I saw "Last Call" yesterday. It's a film on the last eighteen months of F. Scott Fitzgerald's (Jeremy Irons) life. I'm a big Sissy Spacek fan, and she had short recurring scenes as his schizophrenic wife, Zelda Fitzgerald, who had been committed to a sanitarium. The story was based on the memoirs of his last secretary who encouraged him to finish his last novel, "The Last Tycoon."

The story is focused but limited, since it mainly centers around his relationship with his secretary, Frances Kroll (Neve Campbell). Zelda's scenes (in Fitzgerald's tortured imagination) are too short, but I loved the line, "I'm not dead; I'm just in the looney bin."

I'd really recommend the film, although you shouldn't expect a thorough examination of Fitzgerald's life. It does explore the writing process, however, which is pretty unusual. The performances are excellent. Campbell is remarkably restrained and subtle, Irons powerful, and Spacek wonderfully disturbed and addictive as a perfect Zelda. Natalie Radford is also great as Fitzgerald's off-and-on mistress, gossip columnist Sheilah Graham. I'm going to see if Frances Kroll Ring's book is available, since it explores the writing process of this great but disturbed writer.