A purely tasteless, moronic, guilty pleasure. Director Harold Ramis employs a mixture of Mad magazine National Lampoon maturity and Saturday Night Live sarcasm in this goofball golf comedy set on the grounds of a posh country club. Somewhere buried in the slapstick antics, drug references, Marx Brothers-like insults, and gratuitous sex scenes are the intertwined, forgettable subplots of a poor caddie (Michael O'Keefe) trying to earn enough cash to attend college, and golf-tournament and class battles between rich and even richer snobs. Mainly, Ramisjust lets his colourful group of eccentrics crash into each other, relying on several inspired performances to create several hilarious moments of sketch comedy. Most come from the trio of Bill Murray (playing a vile, obsessed groundskeeper engaged in a one-man war with a charismatic and very stuffed gopher), Rodney Dangerfield (basically recreating his crude stand-up routine), and Chevy Chase (who looks bemusedly stoned throughout). Quotable favourites include Murray's acted-out fantasy of winning the Masters, his tall tale about caddying for the Dalai Lama, an overreaching priest's rain-soaked golf game, Dangerfield's verbal assault on the club's uptight dining patrons, and Chase's lesson on the essence of golf ("Be the ball, Danny"). A perfect double feature with other comparably crass films such as National Lampoon's Vacation or Stripes. --Dave McCoy

Brother Cadfael, the medieval mystery-solving monk, is a fascinating detective, at once a man of God, of science, and even of action. Derek Jacobi stars as the former "soldier, sailor, sinner, and Crusader" who has his faith tested by crimes of royal intrigue and baffling murders that seem to plague 12th-century Shrewsbury. You'll find few Benedictine monks so skilled at using a quarterstaff, but beware never to tell him your theory of how a crime "must" have been committed. "We must always be wary of 'must'," he states. "Nothing is certain." And so attest these divine mysteries based on the books by Ellis Peters. Each feature-length episode is self-contained but plays against the backdrop of England's civil war between forces loyal to King Stephen and those to Empress Maud. Eoin McCarthy costars as local Under-Sheriff Hugh Beringar, who relies on Cadfael when murder subverts his efforts to keep the peace. --Donald Liebenson