Michael Caine hasn't always been Batman's butler. For more than 50 years, the prolific British actor has played soldiers, spies, womanizers and violent criminals. He has won two supporting actor Oscars, the first for playing a neurotic adulterer in Woody Allen's "Hannah and Her Sisters" (1986), and the second for his portrayal of an orphanage director in "The Cider House Rules" (1999).

But I don't care about any of this. For me, Michael Caine will always be the snarling hitman in the 1971 British thriller "Get Carter."

"The Italian Job," released in 1969, is considered by many to be the quintessential Swingin' Sixties British film. Despite its timeless heist setup, there's a lot of hip: a funky Quincy Jones score, Michael Caine starring as a suave, philandering thief, lots of girls in their underwear, and a small herd of Minis tooling around on a hangar-size roof in one of cinema history's greatest car chases.

Monomania, single-mindedness, obsession. Whatever you want to call it, the drive that blacks out everything in the periphery and narrows one's focus on an impossible goal eludes contemporary man. We compartmentalize our existence, devoting precious chunks of our lives to wiping up spills, walking to the grocery store, writing e-mails and getting our tires rotated. Even though we hope to look back and see mountains conquered and novels written, we engage in checking off busy-work on daily to-do lists.

Like many of fans of the "Watchmen" comic, I enjoyed seeing my favorite mid-life crime-fighters brought to the screen. A couple of the voices weren't as I imagined them. Still, I sat back and enjoyed the explosions.

But anyone who's seen "Watchmen" knows it offers only a grim solution to nuclear annihilation. Without giving the ending away, somebody with a lot of power goes with a lesser evil, which still hurts pretty bad. It's a clever twist, but so fantastic and horrible, it gives us little to work with in the real world.

It's a novel idea: Dr. Jekyll transforming into his lecherous alter-ego by snorting an experimental powder up his nose. And there's some sense to it. In the early eighties, Mr. Hyde probably would have been a hairy-chested, gold chain wearing drug fiend obsessed with a prostitute who sings in a New Wave band at a seedy night club.