As a seasoned (but not peppery) reviewer, I can assure you that it's not hard to review a thriller or mystery without giving away plot twists. I've done it--plenty of reviewers do it. You just have to spend a little more time crafting what you write.

Yes, people reading reviews want to "know something" about a movie or book. Yes, they want to know if something is worth their time and money. But they don't want the surprises revealed for them. If you think they do, you're misreading the audience. I know it well from having not just reviewed but from having done dozens of panels at mystery conferences and met many hundreds of fans and heard from still more via email, and being a member of a mystery readers listserv.

It's not "fretting" to avoid spoilers. It's being considerate of your audience.

BTW, I saw the trailer and it didn't seem to be to reveal much at all. Maybe there's more than one out there.

You're kidding, right? The whole column is tongue-in-space cheek, right?

Because anyone who expected anything other than a grim arrival, after all their longing, and after having seen Planet of the Apes and a zillion other sci-fi epics, has clearly not been paying attention. What else could possibly happen as the series lurched to a close after years of aching to find Earth?

Myself, I would have preferred for the whole fleet to have been blasted from the sky by a Reaganesque world government so there would be no chance of a sequel.

Merchant-Ivory have excelled in depicting the Edwardian era-- Maurice, A Room with a View, Howards End, The Golden Bowl--not the late Victorian. Of course, they've ranged further afield, as with The Bostonians or Slaves of New York, but Late Victorian has never been their bailiwick.

It takes an indescribably authoritarian mind to believe that one's own Government should have the power to put people in cages for life without having to provide them any meaningful opportunity to prove that they did not do what they are accused of.

Sounds like the old Bourbon Lettres de cachet.

Dear S/Z:*

Manohla Dargis disagrees with you on a point of fact:

"The sex in this film is far from explicit, though it features geometric formations that may be better suited for Kama Sutra students, or at least the limber."

Is she right--are you right? Do you two need to have lunch and discuss what makes for explicit sex?

Thanks,

Lev Raphael

*I hope you like the Barthes reference. It seemed fitting for a review of this film.

Flying back from Austin a few years ago, I heard on CNN that there were very high winds in the Midwest, particularly Chicago where I was to make a connecting flight, and I called home to warn my spouse I would likely be delayed or might not get back that night. I was depressed, but prepared. So I sat at the gate as we got more and more delayed, and CNN's forecast turned dire. The gate agent was absolutely amazing. To each and every person who was anxious or even belligerent, she was calmly soothing, along the lines of: "This si very frustrating for you, I'm sure. We all want to get home but the winds in the Midwest are very unsafe. We'll do our best to rebook you if necessary, and if we can." She was friendly, smiling, undaunted by grousing or cursing. She was a marvel, and far too rare. I've conversely seen a line of close to a hundred wait and wait at a counter in Texas with no announcements until I asked someone to hold my place and I went to the front and said, "Please tell us what's going on--people are getting very jittery and miserable." I won't say which airline, but it's one I've notice has terrible gate agent training--and when I went off to an associated members' club to wait out the delay, the people there nodded when I told them which airline it was: "They do a poor job of training their agents."

Having now watched the movie, I can state with assurance that it is not remotely sexually explicit (and not just compared to Breillat's previous work). That lack of explicitness actually detracted from a wonderful period tale of sexual obsession because the sex scenes were not only lackluster and unexciting, they were far too chaste, with too much drapery and too little energy.

Yes, Bowie was amazing (and I still know the lyrics to many of his songs), but so was Bryan Ferry with and without Roxy Music. He had it all: good looks, style, wit, and bisexual chic whatever he identified with. Nobody tops a line like "You'll be Leda and I'll be Swann." Brilliant.