In theaters

GOSFORD PARK, directed by Robert Altman, written by Julian Fellowes, 137 minutes, rated R.

The new Robert Altman movie, “Gosford Park,” feels like Agatha Christie by way of Noel Coward, Oscar Wilde and P.D. James. It stars everyone currently working in movies – or at least it seems that way – featuring a large ensemble cast that includes dozens of actors, all of whom have obviously shown up to have a grand good time.

And they do.

The film, from a script by Julian Fellowes, is a leisurely interweaving of the “Upstairs, Downstairs” classes in an English manor house in 1932. It’s at once a murder mystery and a social satire, a movie whose story unfolds with the staccato punch of a blizzard of tiny melodramas, most of which have little to do with the unwieldy plot – but all of which add nicely to the experience of watching the film.

The story, such as it is, is centered around a shooting party held at Gosford Park, the sturdy country estate owned by Sir William McCordle (Michael Gambon), a crude multimillionaire industrialist, and his younger wife Lady Sylvia (Kristin Scott Thomas), a chilly aristocrat who lives her life with the sort of icy detachment that suggests she’d either freeze if she paused long enough for her blue blood to congeal or that she is, in fact, already dead.

Arriving for the McCordles’ party are a whole host of types: Maggie Smith’s show-stopping performance as the acid-tongued Constance, Countess of Trentham; Jeremy Northam as the real-life British matinee idol Ivor Novello; Bob Balaban as an American producer of Charlie Chan movies; and Charles Dance as Lord Stockbridge, a bitter pill who can’t bear the fact that Sir William has risen within the aristocracy thanks to his wife’s fondness for his newer-than-new money.

Others come and go through the film’s busy corridors, but no group resonates more than the servants living downstairs – those who have been charged with orchestrating this hellish party while somehow putting up with the glamorous archetypes “bored to sobs” with its proceedings.

Here, Altman mines small, yet perfectly realized performances from Clive Owen, Helen Mirren, Emily Watson, Ryan Phillippe, Richard E. Grant, Kelly MacDonald, Alan Bates, Derek Jacobi and Eileen Atkins, all of whom define their characters without ever being showy.

Without its murder – and Maggie Smith’s supremely bitchy and funny asides – “Gosford Park” would have been just a charming museum piece set in the days before Hitler’s reign, a quaint slog through the English countryside with characters dusted off from a Merchant-Ivory production.

But Altman goes deeper. What interests him is the inner workings of the caste system, which he shakes up and captures through this murder. Indeed, the moment the victim is found slumped over a desk, the film’s several loose ends start to gel as truths are revealed, characters are exposed – and then catharsis, long dormant within these rigid walls, is allowed to unravel within one man’s bedroom.

Grade: B+

THE MOTHMAN PROPHECIES, directed by Mark Pellington, written by Richard Hatem, 119 minutes, rated PG-13.

Mark Pellington’s “The Mothman Prophecies” sounds as if it’s based on a comic book; you half expect it to feature a winged superhero zipping about the world in a colorful Lycra Mothman suit – one that is, naturally, riddled with holes.

Instead, the film is a supernatural drama “based on true events,” which in this case means that the truth – or what is allegedly the truth – has been stretched to create two hours of occasionally compelling fiction.

But don’t expect a satisfying outcome.

Loosely based on John Keel’s book, “The Mothman Prophecies” stars Richard Gere as John Klein, a Washington Post reporter whose life turns into an episode of “The X-Files” when his wife, Mary (Debra Messing), crashes their car after seeing something strange hovering in the middle of the road.

Each survives the accident, but poor Mary isn’t the same. Diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor shaped like a moth, she becomes hallucinatory and paranoid – and is eventually drawn to a bright light of her own.

Two years later, John, still mourning Mary’s death, is driving to Richmond, Va., when he’s mysteriously transported to Point Pleasant, W.Va., a small town whose weird sightings are documented by the local cop (Laura Linney), but which nobody wants to talk about without first raising a shotgun to John’s head.

What follows is a movie that has its suspenseful moments and a technically well-conceived final blowout atop a shaky suspension bridge, but audiences might be hard-pressed to make sense of any of it by the time the film reaches its dramatic conclusion.

Indeed, by not revealing what or who the Mothman is (we barely see the creature), “The Mothman Prophecies” keeps a wary distance. It would be great to report that it’s elusive for the sake of creating a stirring mystery, but what’s closer to the truth is that Pellington and Hatem couldn’t get a handle on their subject.

Grade: C

Christopher Smith is the Bangor Daily News film critic. His reviews appear Mondays and Fridays in Style, Tuesdays on “News Center at 5” and Thursdays at “News Center at 5:30” on WLBZ 2 and WCSH 6. He can be reached at BDNFilm1@aol.com.

THE VIDEO-DVD CORNER

Renting a video or a DVD? NEWS film critic Christopher Smith can help. Below are his grades of recent releases in video stores.

Atlantis: The Lost

Empire ? C

Curse of the Jade

Scorpion ? B-

Lisa Picard is ?Famous? ? B

Kiss of the Dragon ? B-

Rock Star ? B

American Pie 2 ? C+

Bubble Boy ? F

Glitter ? D

Sound and Fury ? A

Jeepers Creepers ? D

The Fast and the Furious ? B

The Glass House ? C

Greenfingers ? B-

What?s the Worse that Could

Happen ? D

The Center of the World ? C

Evolution ? D-

Two Can Play

That Game ? C+

Moulin Rouge ? A-

The Princess Diaries ? C+

Scary Movie 2 ? D

Hedwig and the

Angry Inch ? A

Jurassic Park III ? B-

Lost & Delirious ? C-

Rush Hour 2 ? D

The Score ? B

American Outlaws ? F

Ghost of Mars ? C-

Pearl Harbor ? D

Summer Catch ? C-

Bread and Roses ? A-

Divided We Fall ? A

Made ? B

Pootie Tang ? D+

Osmosis Jones ? C-

Dr. Seuss? How the Grinch

Stole Christmas ? D+

Planet of the Apes ? C-

America?s Sweethearts ? D+

crazy/beautiful ? B

Tomb Raider ? D+

Doctor Zhivago

(DVD debut) ? A-

The Golden Bowl ? C+

Legally Blonde ? B+

Shrek ? A-

Aimee & Jaguar ? A

The Animal ? B

Swordfish ? C

With a Friend

Like Harry ? A-