Well, it turns out that crossing my fingers and rubbing my lucky rabbit's foot didn't do a damned bit of good, as the Harrison Hilltop Theatre's A Streetcar Named Desire closed, after a mere four performances, on August 31. (There was a chance that the show - originally scheduled to open August 21, but delayed due to scheduling conflicts - would run one or two more times in September, yet subsequent scheduling conflicts wound up precluding a second weekend.) Thursday's production was so enjoyable, though, and Kimberly Furness, Eddie Staver III, and Stephanie Burrough were so thrillingly good in it, that I'm more than happy to offer a post-mortem; had director Derek Bertelsen's take on Tennessee Williams' classic run another weekend, it's unimaginable that any devotee of the art of acting would've even thought of missing it.

Tennessee Williams' Cat on a Hot Tin Roof opened at the Richmond Hill Barn Theatre last Thursday, and I may as well preface by admitting that, before the show started, I couldn't have been more excited, as this classic has long been one of my absolute favorite plays.

X-MEN: THE LAST STAND

In his X-Men films of 2000 and 2003, Bryan Singer managed a marvelous blend of gravitas, insouciance, and pure ass-kicking spectacle, and the highest praise I can give X-Men: The Last Stand is that director Brett Ratner, nearly scene for scene, fools you into thinking that Singer helmed this one as well. For a director with an indistinct visual style, there are far worse ways to go than aping the visual style of others, and in the case of The Last Stand, Ratner's channeling of Singer's tone seems less unimaginative than duly reverent, and even inspiring; you can feel Ratner working diligently to not louse up Singer's vision. And he hasn't. This third, and purportedly final, entry in the mutant-superhero saga is a spectacular entertainment, and if you were worried that Ratner's participation would guarantee acceptable effects but little in the way of personality, your fears will prove unfounded - it's a more-than-satisfying wrap-up to the trilogy.

CRASH

Crash, the magnificent drama by Million Dollar Baby screenwriter Paul Haggis, fits alongside such sprawling, ensemble-driven works as Grand Canyon, Short Cuts, and Magnolia, movies in which plotlines dovetail within one another and themes enmesh, and where bitter, dissatisfied characters might not wind up more content than before - some might not even wind up alive - but they will definitely have shared, for better or worse, An Experience. (These characters might not receive traditional happy endings, yet they almost invariably find degrees of solace and a measure of hope.) Moviegoers who crave a clearly delineated moral to their stories can be driven batty by films of this ilk; more than once I've heard someone ask, apropos of one of these works, "But what was its point?" Crash, like its predecessors, explores characters so hungry for contact and meaning and understanding in a chaotic universe that they're ready to explode, and oftentimes do. That hunger becomes the point.