Mae West takes a turn out of necessity... she's bawdy Rose Carlton, "the Frisco Doll"... "kept woman" headliner at a Chinese music hall/bordello?/casino?... in San Francisco, where she gets to sing "I'm An Occidental Lady in an Oriental Mood for Love." But then she has to go on the lam from a homicide charge (it's self defense).

On a steamer bound for Alaska she uses her charms to more or less commandeer the ship from Captain Bull Brackett (Victor McLaglen).…

From the D.H. Lawrence novella, an evocative and mesmerizing study in human relationships. Two women (Sandy Dennis and Anne Heywood) live together and run a chicken farm somewhere in a pretty but harsh frozen clime. [The movie was filmed in Ontario.] The farm is on the verge of failing financially because a fox does an occasional kill in the chicken coop. The women seem to have a deep psychological connection, with neurotic Jill Banford (Dennis) depending on emotional from…

A Swedish family on ski holiday in the French Alps brunches on the scenic outdoor patio of their mountain hotel, when a controlled avalanche comes rumbling down the opposite slope, threatening to grow out of control. Chaos ensues. In the aftermath, a family dynamic is broken... integrity is questioned, disappointment and disillusion set in.

Funny at times and acutely observant of individual nuances, the film takes on tragic elements when the nuclear family starts to disintegrate. Lies and mistrust are…

Not an easy film to follow... is the Thomas Pynchon novel on which it is based the source of this confusion? But if one gets lost in the intricate plot, nothing to worry about. The film is an utter delight, even at an almost three hour running time. Joachin Phoenix gives another great performance as a drug-addled private investigator 1971 L.A., where the hippie culture is played nicely against the Nixon political era. Every performance (there are many cameos) is…