"Best Men" (15)
An entertaining buddy movie which takes off on some unpredictable routes, Tamra Davis's film is set on an eventful day for a convict (Luke Wilson) who is released from jail in the morning and is getting married in the afternoon. Matters are complicated, to say the least, when one of his three tuxedo-clad friends (Sean Patrick Flanery) is revealed as a Shakespeare-spouting bank robber who draws all four men - and the bride-to-be (Drew Barrymore) - into a siege at the local bank.
Lean and tightly scripted, the movie effectively turns darker in tone as it proceeds, and Davis elicits persuasive performances from her well-chosen cast, especially Flanery, unrecognisable from his role in Powder, and Dean Cain, best known as television's most recent Superman/Clark Kent, as a gay Green Beret who has been dishonourably discharged.
"Going All the Way" (18)
Introducing a promising new talent in director Mark Pellington, this coming-of-age period picture is refreshingly free of the genre's cliches. Set in Indianapolis in 1954, in the Commie-fearing McCarthy era, it deals with two young men who become close friends in the aftermath of their Korean war service. One (Jeremy Davies) is a shy and self-effacing aspirant photographer who feels suffocated by his conservative mother (Jill Clayburgh). The other (Ben Affleck) is a confident, good-looking sports star whose ostensibly liberal mother (Lesley Ann Warren) reveals an anti-Semitic streak when he starts dating a Jewish art student (Rachel Weisz).
This well-observed film of an opposites-attract friendship gains considerably from the well-judged central performances from Affleck (who co-wrote and co-starred in Good Will Hunting) and Davies (the nervy interpreter in Saving Private Ryan). A further bonus is the impeccable period detail.
"She's So Lovely" (18)
The 1997 Cannes jury inexplicably gave its best actor award to Sean Penn for his absurdly mannered performance in this irritating and wildly misconceived movie directed by Nick Cassavetes and based on an old screenplay by his late father, writer-director John Cassavetes. Penn plays an unstable personality, with Robin Wright Penn equally over-the-top as his uptight wife. "Love is so difficult," Penn protests. "It's like horse-racing, it's like perfume, it's like fog". And he adds, "You can't see my obscurity unless you've got X-ray vision".
In a movie where the characters speak the loopiest of dialogue, they get to behave even more irrationally and implausibly. Almost an hour into the movie, John Travolta joins the Penns for an embarrassing stab at Method acting, while the director's mother, Gena Rowlands, pops up in a cameo.
Cinema To Video
"Titanic" (12)
There is a time machine quality to James Cameron's hugely ambitious and powerful epic which is assembled on the grand scale, operating on one level as a passionate love story played to the hilt by Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, and on another as an elaborate dramatisation of a horrific catastrophe which claimed 1,500 lives. Ideally, the movie should be seen on a cinema screen, but at least it's going on video in both wide screen and full screen formats. It will be available for rental or purchase from October 19th.
"I Went Down" (18)
Written by the young Irish playwright, Conor McPherson, and directed by Paddy Breathnach, this exuberant, blackly humorous Irish road movie oozes freshness, hilarity and visual style as it follows the misadventures of two inept minor Dublin convicts - played by Brendan Gleeson and Peter McDonald with perfect comic timing - who find within themselves the resources to prove their mettle under pressure. With Peter Caffrey, Tony Doyle and Donal O'Kelly.
"Gattaca" (15)
This clever, sleekly designed futuristic drama of identity-switching marks an auspicious directing debut for New Zealander Andrew Niccol. Set a time when human success and failure are dictated entirely by genetics, it features Ethan Hawke as an unhealthy human specimen so determined to overcome his status as an "InValid" that he assumes the identity of a once-perfect accident victim (Jude Law). With Uma Thurman.
"In The Company Of Men" (18)
Neil Labute's abrasive and chilling contemporary drama features Aaron Eckhart and Matt Molloy as white male corporate executives bitterly frustrated at being passed over for promotion and at being dropped by the women in their lives. They decide to take "therapeutic" revenge on women in general by subjecting one vulnerable young woman (Stacey Edwards) to humiliation.
"Deconstructing Harry" (18)
In his caustic, provocative and hilarious - and unusually expletive-littered - new movie Woody Allen yet again plays an immature, insecure Manhattan writer. Set over 24 eventful hours as he confronts his past, present and future, the film features a stellar cast, among them Judy Davis, Kirstie Alley, Demi Moore, Elisabeth Shue, Billy Crystal and Robin Williams. It's on rental release from Monday week.
"As Good As It Gets" (15)
In her Oscar-winning performance as a struggling single mother, Helen Hunt establishes the only fresh and credible character in this vastly overrated serious comedy. Essentially a contemporary spin on the Scrooge story, it features an over-the-top Jack Nicholson on auto-pilot as a neurotic, self-centered author who suffers from an obsessive-compulsive disorder. James L. Brooks directs.
" Mrs Dalloway" (PG)
Marleen Gorris, the Dutch director of Antonia's Line, takes a heavy-handed approach in her stiff, remote film of Virginia Woolf's novel. It is only partly rescued by Vanessa Redgrave's firm, intelligent portrayal of a woman pondering life's regrets as she prepares for a dinner party in the summer of 1923. As adapted by Eileen Atkins, the film is particularly cluttered in its introductory stages, and its parallel story of a seriously shell-shocked young war veteran (Rupert Graves) is so tenuously connected that it becomes merely intrusive.
"MouseHunt" (PG)
"The squeak shall inherit the earth" is this wacky comedy's publicity slogan. Nathan Lane and Lee Evans spark off each other as feuding brothers who inherit a mansion where a mischievous mouse is on the loose, with Christopher Walken on fine form as an exterminator. Directed with panache by Gore Verbinski.
"Hard Rain" (15)
Morgan Freeman, Christian Slater, Minnie Driver and Randy Quaid take the leading roles, but the use of water and sound are the only remarkable features about Mikael Salomon's formulaic film set in a small Indiana town which is forced to evacuate when the flood waters rise, while thieves plot to rob an armoured car transporting $3 million from the local bank.
"Sphere" (12)
Barry Levinson's big-budget underwater science-fiction film based on the novel by Michael Crichton features Dustin Hoffman as a psychologist, Sharon Stone as a biochemist and the ubiquitous Samuel L. Jackson as a mathematician. The result is turgid and wholly predictable.
