Writer-director Bernard Rose decides that Ludwig van Beethoven looked like Gary Oldman and had a lot in common with both Charles Foster Kane and Jake LaMotta, and makes a movie to prove it (1994). If you can buy any or all of these premises, you might enjoy this as something other than a hoot. There are plenty of sound bites from Beethoven’s best-known works, nicely performed by the London Symphony Orchestra under Georg Solti’s direction; there are attractive Czech locations, and OK performances by Jeroen Krabbe, Isabella Rossellini, Valeria Golino, Johanna Ter Steeg, Marco Hofschneider, Barry Humphries, and Miriam Margolyes. There are apparent lifts from Abel Gance’s Beethoven biopic, which also tried to suggest the composer’s growing deafness on the sound track. But if you think this movie is going to solve the mystery of Beethoven’s cryptic inscription on his last quartet, as it pretends to, you’re out of your skull. (JR)