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Director Luca Guadagnino and James Ivory as scenarist have fashioned a luxurious, sultry and intoxicatingly romantic film from Andre Aciman's novel, Call Me By Your Name. And in the process of adapting this bittersweet story of gay love the filmmakers have improved on an often beautifully written novel that tends to ramble with its first person narrative, punctuated by vivid descriptions of the Italian land and seascapes it wallows in , often to the sensual delight of the reader. As he did with the equally colorful , Italy -based romantic drama of "I Am Love" (2009), Guadagnino paints with robust, sometimes subtle cinematic brushstrokes to bring forth an evocative atmosphere of heat, sun, flora and fruit as vivid background to the main story at hand.

What is it about the best Italian film directors whose penchant for telling stories is so entwined with production values that dazzle the eye, be it in black and white our color? Luchino Visconti, Frederico Fellini, Michelangelo Antonioni , Bernardo Bertolucci and Franco Zeffirelli all had this gift, and it is readily apparent that the torch has been passed on to Luca Guadagnino. Abetted by the brilliant acting of Timothee Chalamet, Michael Stuhlberg and the impossibly handsome and able Armie Hammer, Call Me By Your Name emerges as an unforgettable, erotic and deeply moving saga of love found, lost and remembered.

From the pages of Annie Proulx's poignant, sparingly written short story screen writers Larry McMurtry and Diane Ossana have woven an epic love story for the screen and with director Ang Lee guiding a perfect cast have created in BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN a motion picture that ranks with the great classics of the past. So much has already been written and discussed regarding this prematurely famous film that it seems superfluous at this point to add another comment. But what I find amazing about this film is its dichotomy: on the one hand there is all the current brouhaha concerning the screenplay's "controversial" subject matter. At the same time here is a movie that dutifully follows the pattern of good, old fashioned Hollywood -style film-making. The 20 year saga of Ennis Del Mar and Jack Twist, their passionate love thwarted by convention and bigotry is given the full throttle treatment by Ang Lee who dares to take the time to tell this story at a leisurely pace. The film's opening section is deliberately paced but never boring. And as we come to know the characters of Ennis and Jack and their time on Brokeback Mountain, the rest of the story becomes an emotional journey for the audience as well. Once off the mountain, BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN gains momentum. If the film's longer second half veers into soap opera, as some critics have charged, then it is soap opera of the most riveting and utterly believable sort.

Mere words cannot do justice to the performance Heath Ledger gives in this film. His Ennis is a man whose laconic nature barely hides the anger and passion just underneath the surface. I can't recall another performance where such inchoate feelings of love and loss have been so brilliantly rendered. The final minutes of BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN are as heartrending as any you will see on the screen. Jake Gyllenhaal compliments Ledger's performance beautifully. His Jack is all feeling and frustration, a sweet-tempered man whose dream of sharing a life with Ennis is seemingly quashed at every turn.

Technically labeled by some as a western and/or cowboy movie due to its setting, BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN is really a universal story. However, time (the early 1960s through the early 80s) and place are evoked so completely that one feels immersed in those Wyoming mountain pastures (actually filmed in Alberta ,Canada for the early scenes). As with every other aspect of this film, the cinematography is stunning. Clear mountain lakes mirror majestic skies and pines; a lone campfire, an orange dot on a mountainside, is nearly swallowed in the immense darkness of night; sheepherders guide their lambs, ewes, dogs and mules through vast mountain terrain, one particular shot photographed from what seems like a perch on the moon; small western towns; garish, neon-lit Country Western bars; a nighttime Fourth of July celebration and weathered ranch homes, barns and trailers are registered just as beautifully. This is a movie where grace and grit go hand in glove. Rodrigo Prieto's camera work is flawless.

Ang Lee's achievement cannot be underestimated. He has pulled off an incredible hat trick in making a film that all audiences can relate to. No doubt there are many people who will resist going to see this film, but it will be their loss. BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN is an ineffably sad tale : an elegy for dreams never achieved and roads not taken. It is an American masterpiece.

Peter Jackson pays homage to a classic film and in the process constantly reminds one how truly great the original 1933 KING KONG is. No amount of storytelling embellishment, incredible recreation of Depression Era New York City or State-of-the-Art CGI effects can obliterate the memory of producer/director Merian C. Cooper's early sound masterpiece. Jackson's remake suffers from a surfeit of length. Admittedly the opening scenes of early 30s New York City are breathtaking to behold and the screenplay offers some humorous "inside" references to Old Broadway and Hollywood that should prove amusing to showbiz mavens but will go over the heads of average moviegoers. Everything in the new film seems anticlimactic and it's not just because the plot is familiar. The original KONG was a model of economical storytelling. Jackson's KONG is an interminable three hour extravaganza that works only in fits and starts. The Skull Island sequences, while offering some extraordinary special effects and sound editing, go on way too long and stop the movie's narrative flow dead in its tracks. As the film sputters along into its third hour most audience members are likely to find their haunches more affected than their hearts.