Dean Martin and Ann-Margret.

Together they are very winning, albeit Ann-Margret on her own is winning enough. In Murderers’ Row (1966) she does all she can with a cardboard part (which is a lot) and has never looked more drop-dead gorgeous. But of course Martin is handsome, and he gets all the funny one-liners in this seriocomic secret-agent pic which practically drops the “serio” for the comic. Also, unlike in The Wrecking Crew, he does okay as Matt Helm.

An example of the humor: In Cote d’Azur, Helm pleads with French police not to shoot at his moving car because an innocent girl passenger (Ann-Margret) is riding with him. After the police shoot anyway, Helm murmurs, “That’s the French for you. They don’t think any girl is innocent.”

Directed by Henry Levin, the movie is dopey but also pleasurable. Before she appeared in Downhill Racer, beautiful Camilla Sparv was in Row, but has pronouncedly little to do. Karl Malden is an intriguing villain. To sum it up, it’s nice to have Martin at the Helm here as well as all the other beguiling performers.

(All the reviews are by Earl Dean)

The chief person in “Sail Shining in White,” by Mark Helprin, is an old man of the sea—he is 82—who knows “[a]s if by some magic” that a ferocious storm is coming.

Saying yes to one’s own destruction (engineered by nature), as the old man does, is the subject. Aboard a boat, he knows he cannot survive the storm. There is no capriciousness here, however. The old man seeks an epiphany. He wishes “to see in nature some clue to the mystery to come [death] and the mysteries he would be leaving behind.” What can nature—or nature’s God—do for us? Helprin, I should mention, takes God seriously (“On the sea the only law was God’s law”).

“Sail” does not ignore the Wound in the human condition, but it is a defiantly positive short story. And there is nearly a politesse in its intelligent prose.

The 2006 film, The Devil Wears Prada, is a puny crowd-pleaser about a young woman (Anne Hathaway) who goes to work for a tyrannical fashion magazine editor (Meryl Streep).

Based on the Lauren Weisberger novel, the picture tries to convince us that Andrea, the Hathaway character, is naughty for being seduced by the “shallow” world of fashion, and it’s a silly misfire. But at least the piece has in its favor the non-feminist refusal to give its female characters a pass on all their moral choices. Miranda Priestly, the editor, is a cold and insulting jerk. One of her assistants (“Em”), played by Emily Blunt, is a bitchy snob. Both are essential to the creation of an unkind corporation.

This is what Andrea is doing—for a limited time, trying to keep her head above water in an unkind corporation. She isn’t naughty. Though nice to look at—and with Streep’s expertise—The Devil Wears Prada is, finally, a touchy feely fraud. Somehow, even Andrea’s hairy boyfriend seems fraudulent.