I want my own little moustache sleeping mask! Wait, no I don't.

One should never, ever underestimate the power of the dreaming mind. I had a dream last night where I made a trip to Barnes & Noble, returned home, placed my purchases on my bookshelf. Then, passing by a short while later, I noticed a thick volume that I couldn't recall buying. It was about the size of the hardcover Poetry Speaks volume I own in waking life, but four or five times as dense. Modern Illustrations read the cover, and opening up the book and thumbing through, I saw oceans of tiny text, thousands of words per crisp page, analyses of illustrations and graphics that I am positive have never been in any actual children's book or adult work.

I could actually feel the gloss of the dust jacket between my fingers, hear the crackle of the spine, run my hand over the beetling UPC sticker. Although all of the text fell away the moment I awoke (the dream occurred near the end of my REM cycle, just before I was roused by a sunless dawn), and it wasn't particularly clear even in the dream - I can recall vague snippets, sort of - I am perfectly certain that it was there to begin with.

Now I'm what would be called, in Waking Life, an "oneironaut," an explorer of the dream world. I've always been enthralled by the extra shellacking of realism applied to sleep dreams, as opposed to daydreams, which are misty at best. Over the past year, I have taught myself to feel pain, experiencing a broken nose for the first time without ever really breaking it (it stings your nose to smell all of that salty blood). I've had lucid dreams where I could fly, taken several cross-country trips without ever having to leave my bed, or just buried myself facedown in the dirt on a summer day, just to test how pungent a world I could create. I've often wondered whether it is possible to write while dreaming, so as to gain an extra eight or ten hours time. Sleep is so wasteful.

Combing over the remnants of that dream I experienced last night, I find that I can recognize a couple of the images contained in that book. One of them is definitely from the Lon Chaney, silent-film version of Phantom of the Opera, of the demiurge backdrop seen during the behind-the-stage scenes during the opening of the picture. Also, I am absolutely positive that the author of the book, whose picture was on the inside flap, was Albert Finney, taken directly from the celluloid of Murder On the Orient Express.

Finney, in this film, plays Hercule Poirot (pronounced Pware-O), an incredibly successful shamus who has earned enough money from his famous cases to live extravagantly and not undertake any case that does not tickle his cognizance or interests. With a helmet of greased-down hair, neckless, a seemingly plastered-on moustache, a sparkling intellect, impeccable manners (Poirot certainly is a far cry from Bogart's flatfoot in The Maltese Falcon or Nicholson's private eye in Chinatown) and simply pillowed in finery (he sleeps with a special cover over his moustache, to preserve it, as well as oil-filled stage gloves), Finney recalls both Quasimodo and Al Pacino's character in Dick Tracy in appearance. His first name is just an S away from Hercules. And where Hercules is ostracized and troubled for his tremendous strength, Poirot seems to be made incredibly popular for his beefy mental facilities. The conductor clears prominent passengers out of berths just to give Poirot a seat on the train, goes immediately to him and sycophantically pleads when it is discovered there is murder afoot, while Poirot sips cognac from little shotglasses, turns down 15 grand, piddling bodyguard jobs from rightfully paranoid moneyed men. He's an infinitely watchable character, as long as you don't delve too deep. Once you pry beneath that adamantine courtesy and rich garmenture, there really isn't that much there. Poirot is completely a soulless creation, humane but lacking humanity. Of course, with Finney playing a character of such undying courtesy (he's one of the few people who, when he says "I'm sorry" after hearing about a personal tragedy, you believe him), it is hard to believe that he is the only person who, at least in the movies, ever called Audrey Hepburn a "b-tch."

The other passengers on the train are blustering gargoyles, snooty scarecrows, wry-faced and cold-mannered elite. Not only do they manage to not earn our sympathy or warrant any interest on our part, apart from a simmering loathing and a hope that more than one of them will meet some grim demise. But one of the revelations by the end of the movie is that these are not people who are repellant by nature, but, rather, people who have had such atrocities commited to them, or inflicted upon those that they dearly love, that they have become marblehearted toward anything or anyone warmblooded and life-loving in the outside world. If anything, and sort of flimsily at that, Murder On the Orient Express operates as a protracted revenge fable. There will be many tears and breakdowns by the closing chapter, and Poirot's ultimate resolution to cover up the murder adds a layer of depth to his character sorely missed through much of the picture. We are given the impression that, though a touch mercenary and self-serving, Poirot is basically unswervingly honor-bound to the high ideals. To discover, in the end, that he is a reachable creature who can be emotionally affected is another epiphany all by itself.

The title murder, a drugging and subsequent death from a dozen stab wounds of varying ferocity and depth, is inflicted upon a man who could not be more deserving, whose bloody means to an avaricious end is simply appalling in its far-reaching implications on many, many people. The day after the murder on the Orient Express (actual Orient Express cars were used), the train has been halted due to an accumulation of snow on the tracks. This leads to a wonderful image of catharsis at the end of the picture when a special locomotive, with a plow attached to the cowcatcher, breaks through to the stranded Orient Express, just as Poirot finishes giving his solution. There is the subtle irony that a righteous murder has just been covered up, that all of these characters are doomed to have this guilt on their conscience, no matter how justifiable it was, to bury it deep in their hearts, just as the buried train is freed.

When you watch a movie, you have to make a choice: are you going to watch the film for the facts, the details which comprise the story, which move it from A, to B, to C, or are you going to glean the fundamental facts and then focus on the minutiae, the myriad, little details, both psychological and artistic, which drive the story, which give it its human dimension, flesh it out, animate it and suck us in. I've always been one of the second group, and it's one of the reasons I had so much trouble watching Murder On the Orient Express. There are a jillion plot points and plot twists in the picture, and in order for me to keep pace with the plot at all, I was constantly having to suppress my natural instinct to plumb for the deeper elements. Oh, there was plenty of them there, all right. Seldom have I seen a film which enjoys such diversity of language, both foreign and Saxon, and which gets such a kick out of playing around with both exotic and domestic words, planting clues, planting red herrings and so forth. But it's all too much, too fast, too frequently.

And this is not a film that you can watch twice. Once the labrynthian riddle that is the murder is puzzled out, there's really not much there that warrants a second viewing. Therein lies the strength and ultimate failing of such dispensable diversions as mystery stories.

I will say this, though: I am always amazed how, whether you see them in Enemy at the Gate, or Bram Stoker's Dracula, or Murder On the Orient Express, a snowy environment is one of the few that can be filmed with consistent polish and texture no matter what the decade, no matter if it is natural lighting, technicolor, or more modern techniques.

Final Destination, which concerns several teenagers who cheat Death and the "Rube Goldbergian" ways in which the Reaper dispatches them, one by one, is the lesser of two good "fan films," the other being Apocalypse Now. By fan film, I'm not referring to the considerable following both films enjoy - the first understandably for its gruesome titillations, the latter unquestionably, for its abysmal genius - but to the use of actual fans. Both in the beginning, the fan in Final Destination is a compact, caged, oscillating, metal model, which, lately, are not as popular as the plastic models, one of which I own myself.

The fan in Apocalypse Now, however, is a ceiling fan, and as it churns above a half-mad, staring Martin Sheen, it is a very loaded visual symbol. First of all, it is a clever segue from the helicopters seen in the opening of the film, while The Doors play on the soundtrack. Suddenly we understand, as the screen shifts between Sheen and the copters gliding above a sulry, Vietnamese jungle that we are witnessing a flashback, that the movie is actually beginning inside Sheen's head (who, for the scene, as we learn in the documentary Hearts of Darkness, really did go a little bit loco). The spinning fan, with the dull thudding of its blades, comes to represent the tedium that possesses Sheen while temporarily out-of-action (a well-oiled killing machine rusting solid) as well as the cycle of madness that completes itself (once again) by the end of the film, by Sheen becoming the new Kurtz, having just slain Brando, the brutal blood, having cycled through the body, returning once again to the heart of darkness.

The fan in Final Destination, bathed in electric-blue light which suggests an ominous aura about the scene, and which accents the entire opening sequence, also represents a cycle, this one of death. And when the cycle is broken when one of the teens intuits their imminent demise and panics, resulting in the expulsion of him and several others from the plane, which explodes, that's when the scythe of Death begins mowing down, slowly, patiently, tenaciously, the survivors who cheated the universal plan.

While there are no fans of any sort in the opening sequence of Murder on the Orient Express, I was nonetheless very much reminded of both of the films. All three films open hypnotically, mesmerizing us with the promise of a gruesome and horrific odyssey that is to come. All three live up to that promise, with varying effectiveness. I shudder to admit it, but despite the fact that I've watched the opening of Apocalypse Now about 100 times just for the Doors song, I actually feel that the Final Destination opening is superior, even though I only watched it twice. It's more refined, streamlined, more vested with purpose.

One thing the Final Destination film has over Apocalypse Now is that it's not bogged down by an ambiguous screenplay, which, while providing the muzzy skeleton for a breathtaking film, defies a sticking interpretation of any sort. There's something gloriously monomaniacal about a horror film, or a detective film like this adaptation of Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express. Both types of film, when done right, although boasting some occasional allegorical or psychological underpinnings, are really just pulp rendered with panache.

There's very little, really, that separates Express from Destination. Neither diddle around with voluptuous, but digressional, subplots, but go straight for the jugular, and such single-mindedness is often more difficult to achieve than one may think. A Godard quote that Ebert exploits ad nauseum: "The best way to criticize a film is to make one of your own." Attempt to master the bare-bone mechanics of a horror or detective film, filling it with logical, practical detail and a satisfying solution that can withstand the deliberate inspection of hawk-eyed, niggling film mavens, you'll discover that it is very tempting to resort to stock tactics, and difficult to avoid.

The opening of Murder On the Orient Express actually manages, visuals-wise (to borrow a verbal running gag from The Apartment), to be a sort of spinning fan. The first five minutes of the film, after the abominable throwback of a credits sequence (blaring, bland mood music with a rumpled silk background, suggestive of the delicate touch that has gone into the crafting of the film), are a wordless montage which concerns the kidnapping and murder of Daisy Armstrong, a child belonging to aristocrats and whose abduction and slaying have ghastly repercussions on the parents and the help staff. We get a detail filmed in a sort of amethyst, quite similar to the electric-blue seen in Final Destination, then the front page of a newspaper which features the same detail in print. Back and forth, back and forth, covering all the major players. Back and forth, back and forth, just like a fan, another cycle.

But where Apocalypse Now is one great cycle, and Final Destination is about a break in a cycle, Murder On the Orient Express is a series of joined cycles: greed resulting in atrocity, resulting in self-destruction; then vengeance resulting in a moral question of whether said vengeance is justifiable; the infallible, educated, detective novel flatfoot innocently sniffing about and sleuthing for clues, inexorably coming to an answer that, while being mazy in its logic, is unquestionably the truth. These are all cycles which we have been witnessing in life and literature - excluding the last one, which only dates back to Poe - since the dawn of time. And yet, for some reason, they always strike us as fresh and always provide excellent fodder for fiction, another cycle.

There's an order to the way these things should be done. For instance, you should never watch Sunset Boulevard until you've seen Singin' In the Rain, and you should definitely never watch A Clockwork Orange before Singin' In the Rain. If anything, you should watch The Jazz Singer, the very first talkie, right before you watch Singin' In the Rain, then Sunset Boulevard, then, if you must, if you can endure it, A Clockwork Orange. The perfect weekend or lazy day marathon would be these four films in that order, but good luck finding them at any of the local Blockbusters. Also, you should never watch The Bourne Identity or Gone in 60s Seconds before you watch William Friedkin's The French Connection. Bone up on your Hitchcock, preferrably Dial M for Murder, before viewing The Talented Mr. Ripley, and Notorious before seeing Mission Impossible 2. Before you go after The Moulin Rouge, remember that it's been done before. And before you start thinking that Michael Myers is the alpha and omega of salacious shtick, remember that the far more cerebral Kubrick was slipping delicious, little double entendres into Dr. Strangelove and Lolita before the 70s were even around to be parodied in the first place.

The idea is: see the modern film, but see the classic film first, because the modern film is almost always that classic picture with a bit of 20th or 21st century gloss. This is not to say that modern films aren't capable of, and often are, just as rich and layered as golden age films. And usually more free of straitjacketing, linear plotting, such as with Tarantino's work, which is said to have borrowed much from pulp popular three decades ago, so there's another wonderful cycle. If you are going to watch Gosford Park - and by all means, I urge you to do so, because it's simply a luscious whodunit made infinitely more complex by the social subtext between Jews and Gentiles, unrefined movie folk and the urbane, inherited rich (equals, sitting at the same table, yet not) the servants catching all the juicy gossip below the stairs and the affluent above, oblivious to the drama they are providing for their underlings - I heartily suggest that you view Murder On the Orient Express first. If you are going to be taking in one lush production, at least appreciate its roots before you do so. Conceivably, you could do so afterwards, but you'll be missing a whole extra layer that would only serve to enhance the viewing experience.

Also, another film that complements this one is James Cameron's Titanic. Both are mammoth productions, but while Cameron's film boasts 200 mil, state-of-the-art effects, Murder On the Orient Express features an equally dazzling procession of A-list stars, including Albert Finney, as well as John Gielgud, Wendy Hiller, Lauren Bacall, Martin Balsam, Vanessa Redgrave, Ingrid Bergman, Jacqueline Bisset, Rachel Roberts, Jean Pierre Cassel, Richard Widmark, Michael York and Sean Connery. And while, effects-wise, Express doesn't feature anything as spectacular as the sinking of a luxury liner, Poirot's climactic unravelling of the killer in the dining car contains just as much razzle-dazzle. Actually, the reason why I'm recommending Titanic along with Express is partly because of that sense of the portentous which fills the first 20 minutes of the film, but also because this movie, too, is a film about doomed souls, although in Express the characters drown in gall, not in the Atlantic ocean.

It's also interesting to note that New Yorker critic David Denby, while reviewing Gosford Park, exclaimed, "When has there ever been a movie with such a dazzling set of actors?" or something to that effect. Denby estimated that there were 29 servants in the film, waiting hand and foot on 14 persons of varying prominence. Considering that, no matter what their status or screen time, all 43 of these characters are portrayed by character actors or notables either on this or that side of Atlantic ocean, it would seem that Murder On the Orient Express is vastly overmatched in the luminary department. But then you have to consider the individual fame commanded by each of the actors in Express. Yes, there may be Ryan Phillips and Michael Gambon and Maggie Smith in Gosford Park, but can all of these persons combined, and several more, possibly parallel such Hollywood collosuses as Sean Connery or Vanessa Redgrave. Not in acting talent, mind you. I'd take Gambon or Smith any day over Connery, Redgrave and Finney combined. But the eminence of these individual, older stars cannot be matched.