Casanova (2005)

Ledger--who has been receiving the best reviews of his career playing a lover of an entirely different sort in Ang Lee's dramatic Brokeback Mountain--is breezy and confident as the renowned seductor, embodying Casanova's own advice that the best way to win a woman's attention is to be the flame instead of the moth. Miller (perhaps best known to date as Jude Law's put-upon fiancée), meanwhile, certainly holds her own against him; her Francesca is earnest and determined, with just enough mischief…

Fresh from his triumph as a gay cowboy in Brokeback Mountain, Heath Ledger re-ups as a hetero playing the world's greatest eighteenth-century lover. His comic flair is a big plus in a film that is fanatically busy and fatally sexless. The whimsical plot, involving Casanova's seduction of a cross-dressing feminist (Sienna Miller rivals the Venice locale for beauty), isn't helped by director Lasse Hallstrom's leaden hand. Oliver Platt is fun as the "lard king" with a yen for Miller, but he's just…