A hothouse melodrama that gets dizzy from its own steam, Gilda nonetheless transfixes thanks to Rita Hayworth in the title role. Unfortunately, she’s not on screen enough, and is sometimes misused when she is. The “hero” here, instead, is Glenn Ford’s Johnny Farrell, a con man who winds up running a South American casino,

“Does anyone else want to start a petition demanding that Morgan Freeman no longer play kindly old codgers who dispense valuable advice?

This is the loosest, freest film Sean Penn has done as a director, perhaps because he’s made a movie about one man’s heedless quest for personal freedom. It’s a beautiful match of mood and material, and a major step forward for Penn as a filmmaker. Based on Jon Krakauer’s nonfiction book of the same name,

“There is something subversive going on here, though you have to be willing to poke fun of your own reading habits in order to see it.