Alexandre Dumas's adventure has been adapted to film more than a half-dozen times, but never with more swashbuckling energy and humor than in this version of The Three Musketeers, directed by Richard Lester (with a screenplay by George McDonald Fraser). Lester infuses the tale of bumpkin D'Artagnan's efforts to join the musketeers with a solid sense of the period, but also finds great slapstick wit in the action. The swordplay is wonderfully unpredictable precisely because his characters are human and prone to miscues and misjudgment. He also has assembled an amazingly varied cast--including Michael York, Richard Chamberlain, Oliver Reed, Charlton Heston, Christopher Lee, Faye Dunaway, Raquel Welch, and British comic Spike Milligan--for the tale of how D'Artagnan befriends Athos, Porthos, and Aramis and, in the process, saves the honor of the queen from a plot by Cardinal Richelieu. It gets even better in the sequel, The Four Musketeers. The footage for both movies was actually shot concurrently, then divided into two films, much to the cast's chagrin (they'd only been paid to make one movie). The sequel is a solid continuation of the original, with the same strong cast and the same heady brew of romance, swashbuckling action, cunning plotting, and slapstick inventiveness. The musketeers still battle the forces of evil in the form of Cardinal Richelieu (a well-cast Heston), even as the past comes back to haunt Athos (Reed) in the form of Lady de Winter (Dunaway). Slightly darker than the first film, but every bit as engaging. Put it this way: All of the villains get the comeuppance you've been hoping for, but not without the heroes paying a heavy price. --Marshall Fine
-from Amazon.com website

This 1969 British comedy looks today like a bridge between then-contemporaneous but overlapping styles of comedy, from Terry Southern satire to Goon Show silliness to Monty Python surrealism. Peter Sellers stars as the world's wealthiest man, who sets out with a young ally (Ringo Starr) to demonstrate that people, most especially rich people, will do anything for money. The film is more a series of sketches than an actual story, and some of those get pretty nasty, particularly when a bunch of aristrocrats start feeding from a vat of blood and manure. But in general this is a pretty funny film, and it's great to see a lot of famous and soon-to-be-famous faces on the same screen. Written by Southern, Joseph McGrath (who also directed), Sellers, and Python's John Cleese and Graham Chapman. --Tom Keogh
-from Amazon.com website

Watching this director's cut, it's finally possible to see why the studio made Spielberg mercilessly hack up this comedy: it's a screaming movie (everyone screams a lot), and screaming movies do not need character development. So all those character-development scenes hit the cutting-room floor and, surprise, they were all critical to Spielberg's pace for the humor in this film. The screaming wasn't that funny then--and it still isn't--but what is funny are the reinserted development scenes, showcasing the now-evident sense of hysteria in the Los Angeles community, post-Pearl Harbor. A bunch of certified nitwits, and a few certified lunatics, act as if Tojo Hideki's entire Imperial force is just off the mainland. Actually, one Japanese submarine is, and it helps fuel the frenzy. John Belushi is Wild Bill Kelso, an insane fighter pilot, and Dan Aykroyd plays a conciliatory tank commander. Robert Stack's performance as General Stilwell, one of the best of the film, finally makes sense. Also fun for the numerous cameos, Spielberg's inside jokes, and John Williams's great score. --Keith Simanton
-from Amazon.com website

If The Phantom Menace was the setup, then Attack of the Clones is the plot-progressing payoff, and devoted Star Wars fans are sure to be enthralled. Ten years after Episode I, Padmé Amidala (Natalie Portman), now a senator, resists the creation of a Republic Army to combat an evil separatist movement. The brooding Anakin Skywalker (Hayden Christensen) is resentful of his stern Jedi mentor, Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor), tormented by personal loss, and showing his emerging "dark side" while protecting his new love, Amidala, from would-be assassins. Youthful romance and solemn portent foreshadow the events of the original Star Wars as Count Dooku (a.k.a. Darth Tyranus, played by Christopher Lee) forges an alliance with the Dark Lord of the Sith, while lavish set pieces showcase George Lucas's supreme command of all-digital filmmaking. All of this makes Episode II a technological milestone, savaged by some critics as a bloated, storyless spectacle, but still qualifying as a fan-approved precursor to the pivotal events of Episode III. --Jeff Shannon
-from Amazon.com website

The British superspy with a license to kill takes on his dark underworld double, a classy assassin who kills with golden bullets at $1 million a hit. Roger Moore, in his second outing as James Bond, meets Christopher Lee's Scaramanga, one of the most magnetic villains in the entire series, in this entertaining but rather wan entry in the 007 sweepstakes. Bond's globetrotting search takes him to Hong Kong, Bangkok, and finally China, where Scaramanga turns his island retreat into a twisted theme park for a deadly game of wits between the gunmen, moderated by Scaramanga's diminutive man Friday Nick Nack (Fantasy Island's Hervé Villechaize). Britt Ekland does her best as the most embarrassingly inept Bond girl in 007 history, a clumsy, dim agent named Mary Goodnight who looks fetching in a bikini, while Maud Adams is Scaramanga's tough but haunted lover and assistant (she returns to the series as the title character in Octopussy). Clifton James, the redneck sheriff from Live and Let Die, makes an embarrassing and ill-advised appearance as a racist tourist who briefly teams up with 007 in what is otherwise the film's highlight, a high-energy chase through the crowded streets of Bangkok that climaxes with a breathtaking midair corkscrew jump. Bond and company are let down by a lazy script, but Moore balances the overplayed humor with a steely performance and Lee's charm and enthusiasm makes Scaramanga a cool, deadly, and thoroughly enchanting adversary. --Sean Axmaker
-from Amazon.com website