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Disclaimer: Since this is a romantic comedy, I am probably not part of its intended audience. In fact, this is a movie I would not have picked to watch, except that I heard Loudon Wainwright III did the music and I wanted to know what kind of music the "Dead Skunk" guy would do for a movie.

Having said that, I feel that the makers of this movie should have thought more about what their intended audience would and wouldn't want. This definitely follows the formula for a romantic comedy, which would mean it was aimed at women, right? But there is a lot of extremely crude humor and extremely heavyweight profanity here, and at the risk of sounding sexist, I'm guessing a lot of women would be put of by this. So maybe this isn't supposed to be a chick flick after all?

BTW, in addition to doing the music, Wainwright also has a cameo role.

Since its initial telecast, back in 1967, this enigmatic classic has evoked every reaction from awe to contempt. Given the amount of serious critical attention THE PRISONER has received, and given that a whole society has been created in its honor, I'd say the awe has won out, and I vehemently agree that THE PRISONER deserves to be honored as one of the truly artistic programs created for commercial television.

However, I can also understand the frustration many viewers have felt. Over the course of its seventeen episodes, this offbeat spy thriller becomes further and further offbeat until it ultimately transforms into surrealistic allegory. I confess I'm not sure whether this transformation was intended as a complete surprise, or whether you were supposed to know where the show was going, but in either case, I think you can better appreciate the series if you can see the earlier episodes as preparation for what's to come.

THE PRISONER's title character is a British secret agent (series creator Patrick McGoohan) who may or may not be SECRET AGENT's John Drake. The story begins with him suddenly and mysteriously resigning, then just as suddenly and mysteriously being rendered unconscious and transported to a place known only as The Village, the location of which is known only to those who run it. The Village is a prison camp, but with all of the amenities of a vacation resort,. Attractive dwellings, shops, restaurants, etc. exist side by side with high-tech methods of keeping order and extracting information from those who won't give it up willingly.

Those who try to escape get to meet Rover, a belligerent weather balloon capable of locomotion, and seemingly of independent thought. It appears (to me anyway) that the authorities can summon Rover, send it away, and give it instructions, but that it acts more or less on its own initiative. Rover deals with fugitives by plastering itself against their faces, rendering them either unconscious or dead, depending on how bad a mood it's in. Twice, we see it haul someone in from the ocean by sucking them up into a whirlpool it creates.

Citizens of The Village, including those in authority, are identified only by numbers. Our protagonist is known only as No. 6 throughout the entire series. The Village is run by No. 2, who in turn reports to an unseen and unidentified No. 1. No. 1 is apparently an unforgiving boss, because No. 2 is always being replaced.

Shortly after he arrives in in the Village, No. 6 is informed, by the reigning No. 2, that he should count on remaining there permanently. If he cooperates, life will be pleasant and he may even be given a position of authority. If he resists -- well, the only restriction they're under is not to damage him permanently. To satisfy his captors, No. 6 need only answer one question: `Why did you resign?' His question in turn is, `Who runs this place? Who is No. 1?'

Most of the episodes deal with No. 6's attempts to escape, and/or his captors' attempts to break him, although there are a few side trips. Several episodes suggest that No. 6's own people may be involved with running The Village. Some of the episodes are fairly straightforward, while others leave you with questions as to exactly what went on. It's important to note that several of the more obscure episodes -- for example, `Free for All' and `Dance of the Dead' -- are among the seven episodes that McGoohan considers essential to the series.

And then we come to the final episode, `Fall Out,' which promises to answer all the burning questions the viewers have been anguishing over for seventeen weeks -- and which so frustrated and angered those viewers back in 1967 that McGoohan had to go into hiding for awhile. Of course, I can't reveal any of the really important details, because, as No. 2 says in the recap that begins most of the episodes, `That would be telling,' and as all of us IMBD contributors know, `telling,' is frowned upon. However, to come back to the point with which I started, you should be prepared for a resolution of an entirely different nature than the one you'll probably be expecting -- a resolution that forces you to rethink your entire concept of the Village, and of the intention of the series. If you aren't ready, you'll be frustrated. If you are, you can accept THE PRISONER is the spirit in which it was offered.

Although this is a rather derivative horror movie -- a cinematic goulash made from bits of DELIVERANCE, TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE, THE HILLS HAVE EYES, and all the FRIDAY THE 13TH movies -- it's done well, and so makes for an exciting viewing experience. The plot is genuinely suspenseful, the special effects are state of the art -- in other words, extremely nasty -- the acting is decent, and the characters, while they could have been a bit further developed, are still more real than the shooting gallery ducks that populate so many movies of this type. And there was almost none of the gratuitous sex that always seems to turn up in these movies. (In fact, one such scene was cut from the final version. It's included in the deleted scenes on the DVD.) The movie also made the wonderfully disturbing suggestion that the surrounding community, such as it was, knew exactly what this tribe of inbred monsters were doing and had decided to just let it go on. I would have liked a little more explanation of exactly how the these monsters came to be -- over and above the newspaper clippings we see at the beginning of the movie -- but I realize that really isn't the point.

My one real complaint is that WRONG TURN supports the stereotype of southerners as stupid at best and depraved at worst. I'm not s southerner myself, but I did live in the Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill, North Carolina area for awhile, and thus have become sensitized to this issue.

This is a follow-up to an an earlier review, which I would like to amend after recently seeing GRAVE again and listening to the commentaries on the Millennium edition DVD.

In that review, I sided with the folks who defend GRAVE for portraying the true ugliness of rape, and thus refuting some offensive and downright dangerous myths that have caused women so much grief over the years. I haven't changed my mind, but I have come to realize that in the process of refuting some of those myths, GRAVE has unintentionally supported several others.

On the one hand, GRAVE tells you men who commit rape are NOT simply decent guys who got carried away by their impulses. Johnny, Andy, and Stanley are sadistic bullies and Matthew is a mentally challenged misfit who's willing to deny his conscience in order to keep his friends. On the other hand, these guys are all members of a lower social class -- a class with manual laborers at the top and unemployed deadbeats at the bottom. Johnny runs a service station, Matthew is a grocery boy, and Andy and Stanley do nothing but loiter around Johnny's service station all day. The tacit message seems to be that members of this class are more likely to be rapists than are college graduates, white collar professionals, university professors, and men from similar classes.

Of course, you can argue that one shouldn't make such a general inference from only four characters in only one movie. I concede that I don't have proof, but I do have evidence over and above the movie itself. First, there's Meir Zarchi's commentary. Zarchi comes across as intelligent, articulate, even compassionate, but also as a bit of an intellectual elitist -- the kind of person who would feel that the white collar/academic community couldn't possibly contain any rapists. My suspicion is fueled by Zarchi's description of the four actors who played the rapists. He claims they're all nice, decent guys, and supports the claim by saying they're college educated.

And regardless of what Zarchi's intended message might have been, research has shown -- I'm thinking in particular of the work of Dr. George Gerbner -- that what people see in the media affects their opinion of the real world. Gerbner's work concerns mainly television, but I think it can be applied to movies viewed through the medium of video.

To counteract this bias, I'd suggest reading YOU MUST BE DREAMING by Barbara Noel, with Kathryn Watterson. This is a true story of a woman who was allegedly raped by a respected member of the academic community. (To be fair, I should point out that it took me a long time to see this bias and identify it as a problem with GRAVE -- probably because I have two masters degrees and a white collar job.)

Now, lets move from people to circumstances. On the one hand, GRAVE shows us that rape is an experience women DO NOT invite and DO NOT enjoy. As film critic Joe Bob Briggs points out in his feature-length commentary, Jennifer continues to try and fight these guys off, even when she's been injured to the point where she can hardly walk. On the other hand, GRAVE suggests that rape is always the culmination of an unsolicited and unwanted encounter with a total or comparative stranger. In fact it can often be the case that rapist and victim are not strangers, and that the rape was an unexpected consequence of an encounter the victim entered into willingly. This is in fact where the term `date rape' came from. Getting back to YOU MUST BE DREAMING, the alleged rapist was the victim's therapist.

Again, there's that argument about making a general inference from one example, and again I cite the media's power to influence the viewer's perception of the world. And, according the Meir Zarchi's commentary, the experience that inspired the movie involved a woman raped by a gang of strangers.

Moving on to other matters, I originally complained that GRAVE degenerates into a simplistic slasher movie because Jennifer becomes a one-dimensional killing machine. I am now inclined to agree with Leonard Wolf that the point is to show how rape injures the soul as well as the body.

But I'm afraid I have two new complaints about the revenge portion of GRAVE. The first one occurred to me as I was listening to various statements in both commentaries about this being a pro-feminist film. I find myself wondering if the murderous Jennifer Hill is really what women want people to think of when they hear the word `feminist.' Yes, feminism's want women to be considered equal to men, and some of the more extreme ones do advocate female superiority and a matriarchal society. But do they really want women to be perceived as sadistic, ruthless monsters who achieve their goal through torture and murder? If they want any kind of constructive, positive relationship with men, they're not going to get it that way --

Which leads to my second new complaint, which occurred to me when it was pointed out the Jennifer uses sex as a tool to exact her revenge. This actually undermines the anti-rape message by associating consensual sex with danger. When Matthew and Johnny enter into sexual contact that was initiated by Jennifer, in which she's allowed to have control, they get themselves killed. This could possibly make some male viewers wary of entering into any sexual relationship where the woman is given any control whatsoever. Again, you may say I'm making an unjustified inference, but again, I cite the power of the media.

I've seen movies that bored me, insulted my intelligence, or otherwise made me feel that my time and money had been wasted, but this is the only movie that actually made me feel I'd been swindled. Why? Because less than half of it is new material. Granted, when you do a sequel, it make sense to recap the original to bring everybody up to speed. And this movie even used an effective technique for the recap -- a therapy session with William's younger brother. But as the session went on and on and on, I realized I was watching a condensed version of the original movie. When the recap finally ended, I took the tape out of my VCR to discover less than half of it was left. I realize this isn't an original thought, and I usually try and avoid the `me too review,' but this complaint warrants repeating by as many people as possible.

It isn't hard to see why this movie offended so many people. I mean, it's a slasher movie about CHRISTMAS, and it actually has SANTA as the killer. However, I feel the movie deals with an interesting question. What if you suffered some traumatic event right at Christmas, and the event was somehow bound up with one of the major icons of the holiday? This is what happens to 5-year-old William, who, on Christmas Eve, sees his mother raped and both parents murdered by a street thug dressed as Santa Claus -- right after his semi-senile grandfather tells him that Santa Clause punishes those who are naughty. I think the first part of this movie does an effective job of showing the preadolescent William's struggle to deal with this event as he is raised in a Catholic orphanage and brought face to face with Christmas every year.

I was particularly impressed with the portrayal of the Mother Superior. Although she was most definitely from the Old School of discipline, beating children, locking them in closets for extended periods, and such, I somehow was able to believe she was sincerely trying to do the right thing and cared about the children -- that she was not simply a sadistic hag. There was also an interesting conflict between her and a younger nun, who believed in gentler, more progressive methods.

Alas, the whole thing turns rather formulaic when William puts on the Santa suit and goes on his killing spree. So, as a serious exploration of the question we started with, it falls very short of what it could be. As a slasher movie, though, it's definitely above average.

I was originally not planning to say much about this movie, pro or con, except to tell you what my only reason was for wanting to see it -- which I'll come back to later. My thinking was that it wouldn't be fair to pick on this movie for being merely a sophomoric sex comedy when it was never meant to be anything more. But there WAS an attempt to make it something more -- which succeeded only in making it something less. NURSES attempts to surgically graft two serious dramas onto the sex comedy, and IMHO, the graft didn't take. The end result doesn't even begin to qualify as serious drama, but has probably frustrated many folks who were looking for a sex comedy.

To be fair, I should mention that the DVD edition includes an interview with Roger Corman, who produced the movie, in which he says NURSES was an experiment, and admits it might not have the same appeal as a movie that stuck strictly to formula. So if it was meant to be an experiment, I still shouldn't pick on it, but I have to say the experiment was a failure.

Now, to get back to my reason for watching this movie, it seems there's a connection between NURSES and the controversial rape and revenge movie I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE (a.k.a. DAY OF THE WOMAN). That connection is actor Eron Tabor, who played one of the four rapists (Johnny, the service station worker) from GRAVE, and co-wrote the rock music for NURSES. (My source is the feature-length commentary on the Millennium Edition DVD of GRAVE.) Unfortunately, there's no way to tell how much of the music was written by Tabor, because the opening credits attribute the music simply to `Thompson & Tabor.' There are a few vocal numbers, and I'm wondering if it could be Mr. Tabor singing.

Since its initial telecast, back in 1967, this enigmatic classic has evoked every reaction from awe to contempt. Given the amount of serious critical attention THE PRISONER has received, and given that a whole society has been created in its honor, I'd say the awe has won out, and I vehemently agree that THE PRISONER deserves to be honored as one of the truly artistic programs created for commercial television.

However, I can also understand the frustration many viewers have felt. Over the course of its seventeen episodes, this offbeat spy thriller becomes further and further offbeat until it ultimately transforms into surrealistic allegory. I confess I'm not sure whether this transformation was intended as a complete surprise, or whether you were supposed to know where the show was going, but in either case, I think you can better appreciate the series if you can see the earlier episodes as preparation for what's to come.

THE PRISONER's title character is a British secret agent (series creator Patrick McGoohan) who may or may not be SECRET AGENT's John Drake. The story begins with him suddenly and mysteriously resigning, then just as suddenly and mysteriously being rendered unconscious and transported to a place known only as The Village, the location of which is known only to those who run it. The Village is a prison camp, but with all of the amenities of a vacation resort,. Attractive dwellings, shops, restaurants, etc. exist side by side with high-tech methods of keeping order and extracting information from those who won't give it up willingly.

Those who try to escape get to meet Rover, a belligerent weather balloon capable of locomotion, and seemingly of independent thought. It appears (to me anyway) that the authorities can summon Rover, send it away, and give it instructions, but that it acts more or less on its own initiative. Rover deals with fugitives by plastering itself against their faces, rendering them either unconscious or dead, depending on how bad a mood it's in. Twice, we see it haul someone in from the ocean by sucking them up into a whirlpool it creates.

Citizens of The Village, including those in authority, are identified only by numbers. Our protagonist is known only as No. 6 throughout the entire series. The Village is run by No. 2, who in turn reports to an unseen and unidentified No. 1. No. 1 is apparently an unforgiving boss, because No. 2 is always being replaced.

Shortly after he arrives in in the Village, No. 6 is informed, by the reigning No. 2, that he should count on remaining there permanently. If he cooperates, life will be pleasant and he may even be given a position of authority. If he resists -- well, the only restriction they're under is not to damage him permanently. To satisfy his captors, No. 6 need only answer one question: `Why did you resign?' His question in turn is, `Who runs this place? Who is No. 1?'

Most of the episodes deal with No. 6's attempts to escape, and/or his captors' attempts to break him, although there are a few side trips. Several episodes suggest that No. 6's own people may be involved with running The Village. Some of the episodes are fairly straightforward, while others leave you with questions as to exactly what went on. It's important to note that several of the more obscure episodes -- for example, `Free for All' and `Dance of the Dead' -- are among the seven episodes that McGoohan considers essential to the series.

And then we come to the final episode, `Fall Out,' which promises to answer all the burning questions the viewers have been anguishing over for seventeen weeks -- and which so frustrated and angered those viewers back in 1967 that McGoohan had to go into hiding for awhile. Of course, I can't reveal any of the really important details, because, as No. 2 says in the recap that begins most of the episodes, `That would be telling,' and as all of us IMBD contributors know, `telling,' is frowned upon. However, to come back to the point with which I started, you should be prepared for a resolution of an entirely different nature than the one you'll probably be expecting -- a resolution that forces you to rethink your entire concept of the Village, and of the intention of the series. If you aren't ready, you'll be frustrated. If you are, you can accept THE PRISONER is the spirit in which it was offered.

To comply with IMDB rules, I must begin by warning you that this review contain a possible spoiler -- which leads nicely to my first point. THE STEPFORD WIVES is a movie that suffers from what I call the `Spoiled by Recognition' problem. If a movie hinges on some key fact being concealed from the viewer until the end, the movie is almost impossible to discuss or review without revealing at least some part of the ending. Therefore, the more recognition the movie receives, the harder it is for you to be a first-time viewer who hasn't already tripped over at least some of the spilled beans.

You can still appreciate such a movie, however, if you go into it with the right mindset. My mother has always said she enjoys reading an Agatha Christie murder mystery twice -- the first time to experience the mystery, the second time to see how all the events in the story were cleverly engineered to lead up to the resolution without actually giving it away. If the resolution has been given away, you can read the novel this way the first time around. In the case of THE STEPFORD WIVES, even if you've already been told what the men in Stepford are doing, you can still appreciate how it's revealed only in stages, along with Joanna and Bobbie's growing terror as they slowly uncover the secret.

Of course, a smart story teller will anticipates the `Spoiled by Recognition' problem and offer something of interest besides the big revelation. In the case of THE STEPFORD WIVES, this is accomplished partly through the use of the mystery/thriller format, in which the protagonist solves a mystery and uncovers an imminent danger in the process. The mystery is solved before the story's conclusion, and the focus shifts to averting the danger. Once Joanna figures out what's being done, the question becomes that of whether she can keep it from being done to her.

But truly makes THE STEPFORD WIVES worth your time, even if you've stepped on those spilled beans, are the questions and issues raised by the story. This is a story about the role some men want women to play, and about the lengths those men will go to to force women into that role. It might also be considered an allegorical deal-with-the-devil story, because the men of Stepford are effectively selling not only the souls of their wives, but their own souls as well. This allegorical overtone is interesting, given that this movie is based on a novel by Ira Levin, who also wrote ROSEMARY'S BABY, which involved a literal deal with the devil. (And ROSEMARY'S BABY is a movie that has the `Spoiled by Recognition' problem really bad because it's a classic.)

Indeed, the horror in THE STEPFORD WIVES is very much a horror of ideas, rather than a horror of physical events, which is likely to frustrate you if you're looking for a thrill ride along the lines of NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET. Now, don't get me wrong. I have an appetite for gross-out horror as well, but I think it's important to realize horror can come in other forms as well -- which can be just as effective.

I will concede that THE STEPFORD WIVES might have been more suspenseful; at a nice tight 90 minutes, but both the characters and the situation might have come off as flat and wooden. As it is, there's a much stronger sense of reality, which makes what finally does happen that much more frightening and disturbing.

Finally, I'd like to address one other complaint you may have about this movie -- that it never explains the mechanics of HOW the men are doing what they're doing. The answer is that it really doesn't't matter how. What matters is that they ARE doing it and WHY they're doing it. By way of comparison, I would cite Franz Kafka's classic novella, THE METAMORPHOSIS, in which it is never explained HOW Gregor Samsa turns into a giant insect. It isn't explained, because it isn't germane to the point of the story.

When LAST HOUSE first came out, back in 1972, it had people vomiting and fainting in the aisles. Now, a little over thirty years later, it has people asking why it still warrants our attention, when there are more slasher/splatter movies on a video rental store's shelves than there are cockroaches in a big-city apartment building. Hey, there's even been a major motion picture with a disemboweling -- HANNIBAL.

Part of the answer is historical. LAST HOUSE is the first significant achievement by Wes Craven, who has gone on to become a major figure in both film and television. It may also be that if it weren't for LAST HOUSE, there would be NO slasher/splatter movies on any video rental store's shelves, because LAST HOUSE was the movie that created the genre. Film scholars should also note that LAST HOUSE was based on the same 14th-century Swedish folktale as THE VIRGIN SPRING, and contains various allusions to the Bergman film.

But it isn't just horror movie historians who believe LAST HOUSE still deserves public and critical attention. Many people, including yours truly, feel that even though it's no longer cutting edge, it still retains its original impact. Several good arguments have already been made, which I'll present along with my own.

The most widely voiced argument seems to be that while other films have equaled or surpassed LAST HOUSE in the amount and explicitness of their violence, they don't measure up in credibility. This credibility comes partly from the context in which the violence occurs, and partly from the film's look and feel.

Regarding context, any violent act is less disturbing if it either (a) seems totally removed from any life experience you can imagine getting into, and/or (b) happens to someone you can't see as a real person. Such is the case with so many movies that present contrived situations and victims who are little more than shooting gallery ducks.

Such is not the case, however with LAST HOUSE. The two adolescent girls, Mari and Phyllis, could be people you went to school with, and their humiliation, torture, rape, murder, and mutilation is the end result of a mistake that's easy to imagine making -- letting your guard down because you were having fun and the excitement of the moment made you careless and overconfident. In this case, Mari and Phyllis are off to a rock concert to celebrate Mari's 16th birthday and want to score some weed. Unfortunately, they go off with the wrong guy and end up the captives of Krug Stillo, Fred `Weasel' Podowski, and Sadie -- three escaped convicts who have a very sadistic idea of fun. (The aforementioned wrong guy is Junior Stillo, Krug's illegitimate son, who is a reluctant participant.) When the girls try to resist and escape, the sadism degenerates into bestial rage. So much for the notion that if you stand up to the bullies, they'll back down.

And here, I'd like to add one of my personal reasons for finding LAST HOUSE effective. Krug and Co. and the atrocities they committed against Mari and Phyllis seem all to believable to me because they remind me of several characters I had the misfortune to get mixed up with many years ago. The details wouldn't be germane to this review, but I think it's germane to say that there are probably many other folks who've been similarly -- if not quite so extremely -- victimized, and so can relate to the events in LAST HOUSE.

Moving on to the look and feel issue, while we all appreciate the polished, slick look of a big-budget Hollywood film , that look makes it obvious you're watching a fabrication. But LAST HOUSE is a low-budget movie with with that grainy, washed-out low-budget look and slightly muffled low-budget sound. The filmmakers also deliberately used documentary-style shooting techniques, because their previous work had been largely in the area of documentary films. All of this combined creates the strong illusion that you're eavesdropping on real events.

The second major argument concern the reaction of the killer to what they've done. Unlike Jason and other mindless killing machines, the killers are themselves shocked and horrified by their own acts, which forces the viewer to find those acts all the more shocking.

Finally, I;d like to challenge one basic assumption made by those who claim LAST HOUSE no longer has any power -- that the ubiquity of graphic violence in the cinema must inevitably cause the general public to adopt a `So what else is new' attitude toward it. Granted, constant or repeated exposure to a particular stimulus tend to desensitize one to that stimulus. In fact, some groups of people, such as E.R. doctors, policemen, and social workers, MUST desensitize themselves to heinous and extreme acts of violence to do their jobs properly and stay sane. But we aren't all in those lines of work, and so don't all have to force or let ourselves ease to feel shock when something shocking happens. Even if you've seen every other slasher/splatter movie on your video rental store's shelves, you should still be able to get a shock from LAST HOUSE if your emotions are still alive.

On the plus side, HOLLOW MAN has some impressive and sophisticated special effects that create a very convincing invisible man. (There are some nice featurettes on the DVD about the effects.). Furthermore, the idea of having the test subject disappear and reappear in layers that let you see bone, muscle, and flesh is much true to the original H.G. Wells concept than was the 1933 James Whale treatment.

Nevertheless, I found HOLLOW MAN disappointing. Although there was plenty of action and suspense, I felt the movie fell far short of its potential. I would have expected a modern-day invisible man to go out and wreak havoc all over town, like Jack Griffin did in the 1933 film, only on a grander, more graphic scale. Okay, there's a little of that in HOLLOW MAN (and a little more that was deleted from the final cut and included in the DVD's deleted scenes) but then Sebastian Caine decides to take care of some business that, while it makes sense for him, takes us down a derivative path. The whole last portion of HOLLOW MAN is yet another variation on the `Bunch of folks trapped in a closed space with a monster who wants to eat them' theme.

And while we're about it, I'm afraid I didn't think the Faustian overtones the director was going for came across. The problem. To me, Sebastian Caine doesn't look like someone who sells his soul, but rather someone who never had one to sell in the first place.

But, once again, the special effects create a much more convincing invisible man than I've ever seen before. If you watch HOLLOW MAN for that reason alone, and don't expect much else, you won't be disappointed.

SWEPT AWAY is a genuinely artistic, intelligent, and thought-provoking film that uses a simple story to deal with many complicated issues. However, it's also a product of the school of thought that advocates (1) frustrating audience expectations in the name of artistic evolution, and (2) being as downbeat as possible in the name of realism. The result is a film that I can appreciate at an intellectual level, but can't genuinely enjoy at some deeper gut level.

The story is a variation on a theme that's probably as old as literature itself -- the role reversal that results from a master and servant being "swept away" from a world governed by the master's rules and into a world governed only by the law of survival. The master in this case is Raffaella Pavone Lanzetti (Mariangela Melato), a high-society lady to whom reheated coffee and undercooked spaghetti are major crises. (In fact, the spaghetti was NOT undercooked; Raffaella had never heard of al dente.) Ms. Lanzetti is also offended by the hired help's sweaty T-shirts, apparently unaware that if you perform manual labor in the hot summer sun and the hotter galley of your husband's yacht, a significant amount of sweat is inevitable. The servant is Gennarino Carunchio (Giancarlo Giannini), one of the workers on the yacht, who suffers the largest share of Raffaella 's complaining and derision. In the first part of the film, Gennarino spends much time muttering about how he'd like to get his hand on Raffaella for five minutes.

Gennarino gets to act on his stored-up anger when he and Raffaella get stranded on a deserted island. And herein lies the first example of the film deliberately frustrating the audience. A traditional drama would let us see one character as the hero and the other as the villain. Or, possibly, we'd be asked to see both of them as heroes, villains, or mixed bags. In any case, we'd be able to decide who we were going to sympathize with throughout the story. But SWEPT AWAY continually turns the tables on you. Until they get to the island, your heart is going out to Gennarino, and you would dearly love to dump a plate of that al dente spaghetti on Raffaella 's head. (BTW, you actually get to see something like that happen in the Madonna remake.) But when the worm turns, the "lesson" Gennarino gives Raffaella is so cruel, brutal, and sadistic that it seems way out of proportion to the offense she committed against him -- especially since it goes on so relentlessly for so long. Furthermore, we realize that Raffaella 's attitude toward Gennarino wasn't so much due to malice as ignorance. Her high-society world is all she knows. And we wonder if Gennarino should perhaps have taken that into account. We also wonder if Gennarino really is the vile creature that Raffaella has accused him of being.

But we're forced to switch sympathies yet again -- back to Gennarino -- when they get off the island. By this time, they've fallen in love -- or so they believe -- which begs the question of what's going to happen to their relationship when they get back to Raffaella 's high-society world.

I can't tell you what happens, but I will tell you that the message we're left with is not the one I suspect we were supposed to expect. I'm guessing we're supposed to hope for an upbeat statement about how these two different classes of people can learn from each other. Instead SWEPT AWAY seems to be saying that's a bunch of hogwash, contrary to what you and the two main characters might have wanted to believe.

Of course that could just be the truth, and the upbeat message I spoke of could be trite and corny, which SWEPT AWAY definitely isn't. The power struggle and love/hate relationship between Raffaella and Gennarino serves as a vehicle to explore a lot of complicated issues about class struggles and conflicting values, and maybe where we end up is where the filmmaker honestly believes all this exploring is supposed to take you.

But the end result -- for me, at least -- is that SWEPT AWAY might be a great material for a master's thesis, but not for a fun evening.

By any kind of objective standards, this is a great movie. It takes the live action/ animation combination to a new level, and does so with genuine hard work, rather than clever trickery.

In the first place, the animation was done by cartoonists who drew each frame by hand, just like in the old days. Furthermore, they worked without the benefit of the artificial restraints that are customarily placed on live-action footage to make the combination easier (for example, no camera movement of any kind in any shot that's going to include animated figures).

And there was hard work on the part of the actors too, all of whom were trained in mime, so that they could create a convincing illusion of picking up and throwing around cartoon object and animals that had some weight to them. The actors also took great pains with such matters as maintaining convincing eye contact with the animated characters, and being sure never to forget they were in the scene.

Furthermore, the movie had a fully-developed plot and three-dimensional characters. (Well, you know what I mean.) It would have been very easy to get caught up in technique and forget all the other elements that make a movie complete.

Alas, however, speaking from a purely subjective viewpoint, I didn't like this movie. Why? Because cartoons were a happy part of my childhood, and I hated to see these cartoon characters stripped of their innocence.

Let me qualify this, however, by saying that it wouldn't have bothered me in a movie that was supposed to be disturbing. For example, I found the twisted cartoon images in the `It's a Good Life' sequence from THE TWILIGHT ZONE MOVIE quite effective. But when this corruption is used as a vehicle for comedy, it leaves me feeling like somebody dumped mud all over something I hold dear.

How many times have you said `That would have been a great movie, but the ending ruined it'? Well, THE OTHERS left me feeling just the opposite. The ending is a truly unexpected twist on the classic haunted house story. If only I hadn't had to suffer through such a tedious movie to get there.

To be fair, the intention was good -- to make an artistic horror movie. But I had the same problem with THE OTHERS that I had with several other such artistic horror movies, such as THE HUNGER and THE SHINING. There seems to be an underlying assumption that horror can't be truly artistic, so that the only way to make a truly artistic horror movie is to subordinate the horror elements to the artistic ones. The result is a movie that doesn't scare you and does suggest there's something wrong with you if you actually like horror. A truly artistic horror movie is made by someone who loves and respect the genre, and so wants to create the best example of it that they know how.

Like lots of other folks, I didn't expect much substance from this comic book adaptation about an all-female garage band struggling to get its act together. I figured it would be a shallow but pleasant farce with maybe a decent concert sequence.

And like lots of other folks, I was surprised to discover there was more to it. The Pussycats' search for a respectable venue becomes a nearly fatal encounter with an evil recording company that deals in both music and mind control. The farce turns out to be spiced with a satire on the manipulativeness of the entertainment industry, the plight of teens who choose to run with the crowd rather than thinking for themselves, and the struggle to maintain one's identity and integrity in the face of pressure and temptation. (I was also surprised that VH1 and MTV allowed themselves to be shown in such a negative light.)

Unlike lots of other folks, however, I wondered if there was even more to it than that. I felt there was something almost Orwellian and Faustian in the mix. In fact, I went so far as to speculate that JOSIE might be a darker, more bitter comedy masquerading as farce.-- something along the lines of THE MAGIC CHRISTIAN or even DR. STRANGELOVE.

But the "Backstage Pass" documentary, included on the DVD, took care of that theory. Light-hearted farce was, indeed, the intention -- which left me feeling that the additional depth was both a virtue and a flaw. JOSIE went beyond simple-minded satire, but frustrated me by not going further.

Okay, I realize it isn't fair to criticize a movie -- or any creative endeavor -- for not being what it was never intended to be. But if a movie hints at intentions it ultimately doesn't have, well that's rather frustrating.

JOSIE does, however, have the expected concert sequence, and in case you were wondering, Rachael Leigh Cook, Tara Reid, and Rosario Dawson are actually playing those instruments. Part of the preparation was to send the three of them to "band camp," where they learned to play the three songs they perform in the movie. So enjoy the music, enjoy the farce, and absorb the message. Just don't be looking for this to evolve from farce into high comedy.

CALIGULA isn't great art and IS repulsive enough to outrage all but the most jaded of viewers. But is it simply a sham? Myself, I consider it an especially twisted example of what Gahan Wilson calls an "art trap"-- a film that attempts to be art, but instead ends up being a device that hopefully will trap art, just as a mouse trap hopefully will capture a mouse. I think Bob Guccione was aiming at what Ridley Scott successfully created twenty years later with GLADIATOR -- a historical epic with the brutal frankness that was prohibited back when Rhett Butler almost wasn't allowed to say "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn."

And CALIGULA has good points,, such as Malcolm McDowell in the title role. McDowell's evil magnetism serves this role well, mainly because it helps convince you that Caligula was as charismatic and popular as history tells us. This is in sharp contrast to the creepy, effeminate image presented in movies such as THE ROBE. McDowell's portrayal also works toward Gore Vidal's intended goal of suggesting that Caligula wasn't simply a monster, and actually may have had more in common with some of us present-day "normal" folk than we want to believe.. An interesting corollary to this suggestion is that Caligula's monstrous behavior might be due at least in part to his knowing he wasn't qualified to be the emperor, and thus trying to cover it up by torturing and killing everyone who might have exposed him. In fact, we see him utter his famous statement, "Let them hate me, so long as they fear me," in self-defense when his wife takes him to task. Up until he executes Gemellus, he even reminds me a bit of Macbeth.

And consider the similarity between Caligula and CLOCKWORK ORANGE's psychopathic Alex,, perhaps McDowell's most famous role. If Alex was a student of Roman history, Caligula was probably his hero. This connection makes the two movies interesting companion pieces to each other.

Then, there's the surrealistic, other-worldly atmosphere. I'm thinking especially of the sequence in Tiberius's weird, multi-level abode, and the way the action goes from one level to another when the mood changes. We're on one level while Tiberius (Peter O'Toole) enjoys his romp with his "little fishies," then move to another level where he brutally tortures and executes a young soldier for drinking on duty.

But all of this manages only to elevate CALIGULA from a fiasco to an interesting failure. CALIGULA's main problem is what I call the Take advantage of/Taken Advantage of Syndrome, That's when the filmmakers set out to take advantage of some resource that wasn't available to others before them, and end up being taken advantage of by that very resource, because it takes over. In CALIGULA, the resource is the aforementioned explicitness that was prohibited in earlier times. So much attention is devoted to portraying the depravity and debauchery of the times that precious little is paid to anything else --

Like making the point that was originally intended. I'm guessing CALIGULA was SUPPOSED to argue that the combination of debauched society and absolute power enabled and nurtured the worst facets of Caligula's character, ultimately making him a monster. This argument was then supposed to raise the question of what you or I, or any normal person we know, might become under the same circumstances. Instead, CALIGULA waffles between two contradictory but equally simplistic assertions -- "Society was to blame," and "He was a sadistic wacko." If only CALIGULA had tried a bit harder to convince us that there was some other, more positive, side to Caligula's nature that Roman society suppressed.

And if only a major historical event hadn't been conspicuous by its absence. If I've got my history correct, Jesus was crucified at about the same time Tiberius was assassinated, which means that the Apostle Paul would have shown up in Rome during Caligula's reign to say, "Hey remember that guy you THOUGHT you got rid of?" The Good News would have been both significant and disturbing to Caligula, since he believed he was God Incarnate. (This issue is dealt with in THE ROBE.) This omission might not have jumped out at me if the movie hadn't begun by putting Mark 8:36 on the screen. Still, one positive thing I can say from a Christian perspective is that CALIGULA lays out in very graphic terms what the first Christians were up against.

Even if there had been a better balance between the graphic sex and violence and the other elements of CALIGULA, there's another problem that still might have proved fatal -- trying to have it both ways. Part of Guccione's stated intention was to combine two genres, the grand Hollywood epic and the underground adult film. And I think there might be a third genre in the mix -- the deliberately "sick" movie, epitomized by PINK FLAMINGOS. Well, as other filmmakers have found when trying to combine disparate genres, the audience that's interested in one will hate the other, so that everyone will hate the movie as a whole. Those who want to see serious historical drama don't want to watch lesbian sex scenes, and vice versa. And I bet neither faction wants to watch someone vomit blood -- in slow motion.

But again, I wouldn't dismiss CALIGULA as a rip-off. It's an experiment that didn't work, partly because of poor judgment, and partly because it may have been doomed to failure. As such, it deserves some kind of recognition for trying to break new ground. I do, however, think Guccione needs to get off his high horse (or maybe he's in bed with his high horse?) and stop trying to convince us this is great art. If he would admit his experiment didn't work, maybe Mr. General Public would be more sympathetic to his having tried it.

And by the way -- did that horse still respect Malcolm McDowell in the morning?

Well, this short-lived incarnation of LAW & ORDER has shown me that real trials are nowhere near as exciting as their fictional counterparts, no matter how intrinsically interesting the crimes might be. I think that's a good thing for everyone to learn, but they can learn it from a single episode of this show, and give the remaining episodes of this series a miss without missing anything.

Evidently, NBC felt the same way.

The selling point for this version of LAW & ORDER, is the inclusion of scenes from the criminal's perspective. Alas, I'm not sure these scenes work as intended. In a feature-length film, where you have as much time for the criminal's point of view as for the investigator's, you can create a truly fascinating and thought-provoking multi-dimensional view of the situation. But in an hour-long show that has to focus on the investigators, the few sequences from the criminal's perspective only manage to blur that focus, confuse the issue, muddy the waters, and sometimes give things away that we'd like to discover along with the investigators. Still, this show has the same intelligent but disturbing stories as the original, and a detective named Gorin, who has a delightfully twisted method of interrogating suspects.

This version of LAW & ORDER, which focuses on sexually-based offenses, has the same intelligent but disturbing stories as the original. There's also an interesting thread that surfaces from time to time concerning one of the investigators, Olivia Benson, who's a child of a rape and is constantly confronted with the question of whether she's inherited a rapist's mentality, and how that mentality might manifest itself in her. However, those who particularly like the courtroom aspect of the original should be advised that it's absent from the majority of SVU episodes, which usually end with the suspect being caught. More importantly, some of the crimes are so extremely heinous -- as my brother-in-law likes to say, "heinously heinous" -- that SVU occasionally verges on pandering. As of the date this review was posted, it hasn't crossed that line, but it's dangerously close.

Legal drama has come a long way since the days of PERRY MASON. Back then, the innocent party was always exonerated, the guilty party was always convicted, and justice was always served. It was entertaining, comforting, reassuring, well-written, well-acted drama but still a sophisticated, grownup's fairy tale. Anybody with any sense had to either write it off as pure escapism or feel angry at being taken for a fool. LAW & ORDER, on the other hand, has always featured much more intelligent and believable stories, many of which are inspired by real events. However, many of the episodes are anything but comforting, and some of them even made me angry. All too often, the bad guys get off on legal technicalities or because of judges who sympathize with the wrong people. And sometimes, even when the bad guys do get convicted, we aren't sure whether justice has been served. But I, for one, never felt like I was being taken for a fool.

I have, however, felt like I was being taken the long way around to a resolution on many occasions, which is my one major complaint about the show. Sometimes it seems like these folks spend the whole first half of an episode barking up the wrong tree. Okay, so that's probably how it is in real life, but I find it very frustrating to spend half the show thinking that the guilty party is a hungry man who robbed a pizza delivery boy and killed him by mistake, only to discover that said robber stumbled across the dead delivery boy by accident, and that the real killer is a Mafia hit man and that the pizzeria who employed the delivery boy wasn't buying their anchovies from a Mafia manufacturer. No, that's not a description of an actual episode, but some of them are pretty close.

But to end on another positive note, I'd like to pass along an observation from my wife. In the ten years or so that LAW & ORDER has been running, it has remained focused on the crimes being solved, and never succumbed to the temptation to go off on soap operatic side trips about the sordid details of the characters' personal lives.. Although I think a few TINY personal side trips might spice things up -- like maybe a bit more about Briscoe's battle with alcoholism, and his related divorce -- I agree that too much of this would bring the show down, like it's brought down several other good shows.

CALIGULA isn't great art and IS repulsive enough to outrage all but the most jaded of viewers. But is it simply a sham? Myself, I consider it an especially twisted example of what Gahan Wilson calls an "art trap"-- a film that attempts to be art, but instead ends up being a device that hopefully will trap art, just as a mouse trap hopefully will capture a mouse. I think Bob Guccione was aiming at what Ridley Scott successfully created twenty years later with GLADIATOR -- a historical epic with the brutal frankness that was prohibited back when Rhett Butler almost wasn't allowed to say "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn."

And CALIGULA has good points,, such as Malcolm McDowell in the title role. McDowell's evil magnetism serves this role well, mainly because it helps convince you that Caligula was as charismatic and popular as history tells us. This is in sharp contrast to the creepy, effeminate image presented in movies such as THE ROBE. McDowell's portrayal also works toward Gore Vidal's intended goal of suggesting that Caligula wasn't simply a monster, and actually may have had more in common with some of us present-day "normal" folk than we want to believe.. An interesting corollary to this suggestion is that Caligula's monstrous behavior might be due at least in part to his knowing he wasn't qualified to be the emperor, and thus trying to cover it up by torturing and killing everyone who might have exposed him. In fact, we see him utter his famous statement, "Let them hate me, so long as they fear me," in self-defense when his wife takes him to task. Up until he executes Gemellus, he even reminds me a bit of Macbeth.

And consider the similarity between Caligula and CLOCKWORK ORANGE's psychopathic Alex,, perhaps McDowell's most famous role. If Alex was a student of Roman history, Caligula was probably his hero. This connection makes the two movies interesting companion pieces to each other.

Then, there's the surrealistic, other-worldly atmosphere. I'm thinking especially of the sequence in Tiberius's weird, multi-level abode, and the way the action goes from one level to another when the mood changes. We're on one level while Tiberius (Peter O'Toole) enjoys his romp with his "little fishies," then move to another level where he brutally tortures and executes a young soldier for drinking on duty.

But all of this manages only to elevate CALIGULA from a fiasco to an interesting failure. CALIGULA's main problem is what I call the Take advantage of/Taken Advantage of Syndrome, That's when the filmmakers set out to take advantage of some resource that wasn't available to others before them, and end up being taken advantage of by that very resource, because it takes over. In CALIGULA, the resource is the aforementioned explicitness that was prohibited in earlier times. So much attention is devoted to portraying the depravity and debauchery of the times that precious little is paid to anything else --

Like making the point that was originally intended. I'm guessing CALIGULA was SUPPOSED to argue that the combination of debauched society and absolute power enabled and nurtured the worst facets of Caligula's character, ultimately making him a monster. This argument was then supposed to raise the question of what you or I, or any normal person we know, might become under the same circumstances. Instead, CALIGULA waffles between two contradictory but equally simplistic assertions -- "Society was to blame," and "He was a sadistic wacko." If only CALIGULA had tried a bit harder to convince us that there was some other, more positive, side to Caligula's nature that Roman society suppressed.

And if only a major historical event hadn't been conspicuous by its absence. If I've got my history correct, Jesus was crucified at about the same time Tiberius was assassinated, which means that the Apostle Paul would have shown up in Rome during Caligula's reign to say, "Hey remember that guy you THOUGHT you got rid of?" The Good News would have been both significant and disturbing to Caligula, since he believed he was God Incarnate. (This issue is dealt with in THE ROBE.) This omission might not have jumped out at me if the movie hadn't begun by putting Mark 8:36 on the screen. Still, one positive thing I can say from a Christian perspective is that CALIGULA lays out in very graphic terms what the first Christians were up against.

Even if there had been a better balance between the graphic sex and violence and the other elements of CALIGULA, there's another problem that still might have proved fatal -- trying to have it both ways. Part of Guccione's stated intention was to combine two genres, the grand Hollywood epic and the underground adult film. And I think there might be a third genre in the mix -- the deliberately "sick" movie, epitomized by PINK FLAMINGOS. Well, as other filmmakers have found when trying to combine disparate genres, the audience that's interested in one will hate the other, so that everyone will hate the movie as a whole. Those who want to see serious historical drama don't want to watch lesbian sex scenes, and vice versa. And I bet neither faction wants to watch someone vomit blood -- in slow motion.

But again, I wouldn't dismiss CALIGULA as a rip-off. It's an experiment that didn't work, partly because of poor judgment, and partly because it may have been doomed to failure. As such, it deserves some kind of recognition for trying to break new ground. I do, however, think Guccione needs to get off his high horse (or maybe he's in bed with his high horse?) and stop trying to convince us this is great art. If he would admit his experiment didn't work, maybe Mr. General Public would be more sympathetic to his having tried it.

And by the way -- did that horse still respect Malcolm McDowell in the morning?

This high-action crime drama stands out for me because it succeeds at doing what other movies* have tried and, in my opinion, failed to do -- integrate genuinely funny comedy into the mix. The success is attributable partly to the comedic talents of Will Smith and Martin Lawrence -- who have the ability to deliver crude, rude dialog such that it's funny nevertheless -- and partly to a story that combines suspense and humor into a believable whole.

Our two heroes are police detectives Mike Lowry (Smith) and Marcus Burnett (Lawrence), who are a kind of tough-cop variation on The Odd Couple . Lowry is suave, slick, self-controlled, well-to-do, heroic, and a real ladies man. Burnett, on the other hand, is an ordinary guy who manages to stumble reasonably effectively, if somewhat ineptly, through his work and his married life.

So imagine what happens when Burnett has to convince a key witness, Julie (Téa Leoni) that he's Mike Lowry -- not just for a few hours, but for a few days. Furthermore, this is no pre-planned, well-orchestrated masquerade. A large stash of confiscated heroin has been un-confiscated right from police headquarters, and both the heroin and the perpetrator must be found within four days, or Internal Affairs is going to take some big-time disciplinary action. Lowry and Burnett are called in because they were the ones who captured the heroin in the first place, and because of the one trait they share -- a renegade approach to police work, which may not have their boss's approval, but which does get the job done (and at one point, causes a store owner to think they're out to rob him). The various twists and turns of the investigation lead to Lowry getting knocked out of commission at the same time that Julie witnesses a murder and refuses to deal with anybody but Mike Lowry. But Marcus Burnett is the only one available to deal with her, and since waiting for Lowry to recover isn't an option …

Subsequent events include Lowry's bachelor pad being invaded by Julie and her dogs, while Lowry stays with Burnett's wife, Burnett trying to keep his wife from finding out what's really going on, and Burnett and Lowry trying to find the heroin and keep Julie alive.

For all you action movie fans, plenty of cars, plenty of buildings, and plenty of people get blown up along the way. (Looking over this review, I see that I've belied the high level of violence, which I definitely should warn you against.)

BAD BOYS kept me both amused and on the edge of my seat throughout. I'm afraid I did have two small complaints, however. First, I wish the resolution of the Burnett-pretending-to-be-Lowry story had been timed to coincide with the resolution of the main plot.

As it is, the comic subplot ends, leaving the rest of the movie to proceed in a rather formulaic and pedantic fashion. Second, I wish more time had been spent on Lowry's problem of stepping into Burnett's shoes. The swinging bachelor having to play family man would have been good for a few laughs that we never got.

Aside from that, however, this is an action movie that stands out among the rest.

One final note concerning the DVD "Special Edition" release. BAD BOYS was a movie in which the music was particularly effective, and the DVD actually lets you listen to the music track by itself. I wish DVDs of other movies with great music had this option.

* Three examples that come to mind are 48 HOURS, KINDERGARTEN COP, and another Michael Bay film, ARMAGEDDON. 48 HOURS was grim enough to seriously stifle the humor, even with Eddie Murphy in the lead role. KINDERGARTEN COP made me laugh, but the crime drama felt like an unwelcome intrusion. In ARMAGEDDON, I felt the stakes were high enough that humor didn't seem appropriate.

I felt this movie had a big problem that was the exact opposite of the first STAR TREK movie's big problem. What bothered me about that first movie was what bothered a lot of other people; the various quirks, mannerisms, and what-have-you that we'd all come to know and love about the characters were sadly lacking. In STAR TREK V, however, those various quirks, mannerisms, and what-have-you, were overdone to the point of caricature. At times, it almost seemed I was watching a STAR TREK parody that starred the original cast. This movie also suffers from a 23rd-century version of director William Shatner's insistence on wrecking as many cars as possible during each T.J. HOOKER episode.

All of this was a shame, because this movie dealt with some thought-provoking issues, including the folly of looking for God in all the wrong places. I can't be more specific lest this review become a spoiler, but this aspect of the movie has been discussed by others, who've done a better job than I could do here, so if you want to know more, go and read what they've said.

With the release of WRATH OF KAHN, all STAR TREK fans who'd been disappointed and disillusioned by the first STAR TREK movie could breathe a sigh of relief. So these people hadn't forgotten what STAR TREK was really about after all. The humor, the characters we all knew, and the rapport among them were all here this time.

But I'm afraid I did have one complaint about this movie. The STAR TREK episode "Space Seed," to which STAR TREK II was a sequel, ended on a note of hope and anticipation. Just what sort of new world was Kahn going to create? It was rather depressing to have that hope and anticipation completely trashed by the revelation that that Kahn hadn't been able to create anything. It was also depressing to see Kahn turned from a complex, and even noble, villain, into a purely evil, one-dimensional vengeance machine.

I'm afraid I'm one of the many people who came away from this movie feeling that you can never go home again. As many before me have said, this movie was too worried about competing with STAR WARS and not worried enough about capturing the spirit of the original television series, whose major strength was its characters, rather than its pyrotechnics.

This movie suffers from what I call the Take advantage of/Taken Advantage of Syndrome. That's when the filmmakers decide to take advantage of some resource that wasn't available to others before them, and end up being taken advantage of by that very resource, because it takes over. The resource in this case is all those big-budget special effects that weren't an option when the original TV series was being made.

But there are four points I would ask you to consider before passing final judgment of this movie.

First, as Marshall McLuhan was famous for pointing out, "The medium is the message," and television and movies are very different media. So, any feature film version of a television series must create some feeling of "It's just not the same."

Granted, this is a shaky defense, since later STAR TREK movies succeeded where this one failed, but that may be partly because filmgoers subsequently adjusted to the different "feel" of the big screen, and partly because the filmmakers subsequently realized they had to take this into account.

Second, at least some of the missing rapport that everyone complains about may have been inherent in the storyline. Remember that the original crew of the Enterprise hadn't worked together for ten years, that they were being reunited under adverse circumstances, and that several of them didn't want to be forced back into active duty. Those conditions could hardly have been expected to produce a congenial working environment.

Third, if you go back and watch the original series, that famous characterization and rapport was not present to the same degree in every episode, particularly in earlier episodes, such as "The Corbomite Maneuver," and "The Man Trap."

Finally, whatever might be wrong with the movie, the story does incorporate some important and profound issues, such as the validity and importance of faith. I can't be more specific lest this review become a spoiler. Well, this aspect of the movie has been discussed by others, who've done a better job than I could do here, so if you want to know more, go and read what they've said.

Regarding the director's cut, which is the version available on DVD, it does include some improvement over the two previous versions, There are, however, several things I would have done differently. First, along with trimming that long-winded trip through the V'ger cloud, I would have also trimmed the equally long-winded sequence in which Kirk flies all around the Enterprise, looking at her from every possible angle. I also would have kept at least one of the exchanges between Sulu and Ilia that were added for the television version. Fortunately, everything that was deleted is included on a supplemental disk.