Instant Favorite.

This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

Free-spirit Laura Reynolds (Elizabeth Taylor) lives in a beach house with her home-schooled son Danny. After some incidents, a judge orders Danny to attend a religious school run by Dr. Rev. Edward Hewitt (Richard Burton) and his wife teacher Claire (Eva Marie Saint). The Hewitts' stale marriage and professional lives give rise to Edward's affair with Laura.This is definitely more compelling due to Taylor and Burton's real-life love affair. It's a quiet melodrama. There are some intensity usually between the couple. Otherwise, it's a low simmering romance that could push some buttons due to Hewitt as a religious figure.

Perhaps best known for its Johnny Mandel-Paul Francis Webster Academy Award winning song "The Shadow of Your Smile" and beautiful picture postcard vistas of Big Sur, California, this average Elizabeth Taylor-Richard Burton romance drama was directed by Vincente Minnelli. It was written by its producer Martin Ransohoff, adapted by Irene & Louis Kamp, and features a screenplay by Dalton Trumbo and Michael Wilson.Taylor plays Laura Reynolds, a free spirited atheist (liberated, single mother by choice) artist who hangs out with other hippies while trying to raise her undisciplined nine year old son Danny (Morgan Mason). But through his actions (such as his most recent shooting of a wild deer), Danny has gotten himself in trouble with the authorities such that Judge Thompson (Torin Thatcher) has given his mother no option but to have him enrolled in a San Simeon religious school, run by the Reverend Dr. Edward Hewitt (Burton) and his wife Claire (Eva Marie Saint). Can you tell where this one is headed?Charles Bronson (!) plays one of Reynolds's fellow Bohemian artist boyfriends who carves her naked torso in wood, Cos Erickson, and James Edwards plays another beatnik, Larry Brant, who works as her agent (e.g. trying to sell Laura's paintings). Robert Webber plays Ward Hendricks, a parishioner in Hewitt's church who has a past with Laura (she was his mistress while he put her through art school) that he wishes could continue. Tom Drake plays Walter Robinson, who works at the San Simeon school and ultimately succeeds Hewitt when he resigns per his affair with Laura and the self loathing he feels for other hypocritical deeds (e.g. he'd effectively become a salesman that was willing to overlook certain unethical financial actions by members of his congregation in order to pay for a new place of worship at the school).Among the implausibilities are Laura's ability to afford the beach home she lives in and her irrational reason for ending the affair.

Sometimes, with the best will in the world, you get it wrong. The question here is: how, with all the right ingredients and a more or less foolproof recipe you can't get the soufflé' to rise? Don't look at me, all I know is, Burton, Taylor, Minnelli, Trumbo, Big Sur, what's to go wrong, To digress slightly what is it with Burton and men of the cloth? Becket, Night Of The Iguana, and now this, three holy men and together they didn't have a prayer. Minnelli even cast Tom Drake, his leading man in one of his greatest successes Meet Me In St Louis, maybe he thought they could replicate that success. In their dreams. In casting terms he also threw in James Mason's ex-wife Pamela, and their son Morgan Mason as Taylor's son. Still no go. Maybe it started to go South when they threw out Johnny Mercer's title song and brought in Paul Francis Webster who came up with The Shadow Of Your Smile. As Mercer remarked it sounds like a woman with designer stubble; maybe that's the problem with the movie.

It's so easy to make fun of this Elizabeth Taylor/Richard Burton soap opera with a pretty setting and an Oscar Winning song that lasts only 45 seconds in the movie as the cast credits roll at the end. But it's actually quite good and actually better than the film that made them infamous in the first place-"Cleopatra".Taylor doesn't barge down the Nile in this film, but she has the whole Pacific Ocean to stare at and paint from her lovely home near Monterey, California. All it takes, though, is an injured sandpiper to get the two stars together after Taylor gets over a judge's order remanding her illegitimate son to be enrolled in the exclusive boarding school Burton runs as an Episcopal priest.As the two get to know each other, they begin to appreciate the warmth hidden inside their individual personalities. Taylor is a naturalist who believes that mankind has no business manipulating young minds as they destroy each other, while Burton has forgotten about the initial ideals of why he became an Episcopal priest in the first place. Their love affair threatens to destroy Burton's marriage to the sweet Eva Marie Saint, while Taylor's free-wheeling lifestyle is constantly getting in the way, threatened by fellow artist Charles Bronson and an old beau, Robert Webber, whom Taylor refers to as a slime.Thanks to the wonderful scenery (beautifully photographed to capture each sunset the technical crew could capture), the lush score and tight direction by Vincent Minnelli, "The Sandpiper" rises above mediocrity. It may not be a masterpiece, but it avoids the melodrama and braying of future Taylor & Burton pairings. In their next film, they would perfect the art of dysfunctional coupling with the film version of a certain play by Broadway genius Edward Albee.