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If I ever again have to hear that many whiny guitar songs, mumbling actors, and vapid high school-level observations about life, I myself will escape into the Alaska woods, find that bus, and beg it to run me over.

The movie is based on a mishmash of true facts, made up events, and vague recollections. Our hero is the world's most charismatic and popular human being - he gets a huge round of applause at his college graduation, and constantly runs into people who immediately fall in love with him, take their clothes off in front of him, give him jobs, let him stay at their place, and otherwise offer to help him. But to the Alaska woods he must go, to camp out on his own, because he must become as one with nature to gain his full humanity, or some such 1960's pabulum. If you watch this movie to try to understand what happened on Christopher McCandless's trip, you will end your two-and-a-half hour journey no wiser than you started it. Just read the book.

On my one and only trip to Paris, I took a bus tour to the Palace at Versailles. The magnificently ostentatious palace was almost certainly visible to many of the poor peasants below. It's a monument to the obliviousness of the French monarchy before the revolution. So is this film.

Don't get me wrong, I'm sure that liberties were taken with the facts, and it left some events largely unexplained. But the overall theme is the arrogance of the upper classes right until the end. ("At least it's better than being hanged," says one character being led away to the penitentiary near the end, apparently unaware of their ultimate fate.)

Delores Del Rio is charming as the free-spirited Madame du Barry, and Reginald Owen is fine as the blustery, pompous Louis XV. I was particularly impressed with Maynard Holmes as the fat, inept, but good natured heir to the throne.

Definitely worth watching if your looking to kill some time with a glass of wine.

This is a powerful adaptation of a great Ibsen play. And by "adaptation," I mean there's an interesting little spin that, while faithful to the original, gives this version a bit of a twist. I'm sure Ibsen would approve. But I can say no more about that without getting into spoilers.

Like everything written by Ibsen, this movie is dialogue-heavy. It's not for lovers of fast-moving flashy special effects or loud background music. You can't really watch it while surfing your cell phone; almost every line of dialogue teaches you more about the character and pushes the plot forward. Andre Gregory and Wallace Shawn are both in this film - veterans of another dialogue-heavy film, "My Dinner With Andre." Every single member of the cast is very strong. "A Master Builder" is the first Ibsen play that I ever saw, forty years ago, and it got me hooked on Ibsen for life. Check this one out and see if it hooks you, too.