What is it about family talk-a-thons that make me want to watch them repeatedly?

Happy to report absolutely no difference in my opinion since I saw it in the theater. Except that two other heist movies have been released since. One had better dialogue (Heist). One had a better heist (Ocean's Eleven). Neither had Marlon Brando, Edward Norton and Robert DeNiro in their cast, though.

One problem is that the film is over four hours long. Another problem is that it has nothing if not some of the least ambitious teleplay sensibilities, always choosing to underscore moments in an annoyingly obligatory manner or, failing that, just plain boring us stiff with dry dialogue and under interesting relationships. On the other hand, for a four hour movie, it has more than its share of scope (especially being that it only concerns a single battle in a four year war), a great number of honestly passionate sequences and if not terrific, than certainly intriguing performances (most notably Tom Berenger, who looks so wrong for his fake beard, it almost makes his performance feel more intimate, as if everyone around him seems to be looking down on him, whispering under their breath: "His beard is so lame, I bet his military strategy is equally incompetent."). Nevertheless, when the chips are down, I'd stand up for Gettysburg, were it attacked by my film snob peers. The movie itself has the spirit of the Rebel army, who, if you've been under a rock, lose the battle and subsequently, the war.. I guess I choose to root for the underdog. And I've heard that requires no justification. The Battle of Little Round Top is the only sequence big enough to require a movie theater.

I don't usually turn movies off after thirty minutes of joke retreads, lame-o Hong Kong stylings and absolutely unfunny humor. But sometimes I do.

Or, The Greatest Gimmick Movie of All Time. There's nothing The Great Escape won't do to please you - the viewer. Every single solitary moment is engineered to be part of a master plan to divert your attention from your problems by swindling you into becoming lost in the problems of these men, all of them escape masters. The title refers to a plan hatched in order to liberate some 200 members of a prisoner of war camp in Germany. And everything leading up to, including and following this escape is pure cinematic genius. Sturges paces things in such a throw-your-reality to the wind manner, we can hardly stop smiling long enough to realize just how much of a fluff piece the film really is. To mixed results, the film ends with most of the cast in a desperate Plan B: keeping German soldiers occupied in the chase rather than on the front. The solemn, almost one hundred eighty degree spin the film's conclusion turns out ot be works - but it seems almost obligatory for thee filmmakers to give the entertainment of the film meaning, in order not to make WWII seem like a good old fashioned larf. "I say there are things we don't want to know - important things!" Hey, I just want to be taken away for a few hours. Mission accomplished. Bitching ceases.

I wish I could say I liked it more or less than last year, when I first saw it; but I didn't. Everything about it was marginally reminiscent of my last viewing, which followed the very disappointing Proof of Life. I guess I expected to find myself blaming that film for my indifferent - or should I say, "not blown away exactly" - response to Cast Away. It really is more of a fantasy than a tragedy, even though it contains the single most terrifying fictional plane crash I've seen to date. Hanks is superb, if only because we love to watch Tom Hanks, even in uber serious roles, where we relish the way he seems to shuffle off the responsibility the weight of the dramatic power adorns him with. The best part about Cast Away isn't its third act, but that's the most rewarding part about Hanks performance. Its as if he's not Tom Hanks playing Chuck Noland for about thirty five minutes. He's all the sudden neither man. And we can't get enough of his soft, sad profundity.

...is trouble, so don't get mixed up with her. Of course, Edward G. Robinson does and it causes him a whole heap of good old fashioned trouble (and by extension, we get to watch, which makes is rather fun).

Isn't 'Sweet Smell of Success' brilliant? An endlessly quotable, razor sharp vision of the dog eating the dog. I love the fact that Hunsecker appears to have a thing for his sister - which, coupled with his power and abusive rhetoric, makes him seem an almost cartoonish monster. I couldn't begin to list my favorite lines - but it made me glad that Alexander MacKendrick directed it; the director of British comedies like 'The Ladykillers' not only nails that noir edge, melding the time period with the circumstances seamlessly, but he has a knack for making the verbal acid which spews from Lancaster's (in his best performance, by the way) mouth, seem so sharp as to be witty and admirable. Its a feat - like 'In the Company of Men' and just about anything Mamet has done (most notably, let's say, 'Glengarry Glen Ross') - MacKendrick allows the delivery of these lines to almost anticipate a punchline while, in fact, seeming to flow as rapidly as a screwball comedy's dialogue might.

Do the can-can-can!

Too straightforward and uncluttered for my taste, this Norweigan detective thriller plays like a really surprising American movie that still features the same cops and the same plots, but dazzles with tone and atmosphere.