One of my students at Western Connecticut State U. was planning an essay and presentation for me on the film "Aces High," a 1976 cinematic version of "Journey's End," the great R. C. Sheriff play about World War I. He suggested bringing his neighbor into a three-way conference call to discuss the niceties of adapting a play into a film. Why his neighbor, I inquired. Because he starred in the film, he said, referring to the eminent Canadian actor Christopher Plummer, whom my student encounters occasionally, taking his daily constitutional along the leafy Connecticut lanes near his demesne. Alas, my student and I could never find a good enough print of "Aces High," so we had to shift focus, as it were, to "Paths of Glory." Consequently, the conference call with the great Plummer never happened. Pity. It would have been fun. He has the reputation of being a fine raconteur, and I honestly believe I've enjoyed every single performance the man has ever given, from Captain von Trapp in "The Sound of Music" to...well, Vladimir Nabokov, in a remarkable little film called "Nabokov: The Metamorphosis," in which Plummer portrays VN giving one of his signature lectures at Cornell, ca. 1954, and conveys brilliantly the chill rivulet of genius trickling from VN to Kafka and back and sprinkling him, Plummer, with a drop or two....and now Plummer's doing Tolstoy, in a film called "The Last Station," co-starring Helen Mirren as Sofya, Mrs. Tolstoy. The title refers, of course, to the railway station Tolstoy died in in 1910, after his final, feverish fugue, and so honors the great man on the 100th anniversary of his death. The film should be fascinating, and even if it isn't, it's good to know that we're not condemned to a cinematic diet consisting exclusively of FX, fake sex, robots, and remakes. But with Plummer and Mirren, the two greatest actors of the day, involved, chances are we'll be seeing a minor masterpiece, or even a major one.