life on the screen, and Redford with his characteristically uninvolved manner pretty much left her to play to herself. (His was maybe the most sensitively rendered impersonation of set furniture anyone could hope for.) And to add insult to apathy, the writer Kurt Luedtke (He took home Oscar, too.) picks at the least interesting aspects of her stay in the dark continent. He skirts issues that might have fleshed Blixen out as a woman of her time and temperament. You never get the feeling that he has cracked the surface of Blixen's life, her triumphs and failures, her Christian beliefs, her commitment--albeit bordering on a kind of rich-white-woman condescension--to the natives she employed. And, considering that this is the era when women as artists are coming into their own and are receiving the recognition denied them in the past, it's appalling how little of the "artist" Blixen we get to know here.

What we get are David Watkin's pretty pictures which, if I venture to guess where Blixen would have stood on the matter, would be out of sync with how she felt about Africa. It should have meant more to her than wide-open spaces and animals on the run as helicopters fly overhead. The only people who don't disgrace themselves in the movie are the black actors, and you wish there was less of Streep and Redford and Klaus Maria Brandauer (as her philandering husband), and more of them.

Pouty Brigitte Bardot in the movie that made her an international star. Is it me or does her nubile orphan Juliette bear the basic "accoutrements" of those legendary tragediennes of 19th century English literature like Tess of the D'Urbervilles or Eustacia Wye? It might explain Juliette's last name: Hardy. Except "And God Created Woman" is set in St. Tropez and is not a tragedy. Flat out, it's a middle-aged Frenchman's chic, paternalistic vision of the irrepressible nymphet. By paternalistic, I mean we know more about what the men in her life think about her than what she thinks about them or herself. Curt Jurgens' character (who, I think, stands in for director Roger Vadim) sizes her up quickly, and in the end, blows town with Christian Marquand who plays Antoine, the man she really wants. He's got her number; to him, she's the type who refuses to be tamed, who uses her obvious "gifts" to get what she wants, who's easily bored and distracted, and a slave to her whims. To Antoine, she is an incorrigible wanton; he has no faith that she'll change. But Antoine has his way with her (He figures it's what she wants, and it is), abuses her, and tries to wise up his younger brother (Jean-Louis Trintignant) who had married her. By chic, I mean Vadim always knew how to cast attractive people in his movies. Bardot isn't the only "hotty" here; Marquand matches her heat, watt for watt, and with less effort. There's a jazzy hipness to their look for which few directors besides Vadim had a talent. Still, when Juliette is rejected and runs back to her trusting husband, the movie fades from memory, and the last shot in the picture (of the street where she lives) recalls the landscapes Cezanne abstracted into modern art oblivion.

I prefer the Pedro Almodovar of "Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown" over the Almodovar of "The Flower of My Secret" or his Oscar-winning "All About My Mother." I miss the madcap, wiggy, inventive way he hits his marks. He did it with verve and panache; and he did it blessedly fast. You weren't forced to take too much of what was going on seriously, and yet no one would have been able to pry me from my seat. He made it look like les mujeres were calculating their next move on the spot, and this gave "Women on the Verge..." a kind of highwire-act suspense. The tension he created left me watching breathlessly.

Almodovar has discarded this wonderful side of himself for something more profound, and, unfortunately, more conventional. That doesn't mean there is precious nothing to take home with you: the depth of Marisa Paredes' grief (Here she plays a revered actress named Huma Rojo.) in "The Flower...;" and the haunting face of Eloy Azorin in this one. Even if you're not always sure where the story will lead you, you feel as though you're traipsing through emotional ground Ingmar Bergman had dredged up far too many times to suit even his most ardent fans.

When you're forced as you are in "All About My Mother" to look headlong at Manuela (Cecilia Roth), a nurse who has raised her only son (Azorin) who had been fathered by a man (Toni Canto) who abandons them after deciding getting breasts could only add to his appeal, it's hard to muster sympathy for the rest of the sexually-disfranchised in this movie--and this includes the pregnant nun Rosa (Penelope Cruz). Pity or empathy isn't exactly Almodovar's point, I'm sure; "All About My Mother" takes for granted the prerogatives of the transgender world to do as they please with their bodies and their lives and see as benighted people like Rosa's mother (Rosa Maria Sarda) who cannot touch her own grandchild because he's HIV-positive. (I don't think I'd be that fidgety over the situation if confronted with it, but I'm not sure I blame the woman either.)

When Manuela's mammary-man-friend Agrado (Antonia San Juan) tries salvaging what is left of a presentation of "A Streetcar Named Desire," the movie feels like it's grinding to a halt, and the moment strikes me as condescending. (I think the critic Molly Haskell's notion that characters like Blanche Du Bois or Margo Channing are really figments of a transgender wish-fulfillment is equally as patronizing. You could prop Haskell's impressions on a book shelf right next to Mother Rosa's fears.)

The hearts and flowers that we get in the end don't root very deep; neither does the moralizing. The moral here could be "When you die, make sure the mortician gets the make-up right for your funeral." Otherwise, it would be the same politically correct platitudes we get on the E Channel. The only thing that runs counter to the shallow sentiments is the tenderness which Cecilia Roth brings to the fray. She should have been nominated for an Oscar.

Azorin's is not the only unforgettable face. Fernando Fernan Gomez ("Belle Epoque") who plays Sister Rosa's father holds the camera in the few moments he's on screen. Spain would look to have resurrected their own Ralph Richardson. I needed to clear my eyes to make sure it wasn't him. The great ones never really die.

Blacklisted writer Michael Gordon returned to Hollywood to direct such harmless diversions as this one about four bored middle-class commuters who dream of leaving their humdrum existences and revisiting their idea of a dream bachelor pad, replete with wet bar, long sofa, fantastic view, and what may be the most voluptuous idea of a mistress the Hollywood of the sixties had to offer--a sociology student doing her thesis on the sex life of the suburban male played by Kim Novak. This movie would be a drag without her. She takes her place among the best American movie sex symbol acts of that time: Gina Lollobrigida in "Come September"; Tuesday Weld in "Soldier in the Rain"; Sue Lyon in "Lolita"; Virna Lisi in "How to Murder Your Wife." It was a good year for Novak--1962. Richard Quine ("Operation Mad Ball") directed her opposite Jack Lemmon in what I think is her funniest and most mysterious performance as "The Notorious Landlady." Her best moments on screen have always been the ones where she played smart women, and Cathy and Carlyle Hardwicke are two of the smartest she's ever played.

I long to see the English star, Jessie Matthews, in one of the musicals she made during the thirties. The director of the movie version of A.J. Cronin's "The Green Years"--Victor Saville--had the good fortune to direct her quite a few of them. I hear they were bright and sparkling and urbane, and a joy to watch. I wish I could say the same about "The Green Years" which is unduly shadowy. It chronicles the life of a Scottish boy (the pouty-lipped, fluffy-haired Dean Stockwell) who must endure maybe the most emotionally-pinched father in the history of movies (Hume Cronyn). He survives much of the alienation of affection in his childhood with the help of his large-spirited uncle (Charles Coburn) who always has the good sense to give the boy a helping hand with anything he wanted. He turns into Tom Drake (He was "The Boy Next Door" in "Meet Me in St. Louis.") who is a good physical match to Cronyn. He dreams of a vocation in the sciences, and it's the uncle that comes to his aid again. Coburn is a blessing here, because the only moments in the movie that do not owe their life to him are a stiff musical number with Beverly Tyler at the heart of it that is like a placard proclaiming Catholic purity and righteousness, and an outdoor scene with the usual assortment of kilts, tam-o-shanters, sporrans, and burly log-tossers. It's about then that you might think about heading for the nearest exit. To make your next bag-piping lesson, I'd think.

Is the scenarist the same Robert Ardrey who wrote "The Territorial Imperative?" I'm not sure, but it might explain the father's standoffishness and the barrel-chested log-tossers.

Margaret Sullavan and James Stewart always brought out the best in each other. Whether he was a soldier in the big city and she a jaded Broadway star as in "The Shopworn Angel" or squabbling Hungarian store clerks as in "The Shop Around The Corner," they always made a high time of things on screen. But in "The Mortal Storm" the high time turns uncomfortably noble as they are thrown to the maelstrom of social events that lead to the Nazi takeover of Germany. Stewart has the reserves (the fiery temperament he displayed in boundless measure in "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington) to hold his head above the rising tide of anti-Nazi indignation in this movie. He never becomes boring in choosing the right side. But Sullavan is lost, trying to find the flame she needs to ignite her character. The only time she really catches your eye is when her hair is whipping in the wind as the two of them ski through the Alps. She's shackled to what must be the most dutiful dope of a boyfriend (Robert Young), and director Frank Borzage is at odds with himself on how to reproduce the same mystery around her that he managed in "Three Comrades." And the persecution of the Jewish professor (Frank Morgan in a forgettable role) doesn't stick with you. There's no sting to the injustices. By the time the movie rolls out Bonita Granville (as a child!) the Nazis trick into revealing a secret, it's time to climb a new mountain and ford a new stream.

With a kinder, gentler Robert Stack (My cousin Bonnie used to idolize him on "The Untouchables"); and Maria Ouspenskaya as a "German" aunt whose accent makes me think she came to the mountainside by way of Minsk.

I was a TV addict at a very early age. I lived with my grandparents, and my grandfather and I used to fight over what to watch on his television. He loved westerns; we watched "Cheyenne," and "Wyatt Earp," and "Rifleman," and numerous others during the fifties. I didn't quite share his enthusiasm for these shows, but it was a way to pass the time with him. But after seeing "The West Divide," I know why he loved westerns so. Some may refer to it as a B movie, but I think the B stands for basic. There's something thrilling about its lack of artifice. The sound of fists connecting to flesh doesn't have that ungodly amplification that later, more technically sophisticated examples of the genre had. The sentiment is rarefied like the open air. When the heroine is shot, it's played out plainly and purely; sometimes you can get a stronger emotional effect without a musical score. And the sequence with the runaway team is bracing; I figure the legendary Yakima Canutt stunted in this scene.

And then there is the young John Wayne. I think it is during this period in his career that he proved himself to be the giant star he became. When he dons white buckskin in "The Telegraph Trail," he becomes almost otherworldly. Here he plays a man posing as an outlaw to find the killer of his father. By the time he has set things right, lying supine in his long-lost brother's arms, you understand why so many moviegoers couldn't get enough of him. His entire body in that moment gives way to the scene, and you cherish how tenderly and passionately he's willing to play his part. This movie taps into that well of memories some of us have with family and loved ones, and as Father's Day is tomorrow, it helps remind me what deep, elemental emotion men often feel that these days goes unacknowledged. I certainly wasn't aware of it in those days with my grandfather; but I've gained a new consciousness that has come with my being about his age at the time and watching things I know he'd have loved. Like "The West Divide." It makes you wish they made more westerns like this one.

Doris Day may have been the biggest box-office star at the time, but the hot lights looked like they were taking their toll on her in the 1962 "Jumbo." She seemed more than a bit worn out, especially next to the unbelievably bronzed Stephen Boyd. But there's enough to keep you occupied, even if the material feels dated: the incomparable Jimmy Durante and Martha Raye, and the star--an elephant that matches them for style and show-business savvy. I just wish they did more with the Rodgers and Hart songs--"My Romance" should take off. Here it peters out, and so does your excitement! Bummer!

A great novel MGM's machinery of the thirties brought to the screen, Charles Dickens' "A Tale of Two Cities" will stand the test of time even with this starchy film version as part of its history. What raises this movie above the usual fare Hollywood churned out at the time was the force majeure that Blanche Yurka kicked up as the relentless Madame DeFarge. Director Jack Conway's efforts would have jellied before our eyes without her. When she sets her vengeful sights on the annihilation of those poor Evremondes, a feverish chill passes through everything on the screen, and the wind goes out of this movie's sails by the time that cornstalk of a standby, Edna May Oliver, does her in.

It leaves you with only incidental pleasures--the tremulous approach Isabel Jewell makes to the guillotine; the even more tremulous elocution of Ronald Colman as Sydney Carton (Remember his "It's a far, far better thing I do than I have ever done before."); and glimpses of Lucille LaVerne whom movie buffs might remember in another movie set during the French Revolution--the far superior "Orphans of the Storm."

Moviegoers must be suffering from some kind of pre-millennium fatalistic malaise to mistake "American Beauty" for a work of depth. Written by Alan Ball who produced CBS' "Cybill," this movie shares with the sitcom that contempt for anything outside its own narrow sphere of values. What's worse is this time around Ball tries to pass them off as universal. Its basic pieties are embodied by one Lester Burnham (played way over the top by the sly Kevin Spacey), and we are asked to trust that his newfound "freedom" (Burnham quits his thankless job of 14 years after blackmailing his employer for a year's salary and benefits.) is an example for his control-freak wife (Annette Bening in an embarrassingly overwrought performance) and maybe the rest of us anal-retentives in the audience to follow and quit wallowing in the worship of things and missing the point about the meaning of life. Question is did it ever occur to Ball that there are a lot of us out here who manage to experience the beauty that life has to offer, even when we still sit squirming over where we are going to make the next mortgage or car payment? I don't expect a Hollywood insider like Ball has to worry about that, and Lester Burnham uses blackmail to avoid the money-grubbing trap that's caught the rest of us poor 9-to-5 lunkheads. Is it any wonder that Burnham's daughter (Thora Birch) is mortified by her father's behavior? The movie languishes over his getting wistful over her underage confidante (Mena Suvari) so unabashedly, that the same queasy feeling you had when Woody Allen was eying Mariel Hemingway up and down in "Manhattan" overtakes you all over again.

Why was it necessary that Burnham declare himself spiritually dead, and, hence, poetic justice that someone complete the picture he has of himself? This is the same kind of morbid nonsense some of us had to sit through when Mike Figgis and Nicolas Cage were indulging themselves in "Leaving Las Vegas." Actually, I know why. It's a way of gathering sympathy for the main character and having a made-up tragedy wake up the other characters who despise him to change their minds about him. It's so obviously manipulative and such raging self-pity, I can't believe so many people are buying this stuff.

This is a Dreamworks production which explains the supposedly happy male homosexual meighbors Jim and Jim, but they seem such a shallow depiction of suburban ideals that the goodwill feels like a backhanded compliment. They are just part of the problem that's burning Burnham's hambone. And Chris Cooper whose performance could have been this movie's hallmark is thrown away for an ending that, if gays were really thinking about it, is not just a tired idea but a subtle insult.

It's Wes Bentley's guarded but unflinching gaze that's the real beauty. It surpasses even Ball's video conception of those fleeting moments when life holds you spellbound by its serendipity. Of course, it doesn't hurt to have Conrad Hall behind the lens. The man who capitalized on what most of his peers threw out outdoes even the most fastidious of them with some of the most fluid yet controlled camerawork in a movie released last year. Still, as good as it is, it doesn't take away from the dilapidated yarn this movie is weaving. The story actually diminishes some of the visuals; and he might have garnered an Oscar, but director Sam Mendes didn't notice that he needed to rethink some of the plot and character development and presentation. The camera movements do get a little monotonous. The only thing that didn't need rethinking is the score by Thomas Newman and others which plinks and plunks a seductive chord as it carries us gingerly through the course of the movie. It almost makes you forget that the bloom on "American Beauty" has long fallen off the vine (The moment I noticed it was with Carolyn clipping roses as disinterestedly as Martha Stewart.) and that all you have to look forward to in it, if you reject the death wish lurking underneath it, is abject resignation to, as Lester might put it, our stupid little lives.

If "Get Real" chronicles anything, it is that messed-up jumble of a time that gay men have as teenagers, trying to be true to themselves without giving too much offense to those who abhor them. The mixed-up measures they take to express themselves and give expression to their feelings of desire and adolescent lust, suppressed by community morality and repressed by personal fear and self-hatred, unfolds over the London suburb of Basinbroke where a stick figure of a 16-year-old--Steven Carter--sits in or outside a public bathroom, trying to make contact with someone. He finds it unexpectedly with the big man on the high-school campus who garners immeasurable pleasure from their private meetings, but cannot bear the thought of being outed. The story passes through a grist mill of situations that leave the viewer with the simplistic notion that everything will be fine, if you just have the courage to be yourself with others. If it were that easy, I'm sure Brandon Teena would still be alive today.

Adapted from Patrick Wilde's play "What's wrong with being angry," "Get Real" sends a manifesto to parents and teachers about the supposed pressures they may be putting on their children, gay or otherwise. If you're willing to accept it on this level, the movie functions as an emotional release for all those pent-up gay teenagers who couldn't vent their anger and frustrations at the forces that impose on their burgeoning dreams. But if you try to take it any deeper, then you'd have to consider the internal struggles of John Dixon, the object of Steven's desire, because that is one of the few places in this movie where something is at stake. Johnny (as Steven likes to call him) travels a thornier road, and although Brad Gorton doesn't quite seem up to the challenge, his self-conscious jock does not seem so much a coward in the end as someone saddled with all the trappings of his gentrified upbringing who doesn't want to let go of them. Johnny Boy's smart, but like all teenagers, he's thwarted by desires that defy his good sense.

And that is a shame, because if there ever was reason to give up everything for love, Ben Silverstone would be it. He is the real find in this picture. He's the most elegantly constructed scarecrow to touch the silver screen (Seeing him, Conrad Veidt and "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari" come to mind.), and it's amazing what calm he brings to the center of this movie. Unlike newcomer Gorton, the camera loves Silverstone, and it takes him in as if he were born to be in front of it. If that weren't enough, this young actor (He is about the same age that Steve should be.) has a voice that rivals Jeremy Irons for expressiveness and majesty. Imagine him as Hamlet or Edward II or in a remake of "Brideshead Revisited" and that sultry sound pouring forth in velvety plenitude. Why, it's enough to make you stand up and salute the Queen Mother.

With Stacy Hart as the iridescent Jessica whose dance with Steve is probably the sexiest scene in the entire movie.

The coitus interruptus in "Trick" is coy. At one point, you want Gabriel, a gay would-be musical-meister, to tear into his inconsiderate straight roommate and get him to play fair. But he's tolerant to a fault, and he doesn't really like gay people as a rule, and he doesn't like the bar scene, and he spends a lot of time with his ex-girlfriend (maybe to avoid any contact), and his choice of roommate is just his way of saying "Hands off." He puts up with the impositions, so when he finally finds someone he likes, he can't find any privacy. The entire night with his "trick," Mark, is spent searching for a place, but they never do. What each finds is something better: a sense that they really like each other's company and that the sex is not as important as the companionship they'll enjoy in the long run.

"Trick" doesn't have much to offer beyond this. Christian Campbell is charming, and John Paul Pitoc is sweet, but the movie doesn't have much more to say than that homosexual men have as many insecurities as straight men, and maybe that they are more star-struck than their heterosexual counterparts. The supporting cast make respectable impressions, but the movie never goes beyond being mildly pleasant. Tori Spelling tries too hard to be engaging which means she's mostly annoying. The freshest moments belong to Lorri Bagley as Gabriel's roommate's bare-breasted girlfriend. She has returned from an extended stay in Paris and returns with the intention of becoming a sex therapist, and considering what she is able to do with Gabriel and Mark, I'd say it's not a bad career choice.

In "F/X" Brian Dennehy played a cop with a knack for staying on top of criminals as if he were psychic. His body--stocky, barrel-chested, rock-like--looked like it was made to right injustices. He had the profile of an eagle and the broad face of a bulldog, and he squints with vehement incredulity at anything outside the law. He was impressive.

In a turnabout as serial killer John Wayne Gacy in what could have been the performance of a lifetime, Dennehy uses his probing intelligence and menacing presence at the service of death and perversity. He's the deceiver, seeking sexual pleasure in unlawful ways, while somewhat successfully maintaining a front of decency and respectability. In "To Catch A Killer," he carries himself with the authority that is the mark of the moralist, and we are allowed fleetingly to see how far the reality misses the mark.

If Dennehy falls short here, the fault is with the intent of the movie's makers. They see their work as a kind of primer for law enforcement officials on solving serial homicide. Problem is the movie's reason for being undercuts the reason the movie exists at all, namely, its subject's dark side. Dennehy compromises himself as an actor by using his steely stare to suggest murderous intent and then expecting us to accept externals to convey that he is playing a psychopath. Good psychodrama this does not make, and "To Catch A Killer" remains an only occasionally effective re-creation of already-known facts.

Casting Dennehy is a mistake anyway. What it misses is how innocuous Gacy could look, how harmless he seemed. Could anyone be fooled into believing going home with a leering Dennehy could be safe? Even clown make-up cannot cover this man's ferociousness. And the lure of easy money would give the most money-starved of us pause, I suspect, if it meant getting into a car with Dennehy at the wheel.

Besides, even if someone blind to this risked it, isn't the movie's primary interest in answering the question why men run scared from the idea of death at the hands of a bisexual pederast but embrace the possibility of death under other degrading circumstances? Don't we need to see what we are being asked to hate? The one opportunity we have to do just that is curtailed by police surveillance. It may be in good taste or out of respect for the dead that the filmmakers shy away from what should be the central theme of the movie, but the result is not more understanding but less. Not even incidental questions that come to mind (like why did Gacy keep articles of clothing and other possessions of his victims which any thinking person would recognize as incriminating or why he made his victims suffer when sadists on the whole seem drawn less to inflicting pain than in dominating their subjects) do they bother to address.

Michael Riley plays police chief Joe Kozenczak with honorable restraint, and Martin Julien as Gacy's work supervisor Theo sweats convincingly. Beads of sweat aside, the movie adds up to the mere sum of its parts. Nabbing someone who doesn't have enough sense not to turn his crawlspace into a private gravesite and keep mementos of his conquests for convenient pick-up as forensic evidence, while a psychic (Margot Kidder is not a good choice for this.) is called upon to "psyche out" his weak-willed cohort hardly seems a challenge. It would seem police training is not so much what is needed. More likely, something on the order of providence or dumb luck or both.

The central character of "The Wedding Banquet" looks sullen through almost the entire movie. He knits his brow and ponders as if there were something troubling him to no end. At the very outset, it's quite clear what that is. Wai-Tung is gay, and he hasn't told his Taiwanese parents. He's annoyed with his mother's unwelcome attempts to match him with someone, so she can have what she wants: a grandchild. But he's afraid to tell her or his father why he is not interested. His mixed emotions have no place to go; so they sit on his face, incomplete and unexpressed, except as unresolved anger, much of it at himself. And it's fun to watch as he goes through the motions of pleasing family and lover and acquaintances to take his mind off his troubles.

The script by director Ang Lee, and associates Neil Peng and James Schamus have written a crackerjack story full of things that never have hit the screen before. The wedding banquet itself is full of such insightful details about contemporary Chinese-American life and sentiment that there seems something accomplished that's new to the movies. When the wedding party invades the honeymoon suite, you feel like the writers have a firm grasp on the people they are presenting us, as if they know them, inside and out. I have seen five movies directed by Ang Lee, and this (and maybe his earlier "Pushing Hands") is the only one in which I felt he had a deep understanding of the characters, and for that matter, of human nature and human love.

Filial piety may not be a new thing for the Chinese, and maybe that is why this movie feels rooted, grounded. Wai-Tung who is a successful businessman and landlord commands respect among his colleagues, but when he's with his parents, he's still their little boy. You laugh as this grown man walks with his father, head bowed, keeping exact pace, two steps back, and you realize the secret of the older man's hold on his imitator. Wai-Tung loves his parents, and he knows what they expect. He's ashamed that he doesn't want to fulfill their dreams, that he wants a life of his own, that he didn't turn out as they hoped. But he also cares about his lover Simon, and you know what has drawn them together is that they care about other people. (Simon is a physical therapist who likes lecturing his clients; Wai-Tung tries to appear in charge, but he always seems to be taken advantage of by the people around him.) This concern for others is what draws us to Wai-Tung, and when his parents appear, you know exactly why he's going along with deceiving them.

Winston Chao is handsome and lithe, and he's good at playing a frazzled, bewildered, well-meaning lump. Yet he wouldn't be so likable, if it were not for the propinquity of Mitchell Lichtenstein who clearly has the expressiveness the movie needs. Although the movie comes dangerously close to being one about gay men in love who, in their most private moments, look like the most they do is shake hands, Lichtenstein ("Streamers") manages with the subtlest means to convey a sexual connection. The scene in which Simon presents a cell phone as a gift and carries on a conversation to test it affords Lichtenstein the chance to show what heat he can generate on the screen when he's called to do so. It makes evident how lucky a man Wai-Tung is, and why he'd allow himself to be emotionally torn for so long.

But the most compelling performances here come from Sihung Lung (who played the unwanted father-in-law in "Pushing Hands") and Ah Lei Gua as Mr. and Mrs. Gao. Lung conveys Old-World benevolence that pretty much dictates where this movie goes. He more than fills the shoes of the aging warrior, taking the last few steps that will make his life complete. He grants Mr. Gao a share of dignity his work here rightly deserves. Yet it is Ah Lei Gua who convinces me that she is fully in character. Whether she is bursting into tears over the shabbiness of the civil wedding, or trying to overlook her daughter-in-law's clumsiness in the kitchen, or keeping Simon at a distance when she learns his real position in her son's life, you sense an actress of the highest rank who knows intuitively the character she has been given to play.

With May Chin who, I hear, is very popular in Taiwan, and here carries herself with porcelain elegance. Her Wei-Wei is an enigma, a woman with a penchant for handsome gay men, and the movie is content with leaving her that way. You come away as uneasy about the arrangement she struck with Simon and Wai-Tung as Mrs. Gao is, who exits weeping. When Ang Lee slows down the camera at the end, as Mr. Gao raises his arms to be inspected at the airport gate, the director in spite of himself belies the thought that the old soldier has surrendered to a new enemy--the craziness and the self-indulgence of the next generation. The plangency of that last shot remains with you for a long time.

Bodybuilding had a disreputable allure in the Eisenhower and Kennedy years. Few would admit to its hold on them, but how else could you explain the box-office success of movies like "Hercules Unchained" and subsequent gladiator trash with a fleet of amply-endowed stars like Gordon Scott, Mark Forrest, Dan Vadis, Mickey Hargitay, and Brad Harris bulging flagrantly in front of the camera?

The premiere member of this elite group was a former Mr. Universe--the dark, statuesque Steve Reeves. Before the days when he was sporting a leather loincloth, chained at the wrists, tensing his biceps, and literally bringing the house down, Reeves was introduced for the public's delectation in the 1954 musical "Athena." In it, he plays Ed Perkins, the prize stallion of a stable of physical culturalists groomed by the barrel-chested Louis Calhern--handlebar moustache, bluster and all--as Ulysses Mulvain, a septagenarian who espouses to a neo-Spartan approach to life, replete with vegetarian diet, and plenty of fresh air and exercise. Reeves vies for the affection of the title character, Mulvain's granddaughter (Jane Powell), who, much to the chagrin of the "stars," has eyes for a stuffy, young lawyer (played by the impossibly handsome Edmund Purdom--if there ever was an actor with a silky-milky-white complexion, it's him), himself being primed and tweaked for a U.S. senate seat. Reeves settles for a supporting role in his first major outing on the screen and sits on the sidelines while Powell charts her inevitable course with Purdom glowering at her incessantly. The body beautiful has his big scene with taking the title at a re-creation of the Mr. Universe contest that for insiders must have seemed pretty hokey.

That aside, if you're willing to go with it, "Athena" can be fun--a kind of stilted mixture of numerology, prurient interest, and music--all served up by the not-so-discerning minds of writers William Ludwig ("The Student Prince"), Leonard Spigelgass, and the by-then renowned songwriting team of Hugh Martin and Ralph Blane. Their classic "The Boy Next Door" changes sex with Vic Damone singing it, and their "Love Can Change The Stars" is just syrupy enough for the sweet tooths of hopeless romantics. (My favorite is the spry "I Never Felt Better.") But none of these compares with the grandeur of blazingly blonde Powell's rendition of "Chacun Le Sait" from Donizetti's "La Fille du Regiment." It's full of passion and indignation and fire, and Powell has never achieved so high a note of glory on screen as she has in these few much-too-short minutes.

Also on the sidelines--Debbie Reynolds as Athena's sister Minerva, and, descending from the clouds of Hollywood movie mysticism, Evelyn Varden as Salome Mulvain, grandmother of the nymphs, greeting everyone with something that sounds like "Namari gongo par" and coming out trances every so often to bestow upon her loved ones the will of the stars.

I've been waiting for a superhero movie like this for a long time. "Mystery Men" takes its place among the classic comic-strip spoofs on TV like "Batman" and "Captain Nice" and cartoons like "Underdog" and "Super Chicken." The same spirit lives in all of them: the comic tongue-in-cheek tone; the courage to aim for the heroic in life at the risk of looking ridiculous; the not-so-sure-footed way that these characters manage to prevail over their adversaries. It's the misfired spark of nobility igniting in the weak and the ordinary, and it's wonderful to see it glow so high and bright here.

"Mystery Men" opens on a party at a nursing home. I wish Kinka Usher had had the sense to give more energy and life to the old people in the scene. As it is, it looks like something George Romero might have devised. We need to get the feeling that these old people are as sharp as everyone else, or it feels patronizing. By the time the Red Eyes crash the festivities, you half expect Tom Waits who plays a weapons inventor with a penchant for ladies in their eighties to stand up and shout: "Just what this party needs--a little excitement!" If writer Neil Cuthbert had any sense, he would have had Waits mixing it up with the intruders and egging on the partiers to do the same. It would have made for a rousing beginning, and a better introduction of the troublesome trio: the Shoveler (William Macy); the Blue Raja (Hank Azaria); and Mr. Furious (Ben Stiller), who seem to come out of nowhere to save the day.

There are many other problems to "Mystery Men" than I care to go into; among them that the villain Casanova Frankenstein needs to have as cultivated a sense of the absurd as the rest of the people in this movie, and he doesn't. Geoffrey Rush is the wrong actor for the part; he needs to be way over the top to make the conflict between good and evil a galvanic one. And Rush has never exhibited a talent for the outre. You hope for the ripe theatrics of a John Lithgow in "The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai" or the dry, debonair diffidence of a Paul Freeman in "Raiders of the Lost Ark." Instead what we get is pastiche; something half-baked and not fully realized.

There are too many ideas running through "Mystery Men" for anyone to tie them neatly together, and that may be its deepest problem. But whatever kind of a mess it is is the kind of mess I love. Ben Stiller has always seemed to be slumming in the roles he takes. This one is no exception, but he goes at it with such conviction that you come away feeling that he'd learned something about comedy growing up in a household run by Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara. His Roy is related to all the put-upon, overly sensitive, chronically defensive types that Woody Allen made popular. And whether it's wheedling his way into the affections of the waitress at his favorite hangout (the sleek Claire Forslani), or questioning the wisdom of a fellow superhero (Wes Studi as the Sphinx), or giving a new member of their "elite" group (Jeaneane Garofalo in what are possibly her funniest moments on screen) a hard time, he makes it always fun to watch. I couldn't exactly say that about him in "There's Something About Mary."

Jeaneane Garofalo proves with this performance that she should have been the star of "One True Thing," not Renee Zellweger. I don't think I have ever seen funnier exchanges between a daughter and father (okay, so he's dead and his skull is in a bowling ball, so sue me) in the movies. And the funny part about this role is that it feels like a screwball reprise of Emily Watson's spellbinding talks with God in "Breaking the Waves." And in this version, the girl doesn't die, and bells don't ring in your head.

William H. Macy does something very difficult; he makes stolid magnetic. You understand right away what's attracted Jenifer Lewis' Lucille to Eddie. You can also understand her exasperation. The barbecue alone would be enough to drive me over the edge, but when Eddie's adorable, half-breed son looks up at his father and says "I believe in you, Daddy." to which Lucille sighs and exclaims, "Roland, don't encourage your father," you feel like standing and hailing Neil Cuthbert as a first-rate wit.

With Hank Azaria (whose only moment of note in film up to this point was his bare behind in "The Birdcage") and Louise Lasser (Has it been more than two decades since we first took note of her in "Bananas" and "Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman?") as son and mother who share a fondness for silverware; Greg Kinnear as Captain Amazing and Ricky Jay as his publicist; Kel Mitchell as "Invisible Boy"; Paul Reubens as "The Spleen;" and Lena Olin who, if she didn't have the few lines in this movie that she has, would seem to be visiting the set.

"The Diary of a Country Priest" moves as if it were marking every step along the Via Dolorosa. There is no let-up to its solemnity. Jean-Jacques Grunenwald's score is like a dirge commemorating all those who see Christ's place in the world as a desolate one; a place unconcerned about self even in the midst of suffering, misunderstanding, and rejection. The director Robert Bresson has been said to come as close to approximating the meaning of Georges Bernanos novel as any director ever could. I think he comes as close with this movie of approximating what the Church means by Christ as a Man of Sorrows.

The young, dying priest (played eloquently by Claude Laydu) must put up with a stomach that will only tolerate hard bread soaked in wine and sugar which sets the villagers of Ambricourt's tongues wagging about his being alcoholic. A girl he has high hopes of teaching the Church's truths spreads even nastier rumors about him. He hopes to obtain the barn of a Count as a sports grounds for the local youth, but encounters problems with his wife, daughter, and governess (with whom the Count is having an affair) that cause him to fall out of the rich man's good graces. He finds himself at a loss to pray, and becomes so ill that he leaves town to seek a diagnosis which turns out to be stomach cancer. He dies seeking the help of a fellow seminarian who has left his calling after a bout of drug addiction. He talks the man into corresponding with the only friend he has--the Vicar of Torcy--in the hopes that he will turn away from his life of drug-selling and fornication.

Georges Bernanos' book has been called existential, and maybe that is my problem with it. It obsesses on the "now" of this priest's trials, and by Bresson following Bernanos' lead, squeezes any joy that one could gather exists by doing God's work, and never suggesting what is to be won by it. "The Diary of a Country Priest" is always looking for the intrinsic value of a virtuous act, not what one has to look forward to for acting virtuously. And I think that's a serious omission. Intellectuals may like to champion this approach, and, granted, doing something for love of God rather than the rewards promised seems a higher road to follow. Still the movie belabors its suffering. I never felt this way watching Carl Dreyer's "The Passion of Joan of Arc."

Still, it is a milestone in movie history. Not even Dreyer's work captures exactly what this movie manages to. Its greatness lies in its unflinching way it meditates on the theme of religious conviction. There is nothing like it elsewhere in the movies.