Once in a lifetime

Youth Without Youth

(2007)

Another brilliant, beautiful, thoroughly loony Francis Ford Coppola film, which was such a crowd pleaser that it never made it to the hinterlands and closed in the city before I could get to it--unlike his subsequent brilliant, beautiful, thoroughly loony film. I get the impression that Frank's not really hurting for money--either he invested well, or the wine biz is killer.

In this one, Tim Roth plays a frustrated lover and author rejuvenated when he's hit by lightning, which makes an insane-genius-Nazi-scientist very interested. In other words, this is basically Raiders of the Lost Ark with more intellect and lots more philosophy, and with that one brief naked-breasts shot that Raiders was missing. Or it is until it veers off in a completely different, equally fascinating direction.