The Motion picture:

The extremely gay sounding caption of this dim puissance fool you. Touch of Pink is not a campy, handsome remaining-the-top gay film. It’s in reality a cute and dormant little film about the problems faced by a straight-laced gay couple—and an homage to the romantic comedies of Cary Grant.

The Story:

And speaking of Cary Grant, it is he who greets us at the opening of the movie. Well, actually, it’s Kyle McLachlan (of Sex & The City—Charlotte’s first husband) portraying the spirit of Cary Grant. See, our lead character, Alim (Jimi Mistry), a gay man of Muslim descent, living in London, daydreams about a fantasy world of old 50s romantic comedies. And standing by his side is Cary Grant, giving him advice on amour. And he needs it. Alim is celebrating his anniversary with his boyfriend Giles (Kristen Holden-Reid)—an anniversary that has a guest list comprised of a variety of Giles’s ex-boyfriends. As if Giles’s eyes for the guys isn’t problem enough, Alim’s mother, Nuru, is coming to town. Nuru is third world Muslim (but now lives in Toronto) and she comes to visit hoping to bring Alim back home to Toronto for his cousin’s wedding, at which she hopes to introduce Alim to a girl. See, the problem is, she doesn’t know Alim is gay. So Cary Grant coaches Alim in creating the illusion that he and Giles are just roommates when his mother arrives. Which is where all the lying begins. And Giles willingly steps into the closet—momentarily. He is determined to have Nuru warm up to him, despite her resistance. It’s only a matter of time before the truth comes out. And the secret gets dragged all the way across the ocean to Toronto. And of course, there are shocking revelations to be made at the wedding…but they’re even more unexpected than the audience would—well—expect.

I was pleasantly surprised by this film. It really is a retro-feeling romantic comedy without any of the stereotypical gay banter going on. The characters feel more like my gay friends than the caricatures I usually see portrayed on screen—and they aren’t perfect or beautiful, just real, which is exactly what makes them attractive. The plot may remind you of the movie The Wedding Banquet from a number of years ago, with a Muslim gay man replacing the Asian gay man, but this one is much lighter than that film. The chemistry between the actors is excellent, and all the characters are loveable. Suleka Mathew as Alim’s mother is perfect, if not a little too pretty and young looking, and not third world enough in her personality for us to believe that Alim would be so fearful of telling her the truth. Of course, this movie makes light of a much touchier subject—being a gay Muslim. This film is most likely far from reality—but it’s meant to be inspirational to those who are.

The only other issue I have with the movie is the Cary Grant angle. I enjoyed it at first, but it didn’t carry through well, and eventually started losing steam (not to mention that Cary Grant sort of acts like he’s having trouble comprehending the whole gay thing—and recent biographies tell a very different story about THAT). Although I think Cary Grant was hot, I was never a devoted fan of his movies—those who are well-versed in his films will enjoy the in-jokes that are described by the director in the commentary (sort of like having a horror newbie watch Scream and just not get any of the references). The Cary Grant perspective does add to the fluffy tone of the movie, but the film is definitely strong enough to stand on its own.

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A deflated Disney version of the Kipling children's stories, made during a time (1967) when the studio was spending as little money as possible on its animation division. A good deal of the footage here has indeed been traced from earlier shorts and features, and?as increasingly became the Disney way?reputation voices are used as a means of shortcutting the characterization that was once created through gestures and rhythms. A serious disappointment, recommended only for inveterate Disney fans and most young people.

Dave Kehr

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“It’s more like Harry’s handmade
suits–specially made for the person of taste.”

Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz

An amusing and sophisticated espionage thriller, only slightly flawed
by some of its contrivances. This British spy spoof is about a colorful
tailor who gets off on being respected by the prominent people he surrounds
himself with. The self-exiled tailor lives in Panama by the decree of his
Uncle Benny (Harold Pinter). He’s a fantastic storyteller with a hidden
shady past. He reluctantly becomes a spy for an unscrupulous British agent,
Andy Osnard (Pierce Brosnan), who is coming off a sex scandal in his last
botched assignment. Andy’s a disgraced MI-6 agent exiled to Panama City
to cool his heels. But Andy is a go-getter, a schemer and an opportunist
without scruples. He’s one of those handsome womanizer types (he’s not
exactly James Bond in this role, but instead plays a parody of that role),
who only looks out for himself and is quite adept at leaving others in
the lurch after seducing them. The drug trafficking and gun-running climate
of Panama will prove to be a place just right for him.

Arriving in Panama the first thing Andy does is look up the fidgety
tailor Harry Pendel (Geoffrey Rush), a half-Jewish cockney ex-convict who
reinvented himself as the Saville Row tailor. Harry made up a tale that
he was partners with the WASP Brathwaite and that he learned the craft
in prison, and after serving time his beloved Uncle Benny set him up in
business with the condition he must be far away from him. Here Harry sells
old-fashioned custom-made suits at steep prices, working out of a shop
decorated with leather club chairs where he serves class — Scotch is served
to his pampered wealthy clientele. Harry always speaks with utter praise
for his late partner Brathwaite, even though Brathwaite never was his partner.
The oil painting that hangs on Harry’s fitting-room wall is supposed to
be a portrait of Brathwaite but is actually a portrait of Harry’s late
Uncle Benny, an East End rag man, whose dreamlike face appears at troubled
times to offer Harry advice on how to deal with his current affairs. Harry
lives a bourgeois life in his suburban villa, driving his luxurious Land
Rover and immensely enjoys being a doting father to his two kids and a
loving husband to a wife he simply adores.

Andy knows all this and also that the tailor owes $50,000 on a farm
he bought when he mortgaged his business and home, and now the loan is
being called in by the bank. His American wife, Louisa (Jamie Lee Curtis),
the respected daughter of an engineer who worked on the canal, doesn’t
know Harry’s dark secret from the past or how he has put their two children
Sarah and Mark in financial danger because of his rash actions. But Harry
has an offer from Andy he can’t refuse. If he sells Andy info about what’s
going on in Panama the loan will be paid back by the Brits, as the Brits
like the Americans are worried about the canal now that it has been handed
back to Panama. They are worried that those in power shouldn’t sell this
very valuable trade route to another country. And since the tailor’s wife
is the high-powered executive assistant to the Canal director, Andy gets
him to spy on her. Harry can’t resist this temptation to tell tall stories
and soon he’s telling Andy what he wants to hear. Andy knows that he’s
making this up, but pays him anyway because it fits in with the scheme
he’s cooking up.

Geoffrey Rush is the timid man trapped in the post-Noriega Panamanian
intrigues, and Pierce Brosnan is the seducer without morals. They play
one another off in a most refreshingly joyous way, as for a while it is
hard to tell who has the upper hand. Under John Boorman’s (Deliverance/Hope
and Glory) competent direction, the film has air to breathe for its
smart storytelling parody. It is based on the popular 1996 novel by John
John le Carré who also was the screenwriter and the executive producer,
making sure his work was translated onto the screen in a reasonable facsimile
from the book. He said he was more than satisfied with the movie.

Chilean actress Leonor Varela in her role as Harry’s receptionist,
whose one side of the face is scarred because of the beating given her
by Noriega’s henchmen, gave a fine edgy performance in a supporting role.
Noriega is the puppet state leader of Panama whom the CIA head man Bush
put in power. When his criminal activities and dealings in drugs became
too great for even, the then, President Bush, he was forcibly removed in
an invasion. The country is now supposedly a democracy, but as Boorman
wryly points out these are the same faces running the country who were
with Noriega. Brendan Gleeson plays the wino, a one time rebel against
Noriega, who is now too weak after spending some jail time to be anything
but a broken down man. Harry’s tale to Andy is that he’s head of the ’silent
opposition.’ He says that this freedom-fighting organization, headed by
Gleeson, is planning to take back control of the Panama Canal from the
corrupt government. The joke is how readily the Americans buy into this
unreliable info without thoroughly checking it out, and how this quickly
turns into an international disagreement between Panama and the U.S.. Catherine
McCormack is part of the British Embassy staff, who succumbs to Andy’s
sexual charms.

This farce works out fairly well. The script is tight. The directing
is impeccable, the acting finely tuned, and it sets a fine mood for a thinking
man’s picture to develop amidst all the comedy. Boorman gets his digs in
on what is going on down Panama way, now that Noriega is in jail. The dig
I liked best was: When a local Panamanian is pointing to the city’s skyline,
he asks — “You know what the poor call those?” The answer is: “Cocaine
Towers.” This is not an ordinary commercial formula film made to fit a
mass audience, but it’s more like Harry’s handmade suits–specially made
for the person of taste.

Amy (Jennifer Morrison), Travis (Matthew Davis) and Graham (Joseph Lawrence) are undergraduate
filmmakers aspiring to win the respected Hitchcock Award for best opinion film,
traditionally guaranteeing a film job in Hollywood. In a chance meeting with Reese
(Loretta Devine), the new campus safe keeping sentinel, Amy is inspired by the history of an urban
legend at Pendleton University, Reese’s former place of employment. Amy and her corps of
customer students including profitability operator Vanessa (Eva Mendes), cameraman Simon (Marco
Hofschneider) and uncommon effects geeks Stan (Anthony Anderson) and Dirk (Michael Bacall)
start work, but fateful accidents initiate.

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“Just when I thought I was out, they in me back in.”

Although Al Pacino delivered that famous line in The Godfather, Part III, the words readily could have been spoken by Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland) at the beginning of 24’s squiffy-octane fourth salt. The indefatigable and day in and day out renegade special agent bring about himself on professional poor ice at the end of Season Three, making it all too soft for Erin Driscoll (Alberta Watson), the pompous strange senior of CTU (that’s the Counter Terrorist Component for all you newbies), to burn him. Jack, however, always lands on his feet, and for the nonce works for Secretary of Defense James Heller (William Devane), a rugged-talking Donald Rumsfeld daze-unsatisfactory, who’s in L.A. for a briefing at CTU, and hasn’t an faintest his married daughter Audrey (Kim Raver) is carrying on a clandestine business with Jack.

Of sure, in unerring 24 the craze, merely seconds after the yarn begins, all hell breaks unstructured. A train explodes in the California desert, Heller and Audrey are kidnapped, and before anyone can explain Osama Bin Laden, America’s nuclear reactors teeter on the brink of meltdown. Terrorists once again chain of events to bring the nation to its knees, and the manipulate conditions of calamities forces Jack back into the CTU clasp, where he races against time to—you guessed it—save the area.

24 has riveted audiences for the close by four years not only because of brilliant storytelling, nail-biting suspense, top-dismiss production values, and battle stunts galore, but also because it takes us out of our comfort zone, tapping into bleeding real terrorist fears and depicting fantastic situations with enough kernels of truth to make us be very uncomfortable. Yet in the interest of governmental correctness, prior seasons bring into the world tiptoed around the issue of ethnicity, giving viewers generic European villains instead of more realistic (and frightening) Muslim extremists. In our hyper-sensitive post-9/11 environment, the show’s producers seemed unwilling, even afraid to rouse disagreement or risk racist allegations by pinning nefarious deeds on those of Middle Eastern descent.

Pleasing, no more. Season Four’s immersive plotline at the last moment throws caution to the wind by attacking fashionable terrorism well-spring-on, and, as a result, the storyline feels more immediate and threatening. A well-to-do house of Turkish immigrants lies at the center of a rickety Muslim stall, and the patriarch, Navi Araz (Nestor Serrano), will immolate anything—even his teenage son, Behrooz (Jonathan Ahdout)—to see America destroyed. His dutiful wife, Dina, shares his convictions—to a point—and as played with icy make up one’s mind by the excellent Iranian actress Shohreh Aghdashloo (who earned an Oscar nomination on her stunning function in Organization of Sand and Pea-souper), the character carries on 24’s praxis of creating slick, sharp women we dote on to odium. Like Sherry Palmer and Nina Myers to come her, Dina Araz possesses enough complication and contradiction to fare her a fascinating subject, and Aghdashloo bravely embraces every facet of her name.

Dina, however, isn’t 24’s only charismatic figure. Along with the non-stop action and amusing stress, a gallery of quirky characters keeps the series fresh and fun. The tactless CTU sourpuss, Chloe (wonderfully played by Mary Lynn Rajskub); her overweight, lisping team-mate, Edgar (Louis Lombardi); the hard-ass Secretary Heller; and lock-jawed CTU dragon lady, Miss Driscoll, all push our buttons in various ways. Thankfully, the writers seem astute enough to realize explosions and gunfire alone can’t shore up attentiveness, and their richly drawn characters lend the production vital fabric and emotion.

Yes, some of 24’s trademark twists and turns are becoming formulaic and predictable—most noticeably, the practice of “surprising” us with returning characters from previous seasons during significant sweeps periods—but that’s a stereotypical indication of a protracted-running series. The writers can no longer resuscitate Nina and Sherry (both of whom met a bitter ambivalent in Season Three), so this time around Jack’s trusted confrere, Tony Almeida (Carlos Bernard), and his estranged partner, Michelle (Reiko Aylesworth), crop up midway through the mature, as does ex-President David Palmer (Dennis Haysbert), who steps in to help the White Edifice manage a mélange of security crises. Although their introductions may be less dramatic and shocking than the writers intend, we’re still eager to see them, and accept the gimmick at face value. Banal comedies and dramas require the steadying influence of long-running characters, but 24 remains a different bird, and its fresh angles and fresh faces keep us constantly guessing—and that’s just how we get a bang it.

Staying in view of the mainstream has kept 24 a critical and popular celebrity, as well as a unexcelled organism, and that’s rare in today’s homogenized TV landscape. CSI and Law and Order franchises may usually the airwaves, but thankfully Fox has made sure there is only one 24. And for my blood pressure’s sake, let’s hope they keep it that way.

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Only of the great films of the 1970s, Harmonious Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Haunt was also a certain of the last movies of the Easy Riders, Raging Bulls cycle of American Cinema, before the success of films like Jaws and Star Wars gave rise to a blockbuster mentality that’s all but ruined mainstream Hollywood moviemaking. Looking at it these days, more than three decades after it was made, the film is allay awfully impressive: it remains mysterious, hapless, appalling, shocking. I suspected people seeing it for the first time in 2008 respond quite differently than those who first epigram it when it was rejuvenated, that the tutor in with its cast of to be to come stars in some ways works against the obscure today.

Originally a United Artists release, Warner’s Blu-ray of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest gets high marks; the film looks about as good as it ever will, and while the extras are carryovers from earlier laserdisc and DVD incarnations, these too are excellent.

‘Night of the Living Cuckoos?’ Strange exotic poster from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Funny, I don’t remember Christopher Lee appearing in the obscure.

Convicted felon Randall “R.P.” McMurphy (Jack Nicholson), naively believing he’d be better off serving the remainder of his sentence at a state mental hospital than on work detail in the slammer, convinces his jailers that he’s mentally ill and is shipped off to Dr. Spivey (real-life doctor Dean R. Brooks) for extended observation. Spivey thinks McMurphy is faking, but places him in a ward supervised by Nurse Ratched (Louise Fletcher).

The other patients on the ward are passive and complacent, developmentally stagnated into a purgatorial-type existence through an overuse of psychotherapeutic drugs and Nurse Ratched’s subtly condescending domination.

McMurphy’s arrival and his attempts to motivate his bunkmates into asserting themselves a little rocks the boat, threatening Nurse Ratched’s control of the ward. No matter that McMurphy’s crude, uneducated prodding might actually be helping some of the patients, Nurse Ratched’s authority is for the first time being challenged, and the film becomes a battle of the wills between defiant patient and ruinous caregiver.

Ken Kesey’s novel was first optioned by Kirk Douglas, who turned it into a Broadway play that was unsuccessful, despite the material and its great cast. Douglas, obviously, was drawn to its “little man vs. The System” qualities that often appealed to the actor-producer. Kirk’s son Michael eventually produced the film version, which was directed by Milos Forman. Forman’s parents died at Auschwitz and he spent his early years in Communist Czechoslovakia. He saw Cuckoo’s Nest as a parable about a totalitarianism with which he was intimately acquainted, with McMurphy an incendiary force igniting a passive, defeated populace into action. (Oddly, some people misinterpret the film’s set-up. The point is McMurphy isn’t crazy; he knows it, Spivey pretty much knows it and, maybe, so does Nurse Ratched. Equally important is that at the start of the film McMurphy isn’t committed; he’s essentially “breaking in.”)

Whatever the interpretation of the material, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest struck a raw nerve with 1975-76 audiences; they had never seen anything like it. Indeed, except for Frederick Wiseman’s banned-at-the-time Titicut Foliies (1967), there wasn’t anything like it.

It’s important to remember that in 1975 Jack Nicholson was the only recognizable “name” in the picture, and his prestige as an actor hadn’t yet been eclipsed by his familiarity as the perpetually grinning, sunglasses-wearing Hollywood celebrity. At the time, audiences knew him almost exclusively as the everyman star of movies like Five Easy Pieces and The Last Detail, not as the front-row spectator at all the Lakers’ games who played The Joker in Batman. The rest of the cast were unknowns, young actors making their first film appearances or, like William Redfield (as sexually frustrated patient Dale Harding), busy but largely anonymous character players. Many in the cast would become major character stars: Danny DeVito, Christopher Lloyd, Will Sampson, Scatman Crothers. Back then, however, no one knew who these people were, and the combination of Bo Goldman’s screenplay, Forman’s direction, and the superb acting by all made these people and their environment seem absolutely, starkly real and authentic.*

The film was shot in a real wing at the real Oregon State Mental Hospital in Salem, and the unusual production methodology detailed in the disc’s audio commentary and documentary added enormously to its verisimilitude. Further, the addition of non-actors like Brooks and some improvised lines and bits of business only added to its authentic air. Indeed, many who saw the film when it was new assumed many in the cast weren’t actors but real patients recruited for the film. Some even believe Nicholson’s dedication extended all the way to experiencing real electroshock therapy, which seems doubtful.

Can audiences watching the film today experience the same devastation of those final scenes, or does their familiarity with DeVito, Christopher Lloyd, etc., distance younger viewers from what was once immediate and genuinely raw? One thing’s for sure, were it made today One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest would be a very different film indeed. Besides the inevitable parade of ’60s pop tunes that would replace the music heard on the ward’s record player, the marvelous ambiguity of so much of the film would almost certainly be extinguished. Forman, for instance, calls Nurse Ratched “an instrument of evil” who thinks she’s really helping her patients, but does she perhaps become aware of her own evil briefly, in her sadism toward Billy? In the conference with Spivey and the other doctors, is her assertiveness in wanting to keep McMurphy under her care truly motivated by caring selflessness or conscious cruelty?

Slumber Contributor Exterminating 2

Don't Let Go

Year:
1987
Rated:
R
Hie Time:
75 minutes
Canada display Company:
A.I.M.
Director:
Deborah Brock
Starring:
Crystal Bernard, Juliette Cummins, Patrick Lowe, and Atanas Ilitch as "The Driller Killer"
T & A:
Lower world No
That's No Cowboy:
That's Abdullah the Cutthroat
"The Party Begins When The Lights Go Out!"

It is an old Hollywood adage that sequels are rarely if ever the equal of the originals on which they are based (The second installment of the Godfather series is a good example of one of the few that have accomplished this feat). But that doesn't apply to bad horror movies, does it? I mean, look at the Friday the 13th series. The 6th damn one was probably the best of the entire fucking series and the other sequels were gems in their own right. Armed with this knowledge, the review crew here at Night of the Creeps sat down to enjoy the second installment of Slumber Party Massacre. There was absolutely no doubt in my mind that the second installment in this series would be at least three stars just by virtue of the fact that it was following one of the best bad movies ever made in the original Slumber Party Massacre. Before Eagle Te proceeds to offer his humble opinion on the film, here is a brief plot summary: Courtney, the hot pants younger sister of the surviving new girl from the original that enjoyed strumming her hot bearded treasures to the latest issue of Playgirl (sorry for the obvious frustration, but its been two weeks since Eagle Te has had a chance to practice his Lotus punch on the heavy bag) and who made Eagle Te want to practice his forms in the nude for her amusement, is all grown up now but is troubled by horrible nightmares of her traumatic experience at the eternal slumber party a few years back. When her and her female rock band (a strange yet alluring combination of Bananarama and Tone Loc) decide to go to a condo and play nude Crocodile Mile with their boyfriends for the weekend, terror ensues again when they are systematically eliminated by a musically inclined killer!

Sounds like its worth a rent? WELL IT SURE AS HELL AIN'T!! This movie sucks such a big cock that it would put a number of donkey bobbing strippers in Tiajuana to shame!! The killer is without a doubt the most excruciating character I have ever watched in my years of bad movie experience. The motherfucker is dressed like some Fonz look alike in a gay techno club (not that Eagle Te visits such establishments…Hey, do you think I was just born with this long flowing white kung fu hairdo?) has a drill guitar that he kills people with, then plays a shitty tune and quips an equally painful one liner that will make you cringe harder than when your friends find your autographed John Tesh CD stashed away in the back of your closet! I would sooner volunteer to jack off a mule nude and barefoot in a pit of broken glass while William Shatner's music CD is blasted over some 200 inch speakers in a packed house of the 70,000 seat Georgia Dome then sit through this painful bastard again. IT IS SERIOUSLY THAT BAD!!! Its not that the kills and the teenage cast are bad…in many ways they are okay and there are a few truly funny and memorable scenes, but the killer takes all the promise of this movie and SHITS all over it! The killer is truly that bad and his full length song had me creating a noose out of dirtiest pair of BVDs before it was over with! Heed Te's advice…SKIP OVER THIS BASTARD!!! If you think you're strong enough to stomach it, go ahead and try it. BE WARNED, you will walk away from this feeling like you have just been violated by an angry Turkish construction crew who held you down while Ahmad proceeded to pound your anus with a jackhammer and didn't stop until his favorite episode of Dawson's Creek was over with! Don't laugh…it could happen to you…just ask El Santo!!! Eagle Te definitely does not approve!!!!!

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-Eagle Te

"With a name love Slumber Caucus Liquidate it's gotta be correct… bullshit! The driller killer/POISON lead choirboy sucked shit and Helen Chapel didn't even get conspicuous! This film throughly embarasses its predocessor."
"The thoroughly embarassing 'Driller Killer' that stars as the 'villain' in this sub-zero shitfest deserves to be kicked in the nuts with his damn coarse suede shoes. Slumber Body Massacre 2 is an uncompromised abomination- individual that does not hesitate to take off for a red latest shit on the tombstone of its predecessor!"
"FUCK THIS SHIT!!! Couple of genuinely jocular scenes are simply ruined by the worst humdinger in movie dead letter!! If you surveillance this, don't forget to wipe afterwards! "

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Eleven year outdated Simon Birch (Ian Michael Smith) was born a dwarf. Despite (or perhaps
because of) his disability, he believes he has been chosen championing something special by Genius -
to be a principal. Unfortunately, he doesn’t quite answer into the small town of Graveston,
Maine. His parents bear practically disowned him and he encounters agitation with the local
man (David Strathairn) and Sunday school teacher (Jane Hooks). But he’s establish a
soulmate in Joe (Joseph Mazzello), another kid in his class. Joe’s mother (Ashley
Judd) is bachelor and has never disclosed the name of the father, which causes Joe to be
something of an outcast too. He’s also having trouble adjusting to his mother’s
young man (Oliver Platt). When tragedy cruelly intervenes in both their lives, Simon and Joe
embark on individual journeys - Joe to find his father, and Simon to regard his karma.

---

George C. Scott was a powerful and volatile actor. It was perhaps this latter quality that accounted for the fact that with the exception of “Patton” he appeared in very few films as the heroine star performer. He spent most of his time in supporting or character roles, and more’s the pity. “They Might Be Giants” from 1971 is a good example of the man’s leading labour at his prime. It’s an offbeat film in which Scott plays an weird part. It’s not exactly an undiscovered ideal; too many people already know take it. It’s more like a flawed treasure, immensely entertaining if you’re willing to overlook its shortcomings.

Now, when I say offbeat, I employing strange. Scott plays Settle Justin Playfair, a character who’s nuts. Only, we’re all a little harebrained sometimes, and the film suggests that maybe it isn’t all that bad to be out of one’s gourd. Until his little woman died, the judge was a rich, respected Manhattan jurist. Then, with her expiry, he became a wealthy, disregarded, paranoid loony. You look at, he became Sherlock Holmes. He forsook and forgot his former life, donned a deerstalker cap and a meerschaum pipe, and began looking for Dr. Moriarity behind every door. Still possessing a crack mind, Playfair is able to aver this unanimity indubitably and might in all probability pull someone’s leg enjoyed the rest of days in the guise if it weren’t for his brother. Wanting only to get down from his hands on the judge’s money, the confrere tries to have him committed to an organization. The doctor assigned to determine the judge’s bonkers fettle is played by Joanne Woodward, whose character’s name conveniently happens to be Watson. Dr. Mildred Watson. Playfair knows what she’s after but can’t cause to be acquitted over the coincidence of the celebrity, so he invites her to accompany him on a given of his cases.

Turns peripheral exhausted, the example may be more legitimate than imagined. It seems the brother is being blackmailed by a goon who wants to winkle out his blood lettuce from the judge’s standing, and to get it he would just as soon see the magistrate dead as committed. Together, Playfair and Watson discover a bevy of unspecified clues, a to of displaced persons, and each other.

Director Anthony Harvey (”The Lion in Winter,” “Grace Quigley”), freelancer James Goldman (”The Lion in Winter,” “Nicholas and Alexandra”), processor John Foreman (”Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” “Prizzi’s Honor”) and composer John Barry (the Bond series, etc.) create a film that matter-of-factly rejoices in eccentricity. As Playfair and Watson soon find out, everybody in the world is strange in one way or another, and it is our idiosyncrasies that draw up us who we are. Loneliness and denial are boy problems in a air corrupted by parsimony, selfishness, irresponsibility, and thoughtlessness; to say nothing of those who would situate little value on weak spring. In the end, the movie is not so much an adventure as it is a love story between two isolated, withdrawn people. And it works most of the time. It’s a delight to see Scott take charge of a role, radiating courage in his Don Quixote-cognate with persona but reflecting an special self doubt as sedately. Woodward is likewise effective as the timid psychiatrist with no friends or family who sees much of herself in the delusional judge.