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THE KNACK. Director Richard Lester, who Helped! the Beatles, makes Rita Tushingham the goal of three zany British bachelors who share a town house. At the final guffaw, it's three down and goal to go.
RAPTURE. A gloomy farmhousehold on the coast of Brittany harbors an escaped criminal (Dean Stockwell) who fulfills the various needs of an embittered ex-judge (Melvyn Douglas), his otherworldly daughter (Patricia Gozzi), and a bed-minded serving wench (Gunnel Lindblom). The tragic result is a triumph for English Director John Guillermin.
DARLING. Julie Christie irresistibly shows how to succeed in bed without hardly trying. This tale has its own kind of moral: when you finally get there, it's time to go somewhere else.
THE IPCRESS FILE. Harry Palmer (Michael Caine) is an un-Bonded type of counterspy, who can hardly see without his glasses and does his job only to keep from being sent to jail. But he does it well and interestingly enough to make a thriller that is fun all the way.
SHIP OF FOOLS. Grand Hotel afloat, with such passengers as Vivien Leigh, Lee Marvin, Simone Signoret and Oskar Werner expertly rocking Katherine Anne Porter's boat.
THE COLLECTOR. Terence Stamp plays a butterfly collector who tries to get a girl (Samantha Eggar) into his killing bottle.
THOSE MAGNIFICENT MEN IN THEIR FLYING MACHINES. It is hard to say which are the top stars of this frantic spectacular — the vintage airplanes in a 1910 race from London to Paris or their intrepid pilots, who include Terry-Thomas as No. 1 Bad Guy.
BOOKS
Best Reading
MRS. JACK, by Louise Hall Tharp. An immensely readable biography of Isabella Stewart Gardner, one of Boston's most colorful Victorian lady eccentrics. Armed with money, an unfettered imagination and a whim of iron, she kept Boston's newspapers in copy with her antics for half a century — and along the way assembled a collection of great art now housed in the Gardner Museum.
THE GARDENERS OF SALONIKA, by Alan Palmer. During World War I, the Allies used Macedonia as a dumping ground for out-of -favor generals. But in 1918, French General Franchet d'Esperey refused to stay dumped; instead he struck boldly at the heart of Germany through Belgrade and Vienna. Palmer tells the story of D'Esperey's swift and decisive drive in highly readable style, and wonders aloud why this strategy was not followed three years earlier.
SQUARE'S PROGRESS, by Wilfred Sheed. When his wife calls him a bore and leaves him, a nice, adjusted insurance salesman sets out to discover the Cool World. He learns that hips are duller than squares.
ESAU & JACOB, by Machado de Assis. Rio de Janeiro in the last decade of the 19th century is presented to the reader with a dated but delectable use of hyperbole, metaphor and epigram.
THE LUMINOUS DARKNESS, by Howard Thurman. The essays of Dr. Thurman, a Negro and dean emeritus of Boston University's chapel, reflect the experience of a man who has given thought as well as action to the cause of his people.