Very Cool!!!

Excellent, Without a doubt!!

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

The acting in this movie is really good.

A London architect's jealous wife bickers and rages at him to no avail for his affair with a beautiful young woman. His flagrant behaviour causes his wife to scheme to get him back. Elizabeth Taylor is a film star and the main attraction here, but the emphasis place upon her by the diretor detracts somewhat from a fuller representation of the romantic love triangle in the film. The dialogue is rather contrived but there is good humour and lines are thrown about like sticks of dynamite. Michael Caine plays virtually a supporting part to Taylor's charisma, though York is irresistable as the demure woman and perfect answer to Taylor's middle age beauty and style.

I have an iron-clad rule that any movie with slo-mo is a dog. It's usually a bad sports-themed movie that needs slo-mo to make things seem more dramatic than they really are. It could be a romantic movie where two lovers ran slo-mo across a beach toward each other's out-stretched arms. In this case it's two lovers playing a sport (ping-pong) over the opening credits. And sure enough, the movie is a bowzer. Especially laughable is watching two members of the Elvis Presley generation cavorting to faux rock & roll. There's a little fake Beatles (OK, Ravi Shankar) and some fake Led Zeppelin, and who knows what else. Susannah York is as inert is radon. At certain points I thought Michael Caine was about to fall asleep. At least Liz games it up in that fright wig. She deserved better material.

For anyone who ever hankered to see what a collaboration between the novelist Edna O'Brien and the director of 'Where Eagles Dare' would have looked like, look no further! After two war movies in a row, Brian G. Hutton obviously felt the need to try his hand at something a bit more dangerous; and Elizabeth Taylor in all her big-haired, loud-mouthed and even more loudly dressed glory dominates this delirious spectacle in a way little seen since the heyday of Bette Davis.Taylor and Caine give their all as a self-absorbed pair who make George & Martha from 'Virginia Woolf' look like The Brady Bunch. In reality Caine would probably have abandoned or murdered Taylor long ago; but she's entertaining to watch and listen to at least for the duration of the movie, and shows a delightful flair for mimicry mocking some of her co-stars. (I thought she jumped the shark, however, with her suicide attempt.)Susannah York understandably seems more than a little overwhelmed by the madhouse she's wandered into. A few spoilsports have already revealed the twist at the end of this tale. As a bloke I was as surprised and delighted as I was relieved that a woman wrote it; so it absolved me of feeling guilty at being served up with one of my favourite male fantasies about two women.Whatever happened to these three after the closing credits is anybody's guess; but the audience I watched it with at the Barbican tonight laughed appreciatively all the way through and gave it an enthusiastic round of applause as the lights went up.

"X, Y & Zee" is a timepiece from that awkward, transitional period in Elizabeth Taylor's career when her legendary Hollywood glamour began to give way to a more earthy blowsiness. Unfortunately, her film choices during this phase suggest a disinterest in doing any actual acting and more of a penchant for taking on roles that suited her personal needs (exotic locations, proximity to husband and family, size of paycheck, etc.)If the title "X, Y & Zee" suggests a love triangle, then you'll know all there is to know about this colorful but airless game of sexual one-upmanship where the clothes and decor are more interesting than the people inhabiting them. Two years later Hal Ashby's "Shampoo" would skewer these amoral, directionless types more entertainingly.Perhaps thinking she had a mod, swinging London update of "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" on her hands, Taylor as Zee once again allows herself to be cast as the braying, shrill harpy to a weak, watery-eyed husband (the always charming Michael Caine). Taylor and Caine have one of those functional dysfunctional marriages that are probably an accurate representation of what comprise many so-called happy marriages. Regrettably neither performer is able to make me believe that they were ever a couple in the first place. They just don't fit. That wounded hound dog Richard Burton would have been much better.Anyhow, things get shaken up pretty quickly once Caine sets eyes on pretty, husky-voiced boutique owner, Susannah York and starts romancing her right under Taylor's heavily made-up nose.As the trio uncomfortably navigate the decidedly choppy waters of love and sex, the film struggles mightily to be bitchy and witty and NOW but never heats up much and has nothing up its sleeve but a pretty nice final act (it probably was a good deal more daring back in 1972). York, as always is an exceptionally interesting actress, but her character sometimes makes even less sense than Taylor's and Caine's. For me, the single most fascinating element of the film was Susannah York's shag haircut. What a weird hairstyle. Glistening, shining, intricately layered and geometrically perfect, it is the one image that has stayed with me long after the film had ended.