Eye of the Needle is a nearly forgotten film staring Donald Sutherland as a German spy, and Kate Nelligan. As the film opens, Kate is marrying a young pilot, and Sutherland, code name "The Needle" is discovered by his landlady, whom he promptly kills. On their wedding day, Kate and her new husband have an auto accident which leaves the husband in a wheel chair. Kate is pregnant.

Kate, her daughter and her husband move to an isolated island. Meanwhile, The needle, who has managed to infiltrate the English military, but is close to being discovered, has learned the details of D-Day. He sets off in a small boat to be rescued, but ends up on the same island as Kate in the storm. Things heat up, as Sutherland has to kill more and more often to keep his secret, and he and Kate become intimate. The fur really flies when she discovers his secret.

IMDB users give it 7.0/10, which is fairly high, and Maltin gives it about 3 stars, which is about right in my opinion. It is well worth watching.

Porizkova went evil, and pranced around naked in "Thursday" (1998). We've seen these before, but it's not like we'll turn away when naked supermodels show up. This will be issued on DVD in about three weeks,

Consensus: about two and three quarters. Porizkova got some good marks from critics for playing a complete psychotic with gusto.

IMDB summary: 6.8 out of 10. Apollo rated it 78/100, but Apollo users were much less favorable (60/100)

DVD info from Amazon. Available on pre-order only. Will be issued October 17

Remember that game on Sesame Street called "One of these things is not like the other"? Let's play.

Which one does NOT belong?

The correct answer is Shakespeare. He couldn't work on A Killer Christmas because he had to do a rewrite on The Cable Guy. But the rest do belong. Scott Glenn, a completely solid down-to-earth performer stars. Christopher Trumbo, who wrote The Don is Dead and some other pics back in the 70's, co-wrote this, his first script in 20 years. And the legendary 70's genius, Bogdanovich, directed. Times must be tougher than we thought.

I don't know who Monica Talma is, but she got stark naked in this made-for-cable movie. Unfortunately, she was appearing in a porno film on Scott Glenn's TV set, so the quality ain't the best but, hey, naked is good.

IMDB summary: 5.7 out of 10.

No purchase info available. Yeah, like you would be standing in line to get this for all your friends for Christmas, and maybe a copy for your family priest. I picked it up for $2.99 in the bargain bin at Blockbuster. And I'm thinking it was somewhat overpriced.

I'm kidding. It isn't Raiders of the Lost Ark, but it isn't as bad as it sounds. In fact it's top of the line for made-for-cable. Maybe Glenn and Bogdanovich are down on their luck, but they both still have talent, and the script wasn't bad. I watched it without the FF, and that's more than I can say for some REAL movies! It was worth every penny of the $2.99, maybe even twenty to thirty cents more.

But how much lower can Bogdanovich sink? Maybe next year he'll be working as an AD for Michael Cimino.

This is a period drama about Ireland in the 1920's, when the last generation of the Anglo-Irish aristocrats was trying to decide where they belonged. It is done in the general dignified style of BBC, Masterpiece Theater or Merchant/Ivory.

The historical background:

In 1914, the English revoked the "Home Rule Bill", which had been designed to give Ireland a modicum of autonomy. As you might expect., the Irish were not pleased. Various radical and separatist groups were motivated to action, including Sinn Fein ("we ourselves", founded in 1905), a group which is still known today as the political arm of the IRA.

The Easter Rebellion, in the spring of 1916, marked the beginning of a new era in Irish-English relations. On the day after Easter, the Republicans claimed various government buildings in Dublin, and declared a provisional government of the new Irish Republic. This didn't sit well with the English, who sent in troops the next day, established martial law, rounded up the insurgents and sent the leaders to the firing squad without even any pre-execution crumpets.

I don't know if they thought that this would strike fear into the hearts of the rebels, and quell the insurgency, but if they thought that they were plumb loco, as we say in Texas. Shooting some Irish patriots is like shooting Jason in those Friday 13th movies. It just makes them madder. Britain's forceful suppression of the revolt actually strengthened the will of the rebel groups.

Sinn Fein was reorganized under Eamon De Valera, and set up an alternate assembly which claimed to be the legitimate ruling body of Ireland. The British and Irish fought for five or six years, and if you have seen the movie Michael Collins, with Liam Neeson, you're probably familiar with what happened in that time.

The fighting continued until the establishment of the Irish Free State in 1922. Collins himself was nominated to head up the team which represented the Republicans in the negotiations with Lloyd George. This treaty incorporated 26 of Ireland's 32 counties. I believe you know pretty much what has happened to the other six counties over the years. Actually, the 26 to the South weren't so tranquil, either, in those days. Even patriotic Irish leaders were split over the proper nature of the Anglo-Irish relationship, and the Free State treaty had opponents from every extreme of the political spectrum.

OK, enough background. The point is that there was a bloc of English-Irish creoles, people of English descent who were born in Ireland or whose children were born in Ireland, and who considered themselves both Irish and good subjects of the Crown. Many of them had gone there originally to be government administrators. When Ireland became a battleground in the teens and twenties, these people found themselves at the September of their era, with the end clearly in sight.

They were not able to continue in their former glory, and they had no viable alliances to forge a new life. Irish Republicans certainly didn't want them in the new free Ireland, and yet their divided loyalty made them suspect by the British as well.

So they wondered desperately what to do, tried to stay alive, and cried a lot as they planned to leave their great estates and move to two-room flats in Toronto.

This movie chronicles the lives of those people, the Anglo-Irish, in that time, the 1920's.

Needless to say, for the purpose of dramatic contrast, the lovely young Anglo-Irish daughter is flirting with a British soldier (who is unacceptable to her family because of his social status), and an Irish radical (who is a violent outlaw, and therefore even more unacceptable). Her relationships with the two men leave her walking a dangerous tightrope in a netless society.

The movie is marked by beautiful cinematography. You may not have heard of Slavomir Idziak, but he was Kieslowski's cinematographer, and he's in his element here, working with a director who idolizes Kieslowski, and a composer who scored many of Kieslowski's films. If you had told me, "Oh, yeah, it's a rare English language film from Kieslowski", I would have believed you until I looked at the 1999 date. (Kieslowski died a few years ago).

Oh, well, I guess you can already figure whether you'd like it or not. I have to say that I did not. I found it too middle brow and historical-romance-novelish to be a great movie, and too damned slow and boring to be a good entertainment. I thought it was pretty much of a stuffy snoozefest with some very strong atmospheric touches.

Having said that, let me soften the blow a bit by saying that I ordered the DVD because I was impressed with the photography and the love scene, and I want to see the film in a format closer to the theatrical visual experience.

Keeley Hawes was topless during her rendezvous with the Irish Republican. These are taken from VHS. Regrettably Blockbuster chose not to carry the DVD. The love scene in this movie was done quite well, too well to rely on VHS images. Hawes was afraid of the guy, somewhat repulsed by him, but attracted to him as well, and the scene was charged with a subtle erotica. And Keeley Hawes is appealing enough that I will re-do this film as soon as I can get my hands on a DVD.

Consensus review: about two and a half stars.Three from Berardinelli, two from Ebert. Ebert's review doesn't really explain why he rated it so low. Like me, he was impressed with some visual elements and period detail, and he didn't say much negative, other than implying that the story wasn't interesting enough.

IMDB summary: 6.7 out of 10.

DVD info from Amazon.

And if The Last September represents the traditional approach to period films, here's a film that wants to take all the old rules and discard them.

I had no idea what it was. I just picked it up because it was rated R and had Liv Tyler in it. Well, don't be fooled by the R rating. This movie could have been PG. There is no nudity or anything else but harsh 18th century language.

But the movie was worth it anyway. Helluva direction job. If you live outside the UK, you probably never heard of this movie, but it was the film feature debut of Ridley Scott's son Jake, and it is absolutely dazzling.

A good movie? Well, not bad. It's a period yarn based on some real characters - a shopkeeper and a gentleman down on their luck, who team up to become famous highwaymen, and who rob people with such panache and courtliness that they become beloved and legendary characters. It's energetic, but frankly, I thought the script was so-so, and the characters only moderately interesting.

But the yarn isn't what I want to talk about. Wow, does this guy have visual style and a knack for atmosphere. Every scene, every frame is a treasure. Rent it just to see the kind of fireworks that can be generated by a young director who loves the medium, and loves to show off.

He's not a mature talent yet. The soundtrack was techno-pop, which was a bit of a risk for a story located in 1750. Sometimes it worked to perfection (one that comes to mind is a waltz scene with the actual waltz notes replaced in our ears by the modern techno score), at other times I thought it was just distracting and/or irritating, controversy for the sake of controversy, pointless iconoclasm.

Also, Jake Scott's background is in commercials and music videos, and he may be a bit too much in love with fast cuts and extreme close-ups. But I think that I'm probably just carping. There is so much talent on display here, that it's just fun to watch him at work. This isn't his great movie yet, but he's going to make one, and it isn't going to be that far in the future.

On the nudity front, Liv Tyler appeared in period costumes, but doesn't really have that much with which to stuff a bodice. Will she ever return to our century?

By the way, it was nice to see Robert Carlyle playing in the normal range again, instead of a lunatic or psychopath. For a while there it looked like he was going to be the new Klaus Kinski.

Box office: a failure in the USA, with only $500,000, although it played as many as 475 screens. It was a moderate success in the UK, where it took in 2.5 million pounds.

Consensus: Between two and a half and three stars. Only 69 from Apollo, but 86 from Apollo users. Ebert did not like it at all (one and a half stars), finding it irritating, and guilty of "stylistic excess" - a reasonable point. It's not easy to determine at what point style becomes self-indulgence. Scott obviously passed Ebert's flash point, but not mine. In counterpoint, Berardinelli awarded it three stars and pronounced it a "stylistic success". So it goes. One man's trash ....

IMDB summary: 6.4 out of 10. An impressive 736 votes were cast, so I guess the rest of the world saw it, even if the US didn't.

DVD info from Amazon. The only extras are some bios and trailers, and a very brief feature on the making of the film, but it's a great DVD transfer, worthy of the style of the film.