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Director Robert Altman's final association with Warner Brothers' TV-production unit resulted in this successful 1962 pilot, which featured William Windom in a guest-starring role as an Army private with an interesting past. The episode begins with a beach assault at Salerno and ends as the Allies' drive inland to within striking distance of San Pietro.

Though the action sequences are well-enhanced with stock footage from older war films -- William Wellman's "Darby's Rangers" (1958) and Michael Curtiz's "Force of Arms" (1951) -- the quieter scenes are also handled deftly. Altman skillfully introduces the series' regulars who will figure in future episodes: the crooning Italian-American lover-boy Private D'Angelo (Eddie Fontaine); the stocky, barrel-chested Private Lucavich (Roland LaStarza); wisecracking Private Hanson (Robert Gothie); and the Tennessee mountain-boy radio specialist Private Gibson (Roger Davis)..

"Kaleidoscope" drifts through like a pleasant breeze. Allow yourself five minutes with this light comedy, and you're hooked. Set in 1960's Swinging London and Europe, the film was directed by an American, Jack Smight, in an abstract style that deliberately calls attention to itself. The dialogue is amusing repartee; and the performers seem so offbeat they exist as near comic-book characters. If a viewer feels distanced, then the film's creators have succeeded. It's all pretty much at the same level as that quintessential Sixties caper, "Modesty Blaise" (1966), only a bit less refined and a tad more square.

Warren Beatty stars as a card-cheating playboy with romantic pretensions. Before "Kaleidoscope," Beatty had acted in only one other film comedy ("Promise Her Anything," with Leslie Caron). Here, he comes on a little heavy-handed at first, but he soon settles in with the other performers, including Eric Porter, a powerful presence in the role of a sociopathic Mr. Big with a dreadful Napoleon-complex.

The movie's high notes arrive on cue. The climax is a high-stakes, winner-take-all poker game, and it's a tight, suspenseful scene. Its resolution will leave you breathless, admiring the good, low-keyed humor of the whole affair. The film's denouement, a kidnap-and-rescue sequence, is almost as clever. This film is not High Art -- not by any stretch of our good will or imagination. But there's nothing wrong with taking pleasure from well-made fluff, especially if we realize the genre's built-in limitations. "Kaleidoscope" is great fun because, like its gambler/hero, it doesn't always play by the rules.

With Susannah York as Beatty's chic companion, a Carnaby Street shopowner, and Clive Revill as her Scotland Yard inspector/father.

When "Tora! Tora! Tora!" premiered in late 1970, the critics went on a bomb-and-strafe mission. The movie was deemed an expensive dud, a costly waste of effort and money. Old-fashioned classical narratives were not in vogue during the Counterculture era. Indeed, when viewed within the historical context of the late '60s, "Tora! Tora! Tora!" does seem a throwback to a much earlier style of war-film. All that's missing is a rousing Max Steiner musical score to punctuate the action.

The veteran director, Richard Fleischer, does try to make the film seem "hip" and "anti-authoritarian." He exposes a laundry-list containing one military blunder after another, all of them leading up to a failure by America's power-structure to prevent the inevitable surprise attack - the movie's big set-piece. As a result, generals, admirals, cabinet-officers -- the entire elite -- are made to appear as incompetent as those in "Dr. Strangelove." "Tora! Tora! Tora!" has that smug, cynical "what-if-this-had-happened-instead-of-that" appeal that can often cripple a historical film, especially one that purports to expose the Real Truth behind America's day of infamy.

In this movie, the Japanese fare much better. The actors impersonating Yamamoto and company don't play their parts completely straight. While they may pose as disciplined, dedicated, and spirited warriors, they're never fanatical, never too stiff, and always quick with a joke. Still, the clever competence of the Japanese makes their American counterparts resemble Keystone Kops in army drag. Even Fleisher's direction is bested by his Oriental opposite-numbers, Fukasaku and Masuda. (According to Fleischer's autobiography, Akira Kurosawa was originally hired to helm the Japanese scenes. He proved such a tyrannical boss on the set, however, that the producers let him go after only two days of shooting. This might explain the loose, relaxed attitude of the Japanese actors.)

And then there's the surprise raid itself. Certainly, it's an impressive staging. But to what purpose? Why did Richard Zanuck find it necessary to back this film and almost take Daddy's Fox Studios into bankruptcy? Besides, when compared to John Ford's documentary, "The Battle of Midway" (1942) -- a movie that's an act of bravery in itself -- "Tora! Tora! Tora!" is an emotional blank. It piles on its points of irony effectively; yet in the end, it conveys all the excitement of a burial detail - with just as much panache.