Infamous gives you the unique opportunity to see how two sets of filmmakers can take exactly the same story, make extremely tough though different choices in emphasis and tone and achieve brilliant movies.

Less a parable of literary ethics than a showcase of literary personality, and it is in the end more touching than troubling.

Jones gets everything--the gestures, the generosity, the mean streak, the bending of the ear to recitals of woe, whether across a lunch table or a prison cell. He even nails the voice, like that of a chorister caught running a racket with the incense.

Dizzy with celebrity, New York society and gay life (if all that isn't the same thing), Infamous is more fun. But "Capote" is a better movie.

While less beguiling than "Capote," Infamous remains a soulful and searching portrayal of the writer, carried with immense charm and vivacity by its leading man.

Though it's not as good as the brilliant "Capote," it's nevertheless a riveting, well-made picture.

Infamous is the better Capote film, yes, but also the less easily digestible one, the more eccentric one and -- yes -- the gayer one.

Infamous successfully captures a sense of the loneliness of a writer's life.

I don't know if that makes Infamous a better movie, but it's certainly as good and a lot more fun. British actor Toby Jones is so physically right in the role, you'll think Capote is playing himself.

Watch Infamous on its own. It's a worthy film in its own right, with its own virtues.

Overall, McGrath's film has superior star power (including Gwyneth Paltrow in a one-scene role as a Peggy Lee-like chanteuse), is franker about the sexual nature of Capote's fascination with the murderous Smith and his sad, strangled dreams, and spends more time establishing Capote's glittering New York life before setting him adrift in the heartland.

The pleasure of Infamous is in its gallery of larger-than-life portrayals.

"Capote" is serious, deep and unadorned in the manner of the 1967 movie adaptation of the writer's true-crime novel "In Cold Blood." And Infamous boasts the high-gloss frivolity of the 1961 film version of Capote's "Breakfast at Tiffany's."

"Capote" is the more intellectual of the two films; Infamous is the more emotional. They exist to complement, not eclipse, one another.