Despite last month's massive MGM/UA purge, a few notable new titles have found their way to Netflix Instant.Director Richard Lester (
A Hard Day's Night,
Petulia) brings a fresh take to this old tale, cramming a large all-star cast into corsets and tabards and letting the mud and swords fly. Bawdy, messy, violent, and occasionally thrilling, this first of two Musketeers movies shot back-to-back (
The Four Musketeers is inexplicably unavailable on Instant) remains the standard for all Dumas interpretations before or since. Michael York, Oliver Reed, Richard Chamberlain, Christopher Lee and others take part in some of the most spirited�and exhausting�swordplay ever put on film, made all the more convincing for being performed by the actors themselves. Lester accomplishes the rare feat of fusing a sometimes Monty-Pythonesque tone with genuinely escalating dramatic stakes. Good old-fashioned fun.
Art Carney gives an Oscar-winning performance in this Paul Mazursky road movie. I haven't seen this one myself, but it's always been well regarded and I'm a lifelong fan of Mazursky's other work (including
Moscow on the Hudson,
Down and Out in Beverly Hills, and
Enemies, A Love Story). This one's definitely going into my queue. [
UPDATE: Saw it. Loved it. Sorry to see it gone.]
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