Bill West

A MAN fot ALL SEASONS takes us back to the last century, when movies could be about great Christian heroes, in this case St. Thomas More, a true Renaissance man, who wrote to Erasmus and was a scholar/ruler, Lord Chancilor under Henry VIII. It's an all-star cast with some excellent performances: Wendy Hillyer as More's illiterat pragmatic loving wife, Susanah York as Margaret, his loving daughter, who speaks latin more fluently than the King, Robert Bolt's splendid resonant voice and lined aged face as More has the strength of morality needed for a perilous time, when men were forced to choose, although he tries to save himself by the fine line of the law. Leo McKern is superb as a rough tough Cromwell, who is in tune with the times. The camera knows how to use distances with sound following its images, the narrow window of Thomas' cell in the Tower of London gives a restricted view od cchildren at play. Some small errors--Thomas seated while speaking to the standing King, the Germanic pronunciation of Latin, before a stubborn clumsy-tongued German invented. it. A strong moral for today's GOP, who've caved to a vulgarian.

GIGI gets better and better with successive viewings. It takes time to appreciate its perfection as a bonbon. "The Night They invented Champagne"is a bumptious polka, danced with switching pairs--too raucous for the red room. "I remember It Well" against a Hollywood sunset is sung by two old pros with a sweet funny remembering--or, in Chevalier's case, mis-remembering. The dressed -to-the-nines Gigi"s arrival on the arm of the excellent Louis Jordan, while the decadent scandal mongers ogle, is one of the great entrances in all movies. Gigi has been carefully prepared by her courtesan aunt to take extra-good care of Jordan, choosing and lighting his cigar while revealing the dirty little secret of the dipped pearls. The movie manages a delightful balance between innocence and decadence. Prfectly cast!

Death in Vence is a sensitive and deeply moving portrayal of an aged composer (Gustav Mahler), who is pathetic in his obsession with his own weakness and age expressed with another obsession with a beautiful Polish young man, who teases him with lingering glances. So obsessed is the composer with the lad that he fails to heed a hotel manager's. warning that cholera is killing people all over Venice. He dies on the beach worrying over the pretty boy's being bullied by a bigger boy--a symbol of the composer's life. Very beautiful.

A beautifully rendered depressing movie about a butler who takes the idea that the perfect servant is invisible to a self-obliterated degree. He has no life of his own, even a borrowed one, which he might have had from listening to the conversation of the upper class, because he is "too busy serving." He misses even the love of the housekeeper, played lovingly by Emma Thompson, who loves the Butler dearly but leaves him for a life of her own at a small hotel with a husband she doesn't ;love much. The Butler, beautifully played with blank eyes and expressionless face doesn't notice or hear when his master, Lord Darlington, is taken in by Nazis to the destruction of his reputation.

Unwatchanle because of the staginess. The chatter never stops. Hitchcock is preoccupied with the look of a single take to pick up on the play's occurring in reaat time. Farley Granger is made to look weak and imposed upon too obviously. None of the characters, even Jimmy Stewart is attractive. It's based loosely on the Leopold/Loeb case but is innocent of the homosexual side. Stewart does what he can to appear to be a character who believes superior people are free to murder worthless ordinary people. Hitch moves to color withour difficulty. It's less of a movie than a filmed stage play which tells rather than shows,

Set in Edwardian country houses, Bonham-Carter, Ben Kingsley, and Nigel Hawthorne, especially, make the ridiculous plot almost work. The twins look enough alike to carry that confusion off. Who would dream a plot about sorting out the right sexual organs could support an entire drama (along with Maria and Sir Toby's practical joke)? Ben Kingsley sings "O, Mistress Mine' and the lovely "When and I was" very prettily, although he doesn't look much his part. Nigel Hawthorne plays Malvolio brilliantly, although the Edwardian costuming makes the cross-gartering joke difficult. Director Nunn just has Nigel turn up with tights under a cape. The Jacobean audiences" love of recognition scenes is incomprehensible, but Nunn again just has the twins go ahead and recognize that they each had a dad with a mole on his shoulder. Malvolio's final scene Nun , unfortunately also plays straight with Hawthorne almost winning our hearts. Are we to think the Bard foreshodowed Cromwell's conquest? Better to laugh Malvolioo off the stage.

CHICAGO has everything needed to succeed but is a near miss like its stars Renee Zellweger and Richard Gere. Renee acts, sings, and dances well but lacks the IT that could carry the movie. Gere tries to keep up but lacks it all except IT. Good songs and choeography--"All that Jazz, "Cellophane Man," Isn't It Great" all professionally performed. The jerky camera work defeats what's left of Bob Fosse's snazzy choreography.The direction lacks cohesion and definition; we're given a fuzzy impression, like flailing in a fog rather than the bite the musical calls for.

A showy thriller cum courtroom melodrama, in which Glenn Close gives a very polished performance, spoiled by an excess of coincidences, for instnce that the killer, Forester (Jeff Bridges) has a similar locker number to a hunter with the exact type of knife used in the murder. It's also hard to believe that the attorney would return to the killer's bed so soon after learning that he had played her. Would such an intelligent character have been foolish enough to let the killer know she now had the goods on him, almost an invitation for him to come to his death? Would she have stayed in her home, after the killer told her he was on his way to there? True excellencerare in this genre demands that all of the threads truly come together with the verity of life.

Another treatment of the timeless plot of a couple's discovery that they are more than just friends. Dempsey and Monaghan are attractive. The director tries too hard to show the maid-in-waiting Dempsey is a real man in the cliched sense by showing him roughousing with actors who look and act macho, showing off Dempsey's pecs and biceps, not far from average. It's pleasant enough, considering it lacks suspense. Dempsey , at the and, is pitted against a super-Scot with a castle and better muscles. While we're not surprised he wins Monaghan, logic is on the Scot's side, and we wonder why the bride picks the lesser specimen just because they love each other. Some humorous performances by the boy's pals and especially the bride's friends. No need to apologize if you enjoy it. The plot has proved its appeal many, many times. Why stray from the tried-and-true?

Joan Crawford is tooheavy in personality for Ferenc Molnar's Hungarian pastry. The older actors, Billie Burke and Reginald Owen alone belong and fit into this film. The younger cast should have been played by Europeans, who know how to behave in this frothy world. We don't believe Ms. Crawford would prefer the postman (Franchot Tone) to the wealthy , handsome society man, played by Robert Young, she makes fall in love with her. Some pretty sets in this 1937 bomb, which fails to gel or convince.