A modest but pleasant comedy based on Carl Reiner's semi- autobiographical novel about how he got into show business. David, a nice young Jewish boy from the Bronx (played, oddly enough, by nice young Italian boy Reni Santoni), is a delivery boy for a machinist, but aspires to be an actor. Finally summoning up his courage to answer an audition notice, he gets cast because the leading lady (Elaine May) thinks he's the cutest of the candidates, despite the dour misgivings of her actor father (the gloriously histrionic José Ferrer). David's parents don't want him to do it; his boss doesn't want him to do it; his girlfriend, though initially supportive, becomes jealous of the leading lady. But David persists, leading to many amusing mishaps on opening night. Santoni has settled into a long career as a supporting character actor, but the supporting cast of Enter Laughing is pretty star-studded; in addition to May and Ferrer, there's Shelley Winters (as David's long-suffering mom), Michael J. Pollard, Don Rickles, Jack Gilford, and even a cameo by Carl's son, Rob, who went on to success as "Meathead" on TV's All in the Family and as director of movies such as This Is Spinal Tap and When Harry Met Sally. [+]

Candy, based on the naughty, notorious erotic satire by Terry Southern, whose wicked pen contributed to Dr. Strangelove and Easy Rider (among other '60s classics), and adapted for the screen by the sly Buck Henry (The Graduate and Catch 22), is a bizarre second-hand reconfiguration of Candide for the permissive '60s. Swedish teen beauty queen Ewa Aulin is Candy, all breathy, wide-eyed innocence as a curvy blond kewpie doll-think Lolita, Barbarella, and Baby Spice all rolled into one-whose naiveté lands her in the sack with one dirty old man after another on a sexual odyssey. Guest cads include Ringo Starr as an embarrassingly unconvincing Mexican gardener; James Coburn preening as a surgeon who puts the "theater" into his operating theater; Walter Matthau as a snarling, insane general; and French crooner Charles Aznavour as a humpbacked spider man. Richard Burton stands out as a soused, sex-mad poet with an ever-present wind machine dramatically blowing his hair, and Marlon Brando's phony guru with a seductive line of mystic patter is downright hysterical. Despite luscious cinematography by longtime Fellini collaborator Guiseppe Rotunno and gorgeous opening and closing sequences of space flight by Douglas Trumbull, this clumsy misfire has all the cutting satire of a Monkees episode and only half the style. Director Christian Marquand lets the film ramble interminably while his cast mercilessly mugs their way through ill-conceived roles (except Aulin, who remains a passive, almost alien presence in the center of the chaos). The result is a sloppy all-star sex farce with blunt, misdirected attempts at social topicality buried in teasing peekaboo pinup photography and sexual romps, pleasing enough eye candy but hardly the erotic, satirical, transgressive portrait the picture promises. -Sean Axmaker.

The best-remembered film by the great silent comic Harold Lloyd is still a hair-raiser. The bespectacled Mr. Lloyd plays an earnest young chap who goes to the city to make his fortune, although $15 a week from a department store is the best he can muster. After a string of ingenious visual gags, the movie climaxes with a wild sequence in which Harold, trying to win a prize by drumming up publicity for the store, arranges for an agile friend to climb up the side of the building. Natch, the friend can't do it, so Harold ascends, inch by white-knuckle inch. The stunt is still one of the great coups in movies (this was before rear-projection or digitally erased safety ropes, remember), and Lloyd beautifully wrings every possible complication out of it. That was Lloyd's approach: a simple character, and endless complications. -Robert Horton.

This earthy, down-in-the-excrement adaptation of Stella Gibbons's 1932 popular comic novel stars Sarah Badel as Flora Poste, who at the tender age of 19 loses her parents to the Spanish plague. Flora has been left 100 pounds a year, which, her friend notes, "won't keep her in stockings and furs. " "Possessed of every art and grace save that of earning her own living," she sends letters to her relatives asking to be taken in. Her plan, she states, "is to alter his or her character and mode of living to suit my own taste. " She gets much more than she bargained for when she accepts an invitation from the Starkadders of Cold Comfort. Thus begins her "career as a parasite. " An aspiring author, Sarah will find no end of inspiration from the gallery of colorful characters who inhabit the farm, including the aptly named matriarch Ada Doom, who remains locked in her room and speaks of long ago seeing "something naaaaasty in the woodshed. " The distinguished cast includes Alastair Sim (the 1951 A Christmas Carol and the only Scrooge that matters) as glowering Amos Starkadder and Brian Blessed (Boss Nass in The Phantom Menace) as one of the Starkadder boys. Originally broadcast in 1971, Cold Comfort Farm helped to launch the first season of PBS's signature series Masterpiece Theatre, and vividly illustrated that even this distinguished series could get down and dirty. Though stagy, this vintage production makes for lively viewing and is ripe for classic TV collections. [+]

La Strada is the heart-wrenching story of a slow-witted innocent who idolizes an abusive, circus strongman. This lyrical masterpiece has won over 50 international awards. One of the greatest achievements of his career, Nights of Cabiria is Fellini's poignant tale of an eternally hopeful prostitute working the streets of post-World War II Rome. Variety Lights is Fellini's directorial debut. A beautiful woman joins a band of traveling entertainers, beguiles the group's manager, and breaks the heart of his mistress.