Peckerwood Manor

Who hasn't been moved, at least once, by the work of Francis Ford Coppola, a visionary, frequently bonkers, filmmaker? The first time I saw "Apocalypse Now," his hallucinatory anti-war shocker (and his crowning achievement, I think), I walked out of the theatre unable to speak, as if I'd mainlined the movie's crazed consciousness and couldn't come down. I've seen it at least four times since, and each time, its scenario - or its still powerful vision of the folly of war and mankind's nearing demise - seems even more eerily prophetic.  He took quite a long road to travel to "Apocalypse Now," from his rag-tag beginnings directing soft-core porn, to working for Roger Corman, to winning his first Oscar for the screenplay for "Patton," but one thing's remained consistent before and after. It's his ability - actually, his insistence - on taking jaw-dropping risks. In many cases, this results in triumph, as with "The Godfather

It's over thirty years old - can you believe? - but "Victor/Victoria," the classic musical farce by writer/director Blake Edwards, loosely based on a German comedy from the 1930s, may still be the most radical Hollywood movie to prominently feature gay characters. It's even more daring and more progressive, I'd argue, than the likes of "Brokeback Mountain" or "Call Me By Your Name." And it does it all with, as they say, a little song, a little dance, a little seltzer down your pants. Some stunt! Consider the feat, a movie in which Julie Andrews, a straight woman pretending to be a gay man pretending to be a woman, attracts James Garner, a straight tough-guy who's flummoxed, then approving, when Alex Karass, his tough-guy cohort, comes out of the closet and becomes lovers with Robert Preston, a gay cabaret performer who is himself pretending to be Andrews' gay lover. And that's just the tip of the iceberg in scenario wherein not a si