Review of Aria

Leonard Maltin's BOMB rating for "Aria" has kept me off this movie for years, but it's not really all THAT bad. It's not as good as it could have been, either. I believe the main problem is that in some of the shorts the filmmakers fail to make a strong connection between the music and the images; opera buffs may still love listening to some of their favorite pieces, but they might as well do it with their eyes closed. But they - as well as the other viewers - should keep them open for at least three segments: Julien Temple's amusing bedroom farce, lowbrow in its content but sophisticated in its camera work and featuring the super hot Beverly D'Angelo, Ken Russell's imaginative visual extravaganza (with a perfectly timed finale), and Derek Jarman's elegiac salute to youth. Most of the other contributions are fair-to-middling, but the worst of the bunch by a wide margin is Godard's inexplicable homoerotic infomercial. It's the one segment that I would advise anyone to skip. ** out of 4.