Through a Glass Darkly (1961)

I felt I had to tell you even if it would interrupt your writing. Four family members take their holiday on a remote Swedish island, shortly after one of them, Karin (Harriet Andersson) is released from a mental hospital where she has been treated for schizophrenia. Karin’s husband Martin (Max von Sydow), a doctor, tells her widowed father David (Gunnar Björnstrand) that Karin’s disease is almost incurable. Meanwhile, Minus (Lars Passgård), Karin’s 17-year-old brother, tells Karin that he wishes he could have a real conversation with their father and feels deprived of his father’s affection. David is a novelist suffering from writer’s block who has just returned from a long trip to Switzerland. He announces he will leave again in a month, this time for Dubrovnik, though he promised he would stay around. The other three perform a play for him that Minus has written. David feigns his approval but takes offence since the play could be interpreted as an attack on his character. That night, after rejecting Martin’s erotic overtures, Karin wakes up and follows the sound of a foghorn to the attic. She faints after she hears voices behind the peeling wallpaper. She then enters David’s room and after he puts her to sleep on the couch and leaves the room she looks through his desk and finds his diary, seeing his description of her disease as incurable. She discovers his desire to record the details of her deterioration. The following morning, David and Martin, while fishing, confront each other over Karin. Martin accuses David of sacrificing his daughter for his art and of being self-absorbed, callous, cowardly and phony. You’re trying to fill your void with Karin’s extinction. David is evasive but admits that much of what Martin says is true. David says that he recently tried to kill himself by driving over a cliff during his stay in Switzerland but was saved by a faulty transmission. He says that after that, he discovered that he loves Karin, Minus and Martin, and this gives him hope. Meanwhile, Karin tells Minus about her episodes, and that she is waiting for God to appear behind the wallpaper in the attic. Minus is somewhat sexually frustrated, and Karin teases him, even more so after she discovers that he hides a porn magazine. Later, on the beach, when Karin sees that a storm is coming, she runs into a wrecked ship and huddles in fear. Minus goes to her and she embraces him incestuously before recoiling in shock at her overture. Minus tells his father about the incident in the ship and Martin calls for an ambulance. Karin asks to speak with her father alone. She confesses her misconduct toward Martin and Minus, saying that a voice told her to act that way and also to search David’s desk. She tells David she would like to remain at the hospital, because she cannot go back and forth between two realities but must choose one … Am I little or has the illness made a child of me? Do you think I’m strange? The first in Swedish auteur Ingmar Bergman’s Faith trilogy, this is a precise portrait of family, isolation, mental illness and the vicious vaunting ambition of writers. You’re hunting for themes. Your own daughter’s mental illness! This horrible exchange around 52 minutes in reminds us of the famous Nora Ephron saying, Everything is copy. The first of Bergman’s films to be shot on the island of Faro (at the suggestion of his regular collaborator, cinematographer Sven Nykvist), this quite personal four-hander was conceived as a Strindbergian three-act play, featuring the steady acceleration of tension as the daughter succumbs to the worst aspects of mental illness following a major discovery and each act forming a mirror panel to reveal the drama from different angles. It’s always about you and yours. Your callousness is perverse, say von Sydow as the son-in-law to the remote novelist heartlessly exploiting his daughter’s condition for his writerly ends. I think it’s God who shall reveal himself to us, declares Karin, before admitting she has seen God and he is a spider. What the hell can I do? wails her younger brother having escaped her clutches yet wanting her to regain her health. Eventually as Karin descends into the depths of madness her father recognises the re-enacting of history – Karin is going the way of her late mother and he finally understands his own role in the women’s demise. Utterly desolate and merciless, with Andersson unforgettable as the young woman who finally loses her mind. I can’t live in two worlds

Count Three and Pray (1955)

I’ve done enough walking to last me till Gabriel’s horn. Former brawler and womaniser Luke Fargo comes home to the South from the Civil War a reformed character. Following his traumatic experience at the Battle of Vicksburg, he is now a pastor, intent on rebuilding the town’s only church, which burned down, just like his own house. He is greeted with disbelief by his friends including Matty Miller (Nancy Kulp) and with plain hostility by the rest of the townsfolk as he fought on the Union side. Particularly opposed to him is Yancey Huggins (Raymond Burr) who sees a threat to his own iron-fisted control of the town. Huggins gets his aptly named enforcer Big (Richard Webb) to fight Fargo – but Fargo wins. Fargo encounters two contrasting women from his past: Southern belle and judge’s daughter Georgina Descrais (Allison Hayes) impoverished by the war and living with her ailing mother, tries to revive their romantic relationship, but he is not interested; local madam Selma (Jean Willes) is pleased by his return and accepts him on his own terms. Meanwhile, teenage orphan tomboy Lissy (Joanne Woodward) who has been living in the parsonage, initially dislikes him but gradually her feelings undergo a reversal. She insists on remaining there, taking over the kitchen, which causes Fargo a great deal of trouble, as the townspeople, alerted by Huggins, suspect him of falling back into his old ways and living with a girl. He does not help matters when he reluctantly gambles on a Sunday with prosperous businessman Albert Loomis (Philip Carey), winning a horse race to get lumber for the church building and is goaded into fighting Yancey’s men. Finally, the bishop (Robert Burton) is called in to resolve the situation … The war is over boys. Now there’s no sense in us fighting it all over again. Woodward’s film debut is big and splashy, Cinemascope and colourful and her role and performance are as broad and boisterous as this is long. She practically bounces off the walls with her strong will and orphan energy. Adapted from his story Calico Pony by Herb Meadow, this post-Civil War western traffics in the usual tropes – good versus bad, reformed versus irredeemable, decent women versus whores; the new nation-building imperative versus what’s left behind; and the overarching story here is then the guy trying to do right who doesn’t know he’s co-habiting with a girl of age. Living in sin is a phrase that rebounds a lot. Burr makes for a decent heavy, as ever; and the subplot with Hayes (who would be the Fifty Foot Woman, cult fans!) is well managed, particularly when she sets him up for a nasty fall. It’s one of Heflin’s best roles – complex and conflicted, a good ol’ bad ol’ boy. It’s nice to see the great comedienne Kulp (a former journalist and MGM publicist) in a big screen role a few years before she became embedded in everyone’s living room as Miss Jane Hathaway in The Beverly Hillbillies. She would appear again with Woodward in The Three Faces of Eve for which Woodward gained the Academy Award for Best Actress. There are some good comic scenes here particularly when it comes to Heflin’s attempts to persuade everyone he’s a good preacher and nobody’s there because he’s bought their horses. Premiered in Woodward’s home town of Thomasville, Georgia, you can’t help but feel for the woman Paul Newman left behind, as Ethan Hawke reminds us in his new HBO documentary series The Last Movie Stars when Stephanie Newman tells him that her illustrious father abandoned her mother actress Jackie Witte when she was a newborn, leaving them as well as her brother and sister (all under the age of five) for child-free Woodward. That’s the right reaction, she compliments Hawke when he puts his head in his hands in horror. The affair had been going on for five years, something nobody realised until much later. Seeing these two productions in close proximity leaves a sour taste. The things ambitious performers will do for their career. Woodward later admitted her own movie dream ultimately faded because of the three children she herself had with Newman, who was often away shooting films while she kept house. Karma’s a bitch, etc. but for a while her star burned bright. Never mind, this is nicely shot by Burnett Guffey and there’s a supremely witty score by George Duning. Directed by George Sherman. Don’t try to save the world – save me

The Godfather Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone (2020)

Just when I thought I was out they pull me back in. As Michael Corleone (Al Pacino) ages and has a place of respect in society having divested himself of his casinos, he finds that being the head of the Corleone crime family isn’t getting any easier. He wants out of the Mafia and buys his way into the Vatican Bank but NYC mob kingpin Altobello (Eli Wallach) isn’t eager to let one of the most powerful and wealthy families go legit. Making matters even worse is Michael’s nephew, Vincent (Andy Garcia) the illegitimate son of his late brother, hothead Sonny. Not only does Vincent want out from under smalltime mobster Joey Zasa (Joe Mantegna) who’s now got the Corleones’ New York business, he wants a piece of the Corleone family’s criminal empire, as well as Michael’s teenage daughter, Mary (Sofia Coppola) who’s crushing on him. Ex-wife Kay (Diane Keaton) appeals to Michael to allow their son Anthony (Franc D’Ambrosio) quit law school to pursue a career as an opera singer.  A trip to Sicily looms as all the threads of the Corleone family start to be pieced together after a massacre in Atlantic City and scores need to be settled … Why did they fear me so much and love you so much? Francis Ford Coppola revisited the scene of arguably his greatest triumph, The Godfather Saga, with writer Mario Puzo and yet he viewed it as a separate entity to that two-headed masterpiece. That was thirty years ago. Now he’s felt the need to re-edit it and it holds together better than the original release. The beginning is altered and it’s all the better to direct the material towards the theme of faith. Pacino is doing it all for his children and it’s his legacy he cares about more than money or respect: the symbolism writ large in the concluding sequence, a performance of Cavalleria Rusticana in which the weakness of our own central Christ figure is punished with the greatest violence – the death of close family.  This story then mutates from a pastiche of its previous triumphs to a a pastiche of an opera. The shocking and intentional contrast with the Cuban sex show in Part II couldn’t be starker yet it’s there for the comparison as Michael does penance for the death of Fredo, his dumb older brother who betrayed the family. He is physically weak from diabetes and the accompanying stroke;  his efforts to go totally legitimate have angered his Mafia rivals from whose ties he cannot fully break and they want in on the deal with the Vatican where Archbishop Gilday (Donal Donnelly) is the contact with Lucchesi (Enzo Robutti) who has a strange way of getting to everyone in the manner of old school Sicilians.  The Christ analogy is also about family sacrifice as his brother Sonny’s bastard son Vincent is nipping at his heels while sleeping with his own besotted daughter; he finds he is still in love with a remarried Kay, whom he finally introduces to Sicily when Tony is set to make his opera debut;  he is in bed with God’s own gangsters and the one good man Lamberto (Raf Vallone) is revealed as the short-lived Pope John Paul I. The references to the cinema of Luchino Visconti (and The Leopard) are rendered ever clearer while Carmine Coppola’s musical phrasing even drops in a bit of a spaghetti western music. It’s a sweeping canvas which gradually reveals itself even if the setup is awkward:  we no longer open on the windows at the Lake Tahoe house with their inlaid spider webs, instead we’re straight into the Vatican deal. It takes us out of the world of Godfather II. But we still see that sister Connie (Talia Shire) is the wicked crone behind the throne in her widow’s weeds, her flightiness long behind her but her song at the family celebration echoes her mother’s song at the wedding in the earlier film. The same acting problems remain in this cut. Like Wallach, her performance is cut from the finest prosciutto as she encourages Vincent in his ruthless ride to the top of the crime world. Mantegna isn’t a lot better as Joey Zasa. The Atlantic City massacre at the Trump Casino isn’t particularly well done – we’re reminded of a cut price Scarface. Wrapped into real life events at the Vatican in the late 70s/early 80s which give Donnelly, Raf Vallone and Helmut Berger (another nod to Visconti) some fine supporting roles, with an almost wordless John Savage as Tom Hagen’s priest son Andrew, this has the ring of truth but not quite the touch of classicism even with that marvellous cast reunited, something of a miracle in itself:  it feels like the gang’s almost all here. I cheered when I saw Richard Bright back as Al Neri! So sue me! And good grief Enzo the Baker is back too! Duvall’s salary wouldn’t be met by Paramount sadly and he is replaced by George Hamilton as consigliere. Even Martin Scorsese’s mother shows up! That’s Little Italy for ya! Pacino is filled with regret in this unspooling tragedy. And there we have it: the coda to a form of Italian American storytelling, the parallels with the earlier films expressed in flashbacks, as if to say, This was a life. Scorsese’s work is acknowledged but the narrative is forced forward to the inevitable tragedy. Life as opera – filled with crazy melodrama, betrayals, love, violence and murderous death. Garcia’s role makes far more sense in this version – we meet him quicker, his relationship clearly cultivated by Connie to ensure a passing of the guard. Yet what this cut also reinforces is that Coppola’s filmmaking wasn’t as confident, there are too many close ups – where is that surefooted widescreen composition? There are some awkward transitions and frankly bad writing. It’s long but it’s a farewell to a kind of cinema. And the death of Sofia Coppola as Mary was the price she had to pay for being her father’s daughter, non e vero? Now she’s the film world’s godmother. Gangster wrap. Finance is the gun, politics is the trigger.

The Holly and the Ivy (1952)

Something to look forward to on Christmas Day, brought to us by that wonderful channel Talking Pictures.

Pixie (2020)

She won’t just break you she’ll take a Kalashnikov to your heart. Sligo, Ireland. Wannabe photographer Pixie O’Brien (Olivia Cooke) uses her ex-boyfriends Fergus (Fra Fee) and Colin (Rory Fleck Byrne ) to stage an elaborate drug heist on gangster priests which winds up with the men of the cloth murdered, and Colin kills Fergus with a bullet to the head. Two smitten local boys Frank (Ben Hardy) and Harland (Daryl McCormack) join her on the run from the hit man Seamus (Ned Dennehy) her gangster stepfather (Colm Meaney) has set on them when they try to sell 15kg of MDMA back to the priest Father Hector McGrath (Alec Baldwin) who runs the drug scene on the west coast. It turns out Pixie has a very personal motivation beyond money – revenge for the death of her mother who was helped along by her psycho step brother Mickey (Turlough Convery) … These guns won’t shoot themselves. Father and son team Barnaby and Preston Thompson direct and write respectively and this road trip down Ireland’s west coast (rechristened the Wild Atlantic Way to attract tourists) is bloody and violent and very funny, played by a well cast ensemble who revel in the opportunity to get up to Tarntino-esque antics in a picturesque setting shot rather niftily by John de Borman. There are some zingers but they’re often let down by the sound which prioritises a crazily effective set of songs curated by David Holmes and punch lines get lost in the mix (which does not include any songs by Pixies …). Cooke is fantastic in what is likely her best role to date as the amoral (not manic) pixie dream girl but there is also effective characterisation by Meaney and Baldwin as well as her companions Hardy and McCormack whom she seduces into a homoerotic scene that definitely was not on their cards. It’s got references from all over the shop, it’s rackety and fun with a very spirited tone. Dylan Moran appears as a very nasty piece of work indeed. You’ll cheer when you see what Pixie does to him. Naturally there’s a shootout that features nuns with guns. A great bit of craic altogether. I’m sorry we didn’t fucking cover body disposal in our economics course

Crossfire (1947)

He’s just one guy. We don’t get them very often. But he grows out of all the rest.  When he is called in to investigate the brutal murder of Joseph Samuels (Sam Levene), who was found dead at his home, police investigator Captain Finlay (Robert Young) discovers there may be a murderer among a group of demobilized soldiers, who had been seen with Samuels and his female friend at a hotel bar that night. Meanwhile, Sergeant Peter Keeley (Robert Mitchum), concerned that his friend Mitchell (George Cooper) may be the prime suspect, decides to investigate the murder to clear his friend’s name. To both investigators, each suspected soldier relays his version of that night through flashback. The first to step up is Montgomery (Robert Ryan) who reveals himself to be anti-semitic; the others are Floyd Bowers (Steve Brodie), Mitchell and a potential witness, Ginny Tremaine (Gloria Grahame). While Finlay and Keeley slowly piece together the fragments of that night, there is one possible motive that may have driven the killer to beat an innocent to death, which prompts Finlay to set up a trap to expose the killer…. You can tell a lot about a man by how he don’t respect the service. Adapted from future writer/director Richard Brooks’ controversial novel The Brick Foxhole but of course anti-semitism wasn’t the book’s subject – that would be homophobia, unmentionable as a perversion in those heady days of the Hays Code, as was the issue of inchoate violence among demobbed GIs. John Paxton’s exemplary screenplay still tells a great story with flashbacks used to illuminate the mindset of the killer on the run, with Ryan brilliantly embodying the murderer and Mitchum’s outwardly dozy persona deployed to good effect:  Instead of the purple heart we get purple ink. Brodie makes a good impression as the fall guy. It wears its politics on its sleeve with plenty of on-the-nose dialogue particularly from Young:  Hating is always the same. Always senseless. Yet it falls right. He gets a great speech about how there’s always a minority targeted for hatred and regales a story about his own ancestor, an Irish Catholic murdered for emigrating from the Famine and establishing a home in the US. Effectively a pursuit film – a disguised western, if you will – everyone knows whodunnit and the chase just gives him time to talk himself into a hangman’s noose. Made at a turbulent time for the industry, this B movie astonished many by being nominated for an Academy Award. An outstanding example of the message movie, dealing with the thorny issue of what GIs yet to be discharged from WW2 service were up to with tensions running high in the changing post-war world, every woman potentially a femme fatale:  Grahame excels as the tough lady men want to have ruin them. We’re too used to fightin’ but we just don’t know what to fight. Produced by Adrian Scott (the son of Irish Catholics) and directed by Edward Dmytryk both of whom suffered differently in the wake of the HUAC hearings that this film ironically helped bring about – both were blacklisted among the Hollywood Ten, but in 1951 Dmytryk gave people up in order to work again. They had previously collaborated with Paxton on Murder My Sweet, Cornered and So Well Remembered.  After this landmark production, RKO fired them. Scott moved to Europe and wife Anne Shirley wrote him a ‘Dear John’ letter, marrying another screenwriter, Charles Lederer. Scott’s next wife, Joan, provided a front for him to get work pseudonymously, mainly in British TV. He died at the age of 61. Ryan would star for Dmytryk in the wonderful western The Professionals 19 years later. Dmytryk died at the age of 90 in 1999. I don’t like Jews and I don’t like nobody who likes Jews

 

The Pledge (2001)

There can’t be such devils.  Veteran detective  Jerry Black (Jack Nicholson) investigates the murder of a little girl in small-town Nevada just six hours before he’s officially retired.  He makes a pledge on a crucifix the dead girl made to her anguished mother (Patricia Clarkson) that he will catch the perpetrator. When the only suspect Native American Toby Jay Wadenah (Benicio del Toro) blows his head off in custody, Jerry sets off on his longed-for retirement fishing trip but TV coverage of the case affects him deeply and he moves into the neighbourhood buying a gas station where the killing occurred. When he begins a relationship with a waitress and mother Lori (Robin Wright) and gives a home to her and her young daughter Chrissy (Pauline Roberts) after she takes a beating from her ex, he has all the more reason to nail the killer – but by this time his colleagues reckon they have long since wrapped up an open-and-shut case.  The behaviour of a local Jesus freak Gary Jackson (Tom Noonan) causes Jerry to believe he might have solved not just the mystery death of the young girl the previous winter but the grisly crimes of a previously unnoticed serial killer and when Chrissy goes to meet a man she calls The Wizard Jerry decides to set a trap … All at once you became like an animal. Nicholson’s heartbreaking performance, as the twice-divorced retired cop who might just find happiness late in life and solve the crimes of a serial killer, is everything in this meticulously staged murder mystery. The relationships are well observed, the contrast with blowhard ‘tec Stan Krolak (Aaron Eckhart), the wonderfully observed eccentrics (Harry Dean Stanton, Mickey Rourke, Eileen Ryan, Vanessa Redgrave) who populate the ensemble, the visual tics and psychological hints at Nicholson’s state of mind, the clues, signs and portents which inflect the text. Friedrich Durrenmatt’s novella (adapted by Jerzy Kromolowski & Mary Olson-Kromolowski) was already transposed three times to both big and small screen but its tragic undertow is an understandable lure for someone like director Sean Penn, a performer who himself never shirks complex dramas. Nobody gets away with anything here – and it’s not a pretty picture and even Wright (Mrs Penn at the time) looks careworn with half a tooth missing. Far more than a police procedural, this is a deeply affecting, emotive exploration of loss and missed chances, with the revelations managed so very well.  It’s not just about the predilections of paedophiles but also about paying heed to small children and what they tell adults. The ending is just horrendous and Nicholson, reunited with Penn from The Crossing Guard, is just wonderful, a dedicated cop pursuing his suspicions to the very last. What a great performance. How could God be so greedy?

Sunday Bloody Sunday (1971)

There is no whole thing. You have to make it work. Divorced thirtysomething recruitment agent Alex Greville (Glenda Jackson) begins a romantic relationship with glamorous sculptor Bob Elkin (Murray Head), aware that he’s also intimately involved with lonely middle-aged Jewish doctor Daniel Hirsh (Peter Finch).  Bob takes off from the weekend babysitting for Alex’s friends the Hodsons (Vivian Pickles and Frank Windsor) in order to spend time with Daniel. The younger man represents a break with the pasts of both Bob’s older lovers, and neither is willing to let go of the love and vitality he brings to their mundane lives although he’s planning to leave for New York … I know you’re not getting enough of me but you’re getting all there is. Film critic Penelope Gilliatt’s screenplay, suggested by material she plumbed in her novel One by One, is a deep delve into the compromises and deceptions people make in order to have a little happiness. The North London setting with its population of slightly boho middle class types conceals the fact that the story is told rather cleverly, through the shared answering service, tales that Daniel is told by his patients, the insights of the precocious children Alex is minding and her mother’s truisms about marriage. The autumnal scenes carving out a season of political unrest hint at the melancholy truth that these are people who live in fear of rejection, hesitant about commitment, afraid to make a permanent display of emotion in a film which wears its protagonists’ pathology on its shirt sleeve, a patina of loss.  It’s amusing to see both Alex and Daniel cruise past Bob’s flat late at night, fearful there might be yet another person claiming his affection. Alongside the brilliant performances of the leads, with Finch a standout, there’s legendary silent actress Bessie Love as an answering service operator; Tony Britton in search of a job and winding up with a one night stand; and a very young Daniel Day-Lewis as a car vandal. How apposite for Jon Finch to be hustling his namesake, narrowly avoiding a late night arrest in Piccadilly Circus. Directed by John Schlesinger, whose best film this is, about a world he fully inhabits. He also contributed to the screenplay for this landmark in gay representation, along with David Sherwin and Ken Levison, who are thanked for their assistance in the credits. Some people believe something is better than nothing, but I’m beginning to believe that nothing can be better than something

Midsommar (2019)

Welcome home. When her sister kills their parents in a murder-suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning, psychology student Dani (Florence Pugh) tries to repair her relationship with cultural anthropology student Christian (Jack Reynor) who’s been trying to break up with her and is taking off to Sweden with classmate Pelle (Vilhelm Blomgren. He has invited Christian and their colleagues Josh (William Jackson Harper) and Mark (Will Poulter) for a traditional pagan festival held just once every 90 years. Dani decides to guilt trip Christian into asking her along. When they get there they are disoriented by the permanent daylight, drugged, separated from one another and gradually start to disappear, leaving just Dani to be made May Queen and Christian to perform a very special service… All of our oracles are deliberate products of inbreeding. Writer/director Ari (Hereditary) Aster was offered the opportunity to do a Swedish slasher film but chose to make this instead, a variation on The Wicker Man but with a gang of stupid students instead of one innocent policeman, succumbing to the lure of ancient rituals which are just a cover for sex, incest and murder. As in all horror movies, when people go missing nobody thinks of going for help or contacting the police. They hang around until they are murdered and disembowelled, their body parts reassembled with flowers stuck in their eye sockets. Pugh holds it together in yet another unflattering wardrobe (will someone please dress her properly in one of her films?!); while Reynor is the dumb selfish schmuck ignoring all rational ideas in favour of writing up a thesis. Undoubtedly stylish, this is pretentious and absurdly overlong at 140 minutes and an exploitation film in all but name if the nudists crowing over a copulating couple of ginger mingers are anything to go by. If this doesn’t put you off group activities, religion or Scandinavians, nothing will. I can see you possibly doing that

The Golden Child (1986)

Use the dagger to kill the child. When a Tibetan boy, the mystical Golden Child (J.L. Reate), is kidnapped by the evil Demon Sardo Numspa (Charles Dance) and his troupe of weird minions, humankind’s fate hangs in the balance. In Los Angeles, the priestess Kee Nang (Charlotte Lewis) seeks the Chosen One, who will save the boy from death. When Nang sees social worker Chandler Jarrell (Eddie Murphy) on television discussing job which focuses on finding missing children, she solicits his expertise, despite his scepticism over being the chosen one. Though Jarrell doesn’t believe in mysticism, his investigation leads him to some flabbergasting evidence on the trail of Numspa starting in Chinatown where Kala the Oracle (Shakti Chen) inform him of the importance of his quest, to the mountains of Tibet where Chandler can obtain the dagger to free The Golden Child  … These magnificent Americans – so much power and so little idea what to do with it. Never mind that this is one of the oddest movies in the careers of all concerned, it was one of the weirdest hits of the Eighties. It doesn’t quite do the deep-dive into mysticism and martial arts you expect and it steers just wide of too much threat, with Dance a terrific baddie. Murphy is charming as ever but has to do a lot of the heavy lifting in his scenes with Lewis.  Written by Dennis Feldman and directed by Michael Ritchie. If you took the short path and reached enlightenment before tomorrow who wouldn’t want you for a husband?