For me, Richard Eyre’s Stage Beauty is a so-so, hit-and-miss thing, and the most glaring error is the casting of Billy Crudup as a kind of lady. He plays a 17th Century London stage actor named Ned Kynaston, whose was renowned in the early stages of his career for playing female roles (since women were forbidden to play women in those days). The diarist Samuel Pepys called Kynaston “the most beautiful woman on the London stage,” except that Crudup’s sharp nose and jutting chin make him look pointedly un-feminine or at the least unattractive by any sort of hot-girl standard. If I were to run into a “woman” who looked like Crudup at a party, I’d do a fast 180. Gael Garcia Bernal is very pretty (sort of Julia Roberts-like) when he appears in drag in Pedro Almodovar’s Bad Education, and the young Mick Jagger was quite attractive when he did his bisexual womanly thing in Donald Cammell and Nicolas Roeg’s Performance some 34 years ago. I didn’t even find Crudup’s high-pitched inflections and girly hand gestures very affecting. Jack Lemmon was more womanly in Some Like it Hot…really.

Certain taste-maker journos around town are telling me Dylan Kidd’s P.S. (Newmarket, 10.15) isn’t good enough and therefore that Laura Linney’s shot at a Best Actress nom for her work in this film is in peril. I really think they’re wrong about this. This obviously smart, curiously romantic film is alive and originally plotted, it never drifts or bores, and Linney is radiantly readable in every frame.