Nonetheless, at its best, it has some of the same qualities as Ophüls' classic.
At its best, it has brought millions of new passengers: trains are busier than at any time since the 1920s.
At its best, it has distant echoes of early Hemingway, as filtered through Twitter and Klonopin: it's terse, neutral, composed of small and often intricate gestures.
At its best it has an engaging immediacy, conveying a sense of what can be done in a theater with limited means.
But at its best it has a punch-drunk paranoia that brings to mind Mr. Shepard's salad days as the ultimate wild young dramatist of several decades ago.
"3:10 to Yuma" may be familiar, but, at its best, it has a rapt quality, even an aura of wonder.
To borrow an apt phrase from the unfortunate James Frey, poetry may not get the details right, but at its best it has "emotional truth".
But at its best it has a wistful, improvisatory feel that does indeed feel lifelike, and feels true to the fragile happiness of the two characters.
At its best, it has enabled Australia to undertake wrenching reforms when they were most needed as in the 1980s, when the then treasurer (finance minister), Paul Keating, said Australia was on the way to becoming a banana republic.
At its best, it has the delicate fruit of Burgundy, the age-worthiness of Bordeaux and a broad register of flavors, from cherries to dried flowers to eucalyptus to Darjeeling tea, that is entirely its own.
While Silicon Valley has argued that it would revolutionize education, the reality is that at its best, it has augmented the classic model and not replaced it.
