Given that online outlets like LoveFilm and Netflix allow customers to select classics and curios, as well as the latest releases, we are currently revisiting a number of pictures that were released around the turn of the century. Following last week's British and Irish batch, our final spotlight turns on Hollywood in the hope that the odd title might inspire an enjoyable night in.

BATS (1999).

Ever since our feathered friends took against Bodega Bay in Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds (1963), the natural world has been getting its own back on humankind. We've had spiders, bees, rats, ants and even squirrels (no, just kidding with that one). But, now, director Louis Morneau has threatened civilisation with bats - not of the vampiric kind, but of a GM genus that owe its existence to Uncle Sam and his cockamamie security schemes.

Bob Gunton (in eye-rolling mad scientist mode) is the brains behind a government-sponsored programme to create a breed of flying foxes, who can think strategically and work as a team. The only problem is, they've also developed a fondness for human flesh, as the residents of Gallup, Texas are about to find out.

This is, potentially, a serviceable idea, providing it's played with a knowing wink. But Morneau is in deadly earnest, although he does indulge himself with a double in-joke by having F.W. Murnau's Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror (1922) playing at the local cinema. Nice try, but it doesn't disguise the fact that this film is too awful even to be worth laughing at.

Just about everything is wrong. The acting is wince-inducing and not always because the dialogue is such unutterable drivel. Lou Diamond Phillips is almost inanimate as the stogie-chomping sheriff, although equally wooden in the peroxide-in-peril role is Dina Meyer, whose decision-making prowess has in no way been enhanced by the fact she has a doctorate and is the `best in her field'. Doubts as to her credentials are immediately raised by her choice of assistant, an African-American named Jimmy who is portrayed by Leon as the kind of scaredy cat one-liner-spouting Stepin Fetchit, whom everyone presumed had died out with blaxploitation.

Even the SFX are risible, with the bats being little more than Gremlins with wings, their gargoyle faces contorted in fury both at being genetically bowdlerised and so ineptly rendered by the CGI unit. But it's Morneau's direction that merits especial ire. Having saddled us with gravitas, the least he could do would be to treat us to some stirring action. But his flash-cutting technique renders the attacks visually incoherent, while he ducks altogether the confrontation between the critters and the military, as it seeks to infiltrate the bat cave to set up a refrigeration device that will induce hibernation prior to a grandstanding kaboom.

Morneau made a decent job of Carnosaur 2 (1995), so one can only presume that he was led astray. Back in 1999, with screen space being at a premium, it was a travesty that it should have been wasted on guano like this. Some 15 years on, however, it seems more tolerable on disc.

BLOOD, GUTS, GORE & OCTANE (1998).

The Pulp Dogs school of film-making dated faster than a Mélièsian tableau. But, as an example of how boundless enterprise and energy can overcome limited resources and ability, this textbook indie is up there with Robert Rodriguez's El Mariachi (1992). Yet, as a blackly comic crime caper, it's down among the Tarantino wannabes. This is an instance where the backstory is infinitely more interesting than the one on the screen. A producer on a Sacramento TV station, Joe Carnahan assembled this picture for a mere $7,300, a figure that is all the more astonishing considering it was shot on 16mm film and not digital video. Strapped for time and cash, he worked at such speed, that, on one occasion, he achieved the unheard of feat of shooting 23 pages of script in a single day.

Notwithstanding the contributions of co-star/producer Dan Leis and cinematographer, John A. Jimenez, this is pretty much a one-man operation, with Carnaham writing, directing, co-producing and starring in what is, essentially, a promo reel for his second feature.

He deserves the chance to try again with a bigger budget. But he can't afford to be so self-indulgent next time around. With its stylised visuals and vicious rapacity, the opening has a bit more about it than yer average Quentin retread. There's a shooting at a garage in the middle of the Californian nowhere, which is rapidly followed by several more (all balletically staged in noir nod monochrome) before we fetch up at Bob & Sid's Auto Emporium.

Sid (Joe Carnahan) and Bob (Dan Leis) scrape along by jipping suckers and casting envious glances at Dan Woo's lot across the street. But then, a stranger offers them the chance to babysit a 1963 Pontiac for the night in return for $250,000. Naturally, they agree and - even more naturally - hit upon the plan of faking a robbery and ransoming the motor back to its owners for twice the amount.

Playing the Macguffin of a mysterious package in the Pontiac's boot for all its worth, Carnahan uses every trick at his disposal to distract us from the paucity of the plot. He whizzes the camera around, switches from colour to black and white and cross-cuts like a dervish. But there's no escaping the fact that there ain't much going on and it's taking its time a-happening. And then there's the verbosity. Everything from a discussion about Johnny Cash's sexual preferences to the villain's treatise on life, death and the universe requires 43 words when one would have sufficed. Its pace, profanity and sheer volume only confirms the fact it feels like a failed assignment from a David Mamet pastiche class.

BUT I'M A CHEERLEADER (1999).

Anyone who regularly watches TV-movies will already know that the more preposterous a plotline, the more likely it is to have been based on a true story. So, before launching into an attack on the viability of this overly broad comedy, let's get one thing clear. Sexual rehabilitation centres actually exist and they do attempt to convince inmates that gay and lesbian preferences are biological and can, therefore, be cured. With such a gift of a subject, it's a shame that Jamie Babbit is too immature a film-maker to make the most of the targets in her sights. Her intention, to denounce homophobic fascism, is spot on. But to rubbish it in so clumsy a manner means that it escapes relatively unscathed from the satirical mauling it unquestionably deserves.

Megan (Natasha Lyonne) is an all-American suburbanite with everything going for her. She's a cheerleader, gets good grades and is dating the football team's No.1 heart-throb. However, her distinct indifference to him (in conjunction with her vegetarianism and a poster of Melissa Etheridge) prompts her parents (Harold and Maude's Bud Cort and John Waters regular, Mink Stole) to dispatch her to True Directions, a sexual reorientation centre run by Mary (Cathy Moriarty) and her reformed sidekick, Mike (RuPaul Charles). Although she spends her early days in dyke denial, Mike's `straight is great' exortations and a five-step programme to normalcy persuades Megan that she really is in love with Graham (Clea DuVall), a sulky rich kid who just wants to be left alone to live out her erotic daydreams There's a tendency for lesbian movies to be about the dawning of unsuspected inklings rather than all-out passion. So, while the gradual rapprochment between Lyonne and DuVall has an undeniable sweetness to it, it lacks the genuine tenderness of the burgeoning relationship in Lukas Moodysson's Show Me Love (1998) or the social subversion of Hilary Swank's affair with Chloe Sevigny in Kimberly Peirce's Boys Don't Cry (1999).

Babbit clearly has John Waters in mind in every frame (a fact reinforced by Rachel Kamerman's pastel-dominated production design). However, her comedy lacks the camp anarchy that makes Waters's trash pics so effective. Lyonne and DuVall develop a credible rapport. But Moriarty's pantomime dame of a performance is distressingly misjudged, while cameos from Julie Delpy (as a lipstick lesbian) and Richard Mall and Wesley Mann (as underground activists running a same sex safe house) are too brief to impact. What's most disappointing, however, is the way Megan's co-correctees (in their pink and blue uniforms) are such unrepentant stereotypes. The `drama queen', `sensible butch' and `fat fag' caricatures not only muddy the message, but also waste the talents of Melanie Lynskey (Heavenly Creatures) and Douglas Spain (Star Maps). Fun but feeble.

THE CELL (2000).

Hollywood science has always existed beyond the cutting edge. Transplants, rocketships and genetic engineering were all movie commonplaces long before they were actually realised. Indeed, one can only gasp at science's current inability to master such straightforward cinematic staples as miniaturisation, teleportation and invisibility. Such is the ingenuity of CGI technology that there is nothing that can't be sculpted in pixels. However, there is, as yet, no device for computer-generated storytelling. That still, apparently, requires a human mind. But if this perverse hybrid of Jonathan Demme's The Silence of the Lambs (1991) and Vincent Ward's What Dreams May Come (1998) is anything to go by, the gulf between cinema's formal and narrative capabilities is widening at an alarming rate.

Miriam Kent (Marianne Jean-Baptiste) and Henry West (Dylan Baker) have invented a neurological device that enables psychotherapist, Catherine Deane (Jennifer Lopez), to jaunt through the minds of comatose patients in a bid to identify their ailments. This comes in pretty useful when FBI agent Peter Novak (Vince Vaughn) needs to get inside the mind of catatonic serial killer Carl Stargher (Vincent D'Onofrio) to discover where he's hidden his latest victim before she drowns in the sadistic water cell that is the centrepiece of his medieval torture chamber.

Much has been made of the fact that this is the feature debut of pioneering musivid and commercial director, Tarsem Singh. He's to be applauded for attempting to introduce visceral visual references that owe more to modern art than pop culture. He should also be commended for seeking to map the distortions of a dysfunctioning brain by means of such genuinely filmic tactics as desaturating and enhancing his colours and shifting stocks and grains, instead of lazily relying on plastic pictorialism.

But while Carl's dreamscapes are deeply symbolic, they are rarely disturbing. This isn't the mind of Hannibal Lecter or John Doe or even the Red Room in Twin Peaks. It's merely a confused psyche given a heavy-metal make-over by a designer with a laptop and a scenarist who can see no further than that old movie standby child abuse as a motivation for mental illness. But, at least Tarsem's magpie image-making is arresting, for his grasp of structure is tenuous, his pacing slack and his sense of character conspicuous by its absence.

Ironically, in a film in which the killer bleaches his victims and then shapes them into grotesque Barbie poses, Jennifer Lopez is essentially a doll for Tarsem to dress in a series of exotic or iconic costumes and then glide through his archly diabolic dream sets. She's a mannequin in a mind game, rather than an actress in a role. D'Onofrio is also poorly served, although his reliance on wacko ticks previously used in Stanley Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket (1987) and Barry Sonnenfeld's Men in Black (1997) hardly advances his cause.

But what is most disappointing about this glorified pop video is its dismally predictable plot. We know cinematic science is devised simply to go wrong. But surely screenwriter Mark Protosevich could have come up with something more original than skin-tight suits cast off from David Lynch's Dune (1984), suspension apparatus lifted from Michael Crichton's Coma (1978) and console-twiddling boffins culled from just about every sci-fi/horror B made in the 1950s.

The Cell is a fitting way to round off a summer of blockbusting dross, as it's yet another example of the crisis currently facing mainstream American movies. Technology has finally outstripped the creative imagination. Fabulous sights and sounds can be fashioned at the flick of a switch, but they are meaningless unless they contribute to the entire diegesis. Cinema may be a visual medium, but it's a narrative one, too. What Hollywood most has need of right now is fewer imagists and more visionaries.

CENTER STAGE (2000).

More a pilot for a teen TV show than a feature film, Center Stage has more in common with Alan Parker's Fame (1980) or Adrian Lyne's Flashdance (1984) than the Herbert Ross duo of The Turning Point (1977) or Dancers (1987). But, curiously, it's most closely related to those cliché-ridden sports movies, in which kids from contrivedly different backgrounds are set to compete for a place on the team and all learn about life in the process. But, instead of flashcut match highlights, what we're treated here is a series of archly filmed dance routines. All are shown in their entirety and all are statically shot from a reverential distance to focus our attention on the choreography of the dancers and not the camera.

Well intentioned, perhaps. But the sequences that emerge are so turgid it's almost as if Fred Astaire, Busby Berkeley and Gene Kelly had never existed. Any kinetic energy they may have is dissipated by a misplaced respect for the Terpsichorean art. It's a laudable (if calculated) attempt to popularise a minority artform. But few converts are going to be won over by such a hackneyed melodrama.

The scene is the American Ballet Academy. The prize is a place in the school's corps de ballet. Up for the audition are Maureen (Susan May Pratt), the daughter of the company's PR manager, who has bulimia, a boyfriend on the side and a desire to live her own life; Eva (Zoe Saldana), a talented dancer who has fallen foul of ace choreographer Jonathan (Peter Gallagher); and Jody (Amanda Schull), a small-town girl who catches the eye of the company's womanising superstar, Cooper Nielsen (Ethan Stiefel).

So no prizes for guessing where the focus falls. Potentially interesting themes like the physical punishment that underpins such effortless grace, the perils of bulimia and the psychological damage caused by the rigorous training and selection processes are all sidelined and we spend what seems an eternity with a raft of petty jealousies, corny romances and agony aunt crises. As the majority of the juvenile cast was selected for its dancing abilities, the ineptitude of many of the performances should come as no surprise - especially as the minor characters (the cute gay guy, the stage mother, the kindly ex-prima ballerina) are nothing more than caricatures.

But what is unexpected is Hytner's unimaginative direction. Reinforcing every prejudice about this being a world of precious, hypersensitive luvvies, he squeezes every drop of life out of his drama and misses entirely the exhilaration and beauty of the dance. Nicholas Hytner's Billy Elliot may not have been a dancing masterclass. But, at least it was about people worth investing some emotion in.

CHUCK & BUCK (2000).

Having made his debut with a film about a father who sells his own son into prostitution, it's readily apparent that director Miguel Arteta does not view life through the rose-tinted spectacles worn by even the most sincere Tinseltown realists. However, unlike Star Maps (1997), his second outing is a relatively compassionate picture, despite the fact that it manages to combine a troubling undercurrent of menace and a genuine sympathy for those on the margins of society.

Way back when, Buck (Mike White) and Chuck (Chris Weitz) were best buddies. Indeed, they were so close they even dabbled in a little mutual masturbation. But Chuck has left those days behind and gone on to become a high-flying record executive, with a luxury lifestyle and a stunning fiancée (Beth Colt). Buck, on the other hand, whose social and psychological development has been minimal, is locked into his pre-teen obsession. So, following the death of his mother, he heads out to LA to rekindle the flames.

Hollywood has a way of romanticising both Goonie friendships and mental illness. But, whereas a commerical journeyman might have gone for sitcom laughs and a warm resolution, Arteta eschews nostalgia and sentiment to produce a movie that's full of gauche emotions and uncomfortable comedy. Chuck may be a smug yuppie, but he can hardly be blamed for wanting to keep his sexual skeletons firmly in their closet. Moreover, he has every reason to believe that Buck is much more than a harmless pest. As Chuck quickly deduces from watching Hank and Frank, the play Buck has written for a local community theatre, he sees Carlyn as an obstacle to his happiness and will stop at nothing to eliminate her.

Much of the picture's best business grows up around the play. It's blend of fairy-tale innocence, biting insight and childish petulance makes it compelling in its awfulness. In addition, Lupe Ontiveros and Paul Weitz contribute telling cameos, respectively as the producer who declares Buck's script to be `a homoerotic, misogynistic love story' and the hunky Chuck-a-like, who rapidly becomes the object of Buck's confused affections.

However, it seems exceedingly unlikely that even the sharpest pricking of Chuck's conscience would send him tumbling back into Buck's bed for a bygones blow job. But, this isn't the only flaw in the film's make-up. Chuck and Carlyn are identikit bourgeois bastards and remain unworthy of pity even at the height of Buck's hate campaign. Similarly, White's dazzling performance camouflages the latent danger of a character, who guiltlessly indulges in stalking, voyeurism, slander and more besides in the immature pursuit of his desires. The recent dirth of worthwhile films makes it tempting to turn a blind eye to Chuck & Buck's imperfections. But, while Arteta is a clearly talent to be reckoned with, he's not quite the finished article.

CONFESSIONS OF A TRICKBABY (1999).

With its dark take on the Little Red Riding Hood story, Matthew Bright's Freeway (1996) was one of the most deliriously malevolent black comedies of recent times. There's nothing quite like Reese Witherspoon's savage beating of the wolfish Kiefer Sutherland or Brooke Shields's bitchy snobbery in this loose sequel (`Freeway II' was actually appended to the US title). But it confirms that Bright has a wildly original imagination that a touch of restraint might transform into genuine inspiration.

Once again the Brothers Grimm provide the bare bones of the narrative, as Bright ponders the sinister implications of Hansel and Gretel. As she was named after her mother's favourite drug, Crysyal (Natasha Lyonne) prefers to be known as White Girl. Banged away in an institution that's less a home for girls than a training centre for sin, she meets Cyclona, a psychotic lesbian who persuades her to flee to the sanctuary of the Mexican hostel run by the only person she trusts, Sister Gomez. The fact that this supposedly angelic nun is played by Vincent Gallo should be enough to suggest what's in store once the girls complete their bloody odyssey. Suffice to say it's like no fairytale you've ever seen before.

Denounced by the unenlightened as a deranged piece of exploitation and dismissed by the complacent as another example of post-Tarantino excess, Trickbaby has, unfortunately, succeeded in obfuscating its own message. Bright may go to extremes with both his content and his imagery, but he has still managed to fashion a film that's closer in tone and intent to Ridley Scott's Thelma and Louise (1991) than Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers (1994). It's a nightmarish vision of the pressures facing a depressingly large number of teenage girls. Bulimia, physical abuse, drugs, sexual orientation and self-image are all explicitly explored. But so are such implicit issues as family breakdown, pornography, gun law, religious hypocrisy, the failure of the patriarchal system and the media devaluation of girl power. Don't misunderstand. This isn't a work of intellectual depth or penetrating insight. But it's nowhere near as trivial as has been reported elsewhere.

FINDING FORRESTER (2000).

Gus Van Sant started out as a cutting edge indie director who took risks with films like Drugstore Cowboy (1989), My Own Private Idaho (1990) and To Die For (1995). But in mid-career, he was replaced by a Stepford director - a mainstream wannabe, who followed up his Oscar-scooping Good Will Hunting (1987) with a tame shot-for-shot remake of Psycho (1998) and aanother saccharine-infested slice of feel-good in Finding Forrester (2000).

Hiding away in a Bronx tenement, William Forrester (Sean Connery) has been a recluse since publishing his epoch-defining first novel back in the 1950s. However, his unlikely friendship with Jamal Wallace (Rob Brown), a 16 year-old African-American hoop dreamer with prodigious literary potential, lures him back into the limelight in time to prevent a miscarriage of academic justice.

Apart from its pitifully low-trajectory story arc, what is so disappointing about this film is its refusal to confront any of its many intriguing themes. Van Sant has no interest whatsoever in the creative act of writing. Forrester's allure is simply that he is a damaged genius, whose entombing secret can only be revealed on the diamond at a floodlit Yankee Stadium. Jamal is also reduced to a cipher. He is portrayed as a victim-in-waiting, whose dilemma over furthering his prospects or remaining loyal to his homies matters much more than whether he's the next James Baldwin (or, for that matter, Michael Jordan). How appropriate, therefore, that he should also reach catharsis at a major New York sporting venue, as he deliberately misses a championship shot at Madison Square Garden Equally overlooked is the chance to emulate Curtis Hanson's Wonder Boys (2000) in studying the mentoring of a lively mind by one stifled by self-doubt. But whereas the relationship between Michael Douglas and Tobey Maguire was allowed latitude within an eccentric comedic framework, the Connery-Brown axis constantly has to tread on eggshells to avoid foregrounding the racial aspect of the story that Van Sant is so eager to play down. Consequently, this is more about passing on the torch than illuminating social injustice. Consequently, we get a rerun of Peter Weir's Dead Poets' Society (1989) with a Scent of a Woman (Martin Brest, 1992) finale tacked on for good measure. And this in a film in which plagiarism is considered the most heinous of intellectual offences.

So Anna Paquin's poor little rich girl is reduced to a simpering sidekick when her motives for befriending Jamal might have revealed another layer of dramatic depth. And F. Murray Abraham's embittered professor becomes just another villainous snob out to keep working-class blacks in their place. What's the point of the Havershamesque interiors or the moody jazz soundtrack if you're just going to submerge the whole thing in syrup? But, then, one suspects, Van Sant's aim was solely to ensure that audiences left feeling good about themselves and better about our messed-up world. At least within that shamefully limited remit, the film succeeds.

THE GIFT (2000).

A girl is murdered and, while everyone else is busy jumping to conclusions, a single prescient female knows all is not what it seems. Yes we're back in the realms of Neil Jordan's In Dreams (1999) and Robert Zemeckis's What Lies Beneath (2000) and not even the scripting talent of Billy Bob Thornton can make a darn bit of difference to this formulaic assemblage of supernatural visions, courtroom showdowns, red herrings and telegraphed surprises.

It makes you wonder what attracted an actress of Cate Blanchett's calibre to the project in the first place. A little slumming with the man responsible for such dark delights as Crimewave (1985) and the Evil Dead trilogy (1981-92), perhaps? Or simply a change of pace in between all those prestige dramas? Whatever the motive, Blanchett is head and shoulders above anyone else on display in this uninspired small-town whodunit, which resorts to every conceivable psychic cliché to lull the unsuspecting into those oh so unexpected seat-jumping set-pieces.

Despite being unable to predict the industrial disaster that claimed her husband, mother of three Annie Wilson (Blanchett) gets by giving readings to the unhappy residents of a Savannah backwater. So, when heiress Jessica King (Katie Holmes) goes missing, her headmaster fiancé, Wayne Collins (Greg Kinnear), seeks Annie's assistance. Her first premonition nominates wife-beating redneck Donnie Barksdale (Keanu Reeves) as the culprit. However, a series of disquieting apparitions soon persuades her otherwise.

Although populated with more eccentrics than the complete works of Tennessee Williams, the narrative opens at a pleasingly involving slow burn. But by the time Reeves goes to chokey, Raimi (as he did in A Simple Plan) has already succumbed to thriller excess - whether it be the parent-immolating antics of wacko mechanic Buddy Cole (Giovanni Ribisi) or Blanchett's convenient habit of experiencing ever more gruesome vibes just as a thunder storm starts to break.

When she's not being distracted by the dictates of the plot, there's a poetic melancholy to Blanchett's performance that sets it above the soap operatic machismo of Reeves, Holmes's rich sluttiness and Kinnear's cap-toothed decency. If only Thornton and co-scenarist Tom Epperson had been able to create for her a character of equal complexity to Karl Childers in Sling Blade (1996), this might have amounted to more than a slick genre piece.

ISN'T SHE GREAT (2000).

When this film was released, it was hard to keep tabs on the number of distinguished female novelists (whose city girl sex comedies are still littering 2 for 3 tables in good bookshops everywhere) who threw themselves on the media to admit that they owed their literary inspiration to mum's dog-eared paperback copies of Valley of the Dolls and Once Is Not Enough. This was hardly a confession to endear one to either Jacqueline Susann or her art, but it proved a greater testament to the significance of her life and work than this catastrophic biopic.

There's a pulp irony about the fact that an author whose novels were roundly dismissed for being tawdry trash should have been rewarded with so fitting a screen tribute. It's not just a minor misfire - this is bad enough to have been a TV-movie, starring Linda Purl, Susan Lucci and Ann Jillian. The whole sorry mess begins in the 1950s, when wannabe actress Jackie (Bette Midler) encounters Irving Mansfield (Nathan Lane), an eager agent who persuades her to give writing a whirl, after their autistic son goes into a clinic, because no one understands the sleazy underside of Tinseltown better than she does. But not everyone is convinced and they are forced to schlepp around the bookshops of America persuading owners to stack their shelves. Fame follows with S&F inevitability, only for the great author in the sky (whom Jackie frequently consults in the branches of her favourite tree) to pen a sentimental final chapter.

No one emerges from this farrago with any credit. Director Andrew Bergman wavers between celebrating and being embarrassed by his subject's antics and ends up producing a period pastiche rather than a personal portrait. Supporting players Stockard Channing (as Jackie's bibulous buddy), John Cleese and David Hyde Pierce (as publisher and editor respectively) are marginalised into pointlessness, while Nathan Lane is left to make what he can of the Paul Rudnick shtick that passes for dialogue.

As for Bette Midler, in a role that should have been tailor-made, she is forced to resort to full-throttle camp to disguise the cackhandedness of this clumsy outline sketch. Susann's battle with breast cancer is mawkishly explored, but there's no mention of her fondness for either a tipple or a tumble (with either sex). And where is the woman Truman Capote once described as a `truck driver in drag'? This is sanitised screwball, backslapping showbiz kitsch and romantic cornball when it should have been a tacky, irreverent and salacious study of a feisty, lowbrow iconoclast. That might have been worth watching.

THE LEGEND OF BAGGER VANCE (2000).

Adapted from the novel by Steven Pressfield, this is an attempt to do for golf what Barry Levinson's The Natural (1984) did for baseball. Not content with positing golf as a metaphor for life, it seeks to submerge us in the lore and values of the game, while also seducing us with its character-forming, spectator-thrilling unpredictability. But, unfortunately, it's an underdog tale that doesn't wag.

It's the late 1920s in Savannah, Georgia and Adele Invergordan (Charlize Theron) has arranged an exhibition match to prevent a cabal of soulless tycoons from taking over her late father's golf course. Bobby Jones (Joel Gretsch) and Walter Hagen (Bruce McGill) are the big draws. But the locals are cheering on Rannulph Junuh (Matt Damon), an amateur ace whose life fell apart in the trenches of World War I. However, help is at hand in the shape of Bagger Vance (Will Smith), a black itinerant who emerges from the night mist with an offer to become Junuh's caddy and help rebuild his game.

Seen through the eyes of young Hardy Greaves (J. Michael Moncrief - who grows up into an uncredited Jack Lemmon, who narrates what is essentially a glorified flashback), what happens next is shudderingly predictable. It's Tin Cup with plus-fours and spats. But what makes it so difficult to watch is Redford's insistence on coating every scene with schmaltz. It's a cornball set-up. Bagger and Junuh clearly inhabit a golfing remake of Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life (1946), while Adele seems to be a madcap migrant from an unfunny screwball comedy. But even this might have been tolerable were it not for the fact that much of the dialogue seems to have come from The Little Book of Golf Zen.

With Redford constantly cutting away from the game for shots of startled bunnies, whispering reeds and magic-hour sunsets, it's tempting to suggest he was contemplating self-parody. Yet he was evidently aiming for a quasi-spiritual tone in keeping with the fact that Bagger Vance sounds so like Bhagavad - a Hindi word for god. With issues of race, class and deep southern chauvinism buried in a bunker off the first tee, this is a condescending neverland fantasy that's adequately acted and clumsily directed. Hardly a glowing recommendation.

LIBERTY HEIGHTS (1999).

Judging by the starkly contrasting visions of John Waters (Cry-Baby, 1990) and Barry Levinson (Diner, 1992; Tin Men, 1987; and Avalon, 1990), Baltimore must have been quite a place in the 1950s. The city's northwest neighbourhood provides the setting for this well-meaning blend of nostalgia and social history. But what might have been a penetrating study of a period riven with simmering prejudice ends up being a congenial shamble down memory lane.

Stung by anti-Semitism, yet unfazed by the desegregation of their schools, Ben Kurtzman (Ben Foster) and his elder brother Van (Adrien Brody) are surprisingly level-headed kids, considering their father, Nate (Joe Mantegna), runs a burlesque palace as a front for an illegal numbers racket. But, the sky is about to come tumbling down, as not only is Nate facing ruin after a petty dope pusher, Little Marvin (Orlando Jones), hits a $100k jackpot, but Ben has fallen for his African-American classmate, Sylvia (Rebekah Johnson), and Van is head over heels with a WASP princess (Carolyn Murphy).

Prompted by a thoughtlessly disparaging reference to Judaism in a review of Sphere (1998), Levinson clearly regards this as an important personal statement. He's correct in identifying the mid-1950s as an era of discrimination - with race, class, religion, politics and sexual orientation all meriting at least a passing mention. Indeed, the most striking evidence of this casual bigotry is the unquestioning way in which anti-Semitism had resumed its place at the heart of US urban society only a decade after the revelation of the Holocaust. But, in order to reach a mainstream audience, Levinson has been forced to draw the sting from his analysis and present his comments either in the form of acerbic asides to the human drama or by means of clumsily stereotypical opposites. Thus, rascally Little Melvin is contrasted with Sylvia's dignified doctor dad; the admirably adjusted Sylvia herself mirrors Dubbie, the screwed up little rich girl and Ben's nerdy Jewish pals show up Van's patronising Gentile buddies.

Themes are broached only to be dropped almost immediately. On Halloween, for example, Ben dresses as Hitler to go trick or treating - yet the impact this has on his distraught grandmother is barely addressed. Similarly, Van is called a `Pinko' when he refuses to swear on the Bible during a court case, but McCarthyism never rears its ugly head again. The generational aspect of prejudice is also alluded to, with the kids being able to rise above the calcified concerns of their elders. But, as in such white liberal treatises as Stanley Kramer's Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967), only part of the story is told.

Where are all the teenage Jewish girls? With both Ben and Van finding their romantic idyll outside their own race, the only portrait we get of Jewish-American womanhood is a doting mother (Bebe Neuwirth) and a nosy Yiddish Buba (Frania Rubinek). Why does Sylvia have to come from a comparatively privileged background? How come Nate finds it so easy to bamboozle Little Melvin (an ill-educated dupe who comes across as a hybrid of Stepin Fetchit and Little Richard)? And, from where do Ben and his buddies suddenly acquire the self-awareness to march into a restricted bathing area and reveal the word `JEW' spelt out across their bared chests? These were certainly pernicious times and Levinson is to be commended for denouncing them. But their surface is barely scratched in this Neil Simonesque collection of rites-of-passage vignettes.

The film's tagline is `You're only young once, but you remember forever'. Leading on from this, an interesting and underexplored avenue occurs in Ben's concluding voiceover, when he wonders why some memories linger and some fade (a conundrum also pondered by Marcello Mastroianni in his cine-memoir, I Remember). Selectivity and the idea of romanticising the past would have been well worth exploring. But, at least Levinson succeeds (thanks in no small measure to Christopher Doyle's loving photography and a splendidly apposite soundtrack) in making the viewer feel nostalgic about an adolescence that is not their own. No mean achievement in itself.

THE LITTLE VAMPIRE (2000).

It might have made sense for Uli Edel to have reworked the most atmospheric kiddie horror film ever made, Robert Wise's The Curse of the Cat People (1944). But what on earth is the director of Christiane F. (1981), Last Exit to Brooklyn (1989) and Body of Evidence (1993) doing at the helm of a tale so politically correct it makes Rentaghost look like a video nasty? But, then again, Wolfgang Petersen did shoot The Neverending Story... (1984).

The 15 novels former teacher Angela Sommer-Bodenberg has written about the Sackville-Bagg family are the closest Germany has to a Harry Potter phenomenon. In fact, with their mix of dark deeds and black comedy, they've more in common with the ghoulish yarns of Roald Dahl or the Goosebumps books. However, the tale that launched the series has been long overdue a cinematic treatment and Edel and his Anglo-American cast have great fun realising it.

When his father moves to Scotland to design a golf course for the eccentric Lord McAshton (John Wood), Tony Thompson (Jonathan Lipnicki) finds himself the butt of all the jokes at his new school after he reveals he's being troubled by spooky nightmares. However, the bullies are forced to eat their words after Tony hooks up with Rudolph (Rollo Weeks), a 300 year-young vampire, whose family needs to retrieve part of a magical amulet if they are to conquer an ancient curse and become human.

Apart from the sight of a herd of fanged cows taking to the skies, the special effects prove the undoing of this spirited, but inconsistent romp. Joseph Nemec's Gothic interiors are mischievously evocative and Richard E. Grant and Jim Carter make splendid adversaries as Frederick Sackville-Bagg and the vampire hunter, Rookery. But Alice Krige is wasted as Rudolph's kindly mother and nine year-old Jonathan Lipnicki seems unsure whether to unleash a touch more Jerry Maguire (1996) winsomeness or some Stuart Little (1999) petulance.

Neither is particularly helped by the uncertain tone of Edel's direction and a screenplay that's short on both laughs and chills. Kids today have strong stomachs and can take considerably more gore than is shed here. However, this does mean that the very tinies can accompany their older siblings without needing to duck behind the seat every other minute. A useful standby for a half-term treat, this will keep the youngsters amused while driving the grown-ups to distraction. Still, it could be worse. The American version is slated to have songs.

LOSER (2000).

In 1999, audiences were treated to Dangerous Liaisons being reworked as Cruel Intentions, The Taming of the Shrew being made over into 10 Things I Hate About You and Pygmalion being dumbed down into She's All That. Then, Amy Heckerling, who started the whole thing by updating Jane Austen's Emma as Clueless (1995), has attempted to turn Billy Wilder's sophisticated adult comedy of sexual manners, The Apartment (1960), into a campus romcom. It's an understandable ambition, but the result is a misfire that should, surely, have been consigned straight to video. Heckerling crowned herself Queen of the Teenpic with her razor-sharp interpretation of Cameron Crowe's screenplay, Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982). But, in the intervening 18 years, kids moved on considerably. Unfortunately, Heckerling did not.

In his first outing since his exceptional turn in American Pie, Jason Biggs stars as Paul Tannek, a Newfoundland farmboy who fails spectacularly to fit in at his New York university. Voted out of his dorm room by animal-house roomies Zak Orth, Thomas Sadoski and Jimmi Simpson, he finds a bedsit in a veterinary clinic, which the frat brats proceed to use for an off-campus party. But at least that brings him closer to Dora Diamond (Mena Suvari), a gothic ingenue, who waitresses in a topless bar and is having a clandestine affair with self-seeking English professor Edward Alcott (Greg Kinnear), whose tenure depends on keeping their trysts secret.

What happens next is strictly A-B storytelling, utterly devoid of life lesson subplots and quirky diversions. Paul starts a dweeb (albeit an amiable one) and remains one at the end. Neither he nor Dora seem to learn very much from their experiences, remaining desperately keen to be popular and just as likely to be manipulated in the future. But, more seriously, Paul isn't a funny character. He's the butt of predictable pranks to which he responds with a hurt smile instead of a stinging rejoinder. Dora is similarly limited, seeming more wilfully naive than cynically exploited. Following Jennifer Jason Leigh in Fast Times and Alicia Silverstone in Clueless, she's easily Heckerling's most anodyne heroine.

The script makes a couple of laudable attempts to ground the action in reality by having Paul and Dora discuss grades and finances. But these everyday student themes don't make for much of a spectacle. So what drives the plot is sex, drugs and rock'n'roll and they've been done to death in everything from Ridgemont to Todd Phillips's Road Trip (2000) Yet, has there ever been such a resistible bunch of party animals as this trio? At various stages, they are guilty of vandalism, blackmail, animal cruelty and spiking women's drinks with a date-rape drug - ho ho ho!

Heckerling has tossed in every idea she can lay her hands on in the hope of making a couple stick. There's a throwaway reference to Mike Nichols's The Graduate (1967) and a superfluous snippet of Alan Cumming's Tony-winning performance in Cabaret. There are even cameos from Dan Aykroyd, Andrea Martin and David Spade - but none of them have anything worthwhile to do. Worse still, the band featured in the gig-to-die-for sequence is Everclear. Enough said.

LOVE & BASKETBALL (2000).

The subject of an intense bidding war after a read-through at a Sundance script seminar, teleplay veteran Gina Prince-Blythewood's directorial debut restores some credibility to Spike Lee's reputation as a producer, following Malcolm D. Lee's execrable The Best Man (1999). It also goes some way to atoning for the shameful misogyny of his own basketball opus, He Got Game (1998). But, otherwise, this is a disappointingly conventional love story, which packs its four quarters with sporting action to disguise the absence of more challenging material.

First meeting as 11 year-old next-door neighbours, Quincy and Monica (initially played by Glenndon Chatman and Kyla Pratt, and thereafter by the rather pedestrian Omar Epps and the excellent Sanaa Lathan) are both obsessed with basketball. He is determined to follow in his pro-ball father's footsteps, while she seeks to rebel against her mother's dedicated domesticity, which she thinks has been born out of a prissy lack of courage to break with gynocentric tradition. Monica also wants to become the first woman to play in the NBC - a plot device that turns out to be something of a red herring, for this is not a film about a woman trying to make it in a man's world, but a study of the gender gulf that exists in all sports at all levels. All the cash and kudos goes to the boys and Prince-Blythewood might have done better to explore this dichotomy rather than chronicle the couple's highly predictable romance, with its tiffs, misunderstandings, insecurities and jealousies.

Refreshingly free of grandstanding heroics, the court sequences are well staged. But, after Steve James's monumental documentary, Hoop Dreams (1994), there's little new to say about the slippery slope black basketballers have to surmount to make it into the big time - especially when you remove both race and class from the equation. Both these kids have been raised in an affluent Los Angeles neighbourhood and while Q may have to deal with his revered dad's adultery and Monica may suffer at the hands of a strict blonde coach, they have no fears of crack or crime coming between them and their ambitions. It may come on as a battle-of-the-sexes issue picture, but this is a cosy, white bread drama, which betrays just how far Spike Lee has drifted from the dangerous days of Do the Right Thing (1989).

LOVE & SEX (2000).

American screen comedy had lost its way in 2000. With all the cash and kudos being in TV, the genre had been overrun by gross-outs and romcoms. In the former, the secret was to be as politically incorrect as possible, while the latter prided itself on being spikily twee. Love & Sex was Valerie Breiman's directorial debut. Allegedly based on her own experiences, it was by no means a bad picture. It desperately wanted to be liked and dutifully connected every link in the chain from `meet cute' to `happy ever after'. But she might have been better served had she imposed her own personality on proceedings and not revealed so readily her debt to Woody Allen and Nora Ephron.

Ordered to come up with something perkier than an article on blow-jobs, women's magazine writer Kate Welles (Famke Janssen) trawls through her disastrous love life for inspiration. She's seen it all from playground heartache to adultery. But with Adam (Jon Favreau), a neurotic artist with a predilection for grotesque imagery, things were different. That is until he got bored and she began dating Joey (Josh Hopkins), a wannabe actor with a De Niro complex.

The storyline hops through its hoops with the efficiency of a film school exercise. Derivative and lacking in idiosyncrasy it may be, but it rarely overplays its hand and allows Janssen and Favreau the space to create both character and chemistry. There are also a handful of good lines dotted around the otherwise self-conscious screenplay. Kate describes one of her ex's girlfriends as a `bimbo savante', while a poster for one of Joey's direct-to-video action flicks proclaims `It was a war no one thought they could win...in a land no one thought they could find'.

But the banter often seems strained and Breiman's direction suggests she doesn't trust us to get all the jokes and references. In essence, she has stretched a sitcom episode to its limits and it's no surprise, therefore, to find David Schwimmer cropping up in an uncredited cameo (even though it is a neat gag). As date movies go, this is bright enough to entertain and smart enough to amuse. All that's missing is the bittersweet taste of life.

THE PATRIOT (2000).

One of the perks of winning a war is that you get to twist fact into legend. Among the stories to emerge from the American War of Independence was that of Francis Marian, the so-called Swamp Fox, whose band of militiamen conducted a guerilla campaign against the redcoats in the Carolina backwoods. History has since identified him as a racist cutthroat. But he is presented as the embodiment of idealistic heroism in Roland Emmerich's offensively revisionist à clef account of the conflict between the crown and the 13 colonies.

Benjamin Martin (Mel Gibson) may have been the paladin of the French and Indian wars, but now he's a parent and scourging the English is low on his agenda - much to the disgust of his eldest son, Gabriel (Heath Ledger), who joins Washington's Continental Army in a burst of indignant jingoism. But when a wounded Gabriel inadvertently leads a cavalry patrol to the ol' homestead, Ben's fighting spirit is roused by the callous murder of his second son by the sadistic Colonel William Tavington (Jason Isaacs). Several ambushes later, Ben is being hailed as the `Ghost' and the last hope of victory for the flagging rebel cause.

Taking up where Hugh Hudson's 1985 epic Revolution (and, for that matter, Emmerich's 1998 remake of Godzilla) left off, this is a propagandist barnstormer riddled with fatal flaws. As the Braveheart of the South, Mel is tooled up with a musket and tomahawk instead of a kalashnikov, but he still does most of his slaughtering in slo-mo. Such is the emphasis on battlefield gore and gimmickry that Emmerich and his long-suffering cinematographer Caleb Deschanel even reproduce a cheap 3-D effect by having a cannonball bounce towards us before it decapitates a nameless trooper.

But, at least, the action is competently staged. The melodrama, on the other hand, has all the period insight and profundity of a Barbara Cartland novel. As in his earlier outing, Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan (1998), screenwriter Robert Rodat demonstrates a total inability to create anything other than cardboard cutouts and dialogue of juddering inconsequence. Had they been literary caricatures, like Joely Richardson's simperingly loyal sister-in-law, the dramatis personnae may not have been so risible. But they're all movie anachronisms, millennial tropes instead of credible contemporaries - the militiamen are central casting rednecks minus their Metallica t-shirts and baseball caps; Gabriel's child bride is a feistily liberated babe who shames the cowardly menfolk with her rallying soundbite; Tavington is a pantomimically sneering cad from the Die Hard school of English villainy; while Ben himself is a troubleshooting maverick in a Death Wish state of mind.

But, worst of all, is the mute daughter, who misses her mummy and hates her daddy for never being home. The lachrymose scene in which she finally speaks to a furiously emoting Mel recalls Oscar Wilde's quip about being unable to read the death of Little Nell in Dickens's Old Curiosity Shop without howling with laughter. Yet, the stock characterisation, diegetic shallowness, rambling verbiage, emotional contrivance and lumbering pace could all have been forgiven were it not for the cynical approach to fact.

It's 1776 and yet Ben is already a committed civil rights activist who disavows slavery and employs only free men, who toil in his fields with a song in their heart. Consequently, the races mix freely at Gabriel's wedding and the sole black soldier in the regiment refuses his mandatory 12-month discharge to fight for the flag. This wretched political correctness does not apply to the Brits, however. Americans would never stoop to atrocity, whereas Tavington has all the ruthless barbarism of a Gestapo officer. Indeed, he even barricades an entire community into its church before torching it in a shamelessly disingenuous scene that has been clumsily culled from Elem Klimov's harrowing study of Nazi criminality, Come and See (1985). The wilful disregard for timescale and the development of this protracted conflict further undermines the credibility. What's more, there is a total absence of a cause for the colonialists to fight for. Taxation without representation is mentioned only once, so are we to believe that Cornwallis (an embarrassed-looking Tom Wilkinson) surrendered at Yorktown because a single parent took umbrage at the death of his kid? Dangerous as history and dismal as drama, The Patriot is nothing more than a soulless summer blockbuster with delusions of significance.

PLAY IT TO THE BONE (1999).

It's too easy to label Ron Shelton as a director of sport movies. His work may have focused on baseball (Bull Durham, 1988), basketball (White Men Can't Jump, 1992) and golf (Tin Cup, 1996), but there's more to these films than athletic action. Behind the locker room badinage and the gladiatorial preening, these are astute studies of male insecurity. Shelton's obsession is the pummelling the ego has to take in order to achieve fleeting success. Indeed, no other current film-maker has such a handle on the pain and frustration of failure.

Yet, there is a formula to these pictures. The boorish macho sportsman can always be tamed by a strong, self-assured woman (think Susan Sarandon, Rene Russo, Rosie Perez). Here she takes the form of Lolita Davidovich (who worked with Shelton on Blaze, 1989 and Cobb, 1994), who loves both the men with whom she's motoring to Vegas for the fight of their lives. It's not too much of a stretch, therefore, to see Play It to the Bone as Shelton's Jules et Jim (1961) - with a little Rocky (1976) and Thelma and Louise (1991) thrown in for good measure.

Vince Boudreau (Woody Harrelson) and Cesar Dominguez (Antonio Banderas) coulda been contenders, until Vince fell victim to rigging and Cesar was accused of taking a dive. But they are offered a lifeline when a syndicate led by Joe Domino (Tom Sizemore) gifts them a spot on the undercard of Mike Tyson's next fight, with the winner being guaranteed a shot at the middleweight title. The road trip to Nevada is supposedly packed with incident, as the loyalty-torn Grace (Davidovich) tries to provoke an animosity that will carry into the ring. But, apart from a dubious encounter with a drug-addled nymphomaniac (Lucy Liu), the journey is notable only for a couple of in-jokes - Cesar's admission of a gay past alludes to Banderas's association with Spanish director Pedro Almodovar, while Vince's claim that he has visions of Jesus refers to the fact that Harrelson once considered becoming a Presbyterian preacher. The fight, however, is another thing altogether.

Although rooted in fact, the supporting bout that becomes the main event appears a hackneyed premise - all the more so considering the clumsy Rockyesque choreography of the opening rounds. But, as it becomes harder to throw punchs than to roll with them, the fight takes on a sickening truth. Only Takeshi Kitano's Tokyo Fist (1995) has depicted boxing with more savagery, while only Martin Scorsese's Raging Bull (1980) has captured so viscerally the sport's brutal nobility. But, more tellingly, there's a Hawksian feel to this toe-to-toe slugging, as two washed out pugs take their last shot at glory. It's a grandstanding finale. But it's a long wait to the payoff.

PROOF OF LIFE (2000).

Apparently there's no such thing as bad publicity. Badly timed publicity, however, is another matter. When the storm surrounding the production of a movie has died down before its release, it leaves everyone with a sense of anti-climax. If Meg Ryan and Russell Crowe had still been scandalising the tabloids, Proof of Life would have been as much a must-see as Ridley Scott's Hannibal (2001). But now that the passion that coffin-nailed Ryan's marriage to Dennis Quaid has been consigned to the gossip footnotes of Y2K, it becomes just another option for the choice-spoilt punter. Taylor Hackford's film, however, has enough internal problems without dwelling on the peripherals. Veering between thriller, romantic melodrama and action adventure, it's a directionless thick ear of a picture, with the star turns as responsible as anything else for undermining any semblance of credibility.

Upto his neck in it is Terry Thorne (Russell Crowe), a hostage negotiator who has no sooner returned from a mission in Chechnya than he's off to South America to spring dam engineer Peter Bowman (David Morse) from a drug-dealing terrorist group. However, what makes this assignment trickier than usual is not the hostile terrain nor the intransigence of the kidnappers, but the fact that Thorne falls in love with the victim's wife, Alice (Meg Ryan).

To screenwriter Tony Gilroy's credit, this is a busy old narrative with lengthy segments being devoted to the ransom negotiations and the reluctance of a multi-national oil company to get involved in their employee's deliverance. Even more intriguingly, there's are potentially engrossing subplots involving Bowman's relationship with his captors and Thorne's association with his sidekick David Caruso). However, these are largely overlooked to concentrate on the passion fou.

Considering events off screen, it's surprising how little chemistry there is between Ryan and Crowe. It's almost as if they were straining to keep prying eyes away from their affair. Ryan has previously proved herself capable of handling heavy duty drama. But she never comes to grips with this role, although she is more willing to attempt a performance than Crowe, whose impassivity feels more like detachment than introspection. It says much for the negligibility of what is supposed to be a mainstream entertainment that the only exemplary contribution is that of Krzysztof Kieslowski's favourite cinematographer Slawomir Idziak, whose command of light and angle is extraordinary. As for the rest, mere proficiency is evidently the best they had to offer.

THE ROAD TO EL DORADO (2000).

With Mike Gabriel and Eric Goldberg's Pocahontas (1995) and Don Bluth and Gary Goldman's Anastasia (1997) already having thrown historical fact to the winds, it was too much to ask that the makers of Brenda Chapman, Simon Wells and Steve Hickner's The Prince of Egypt (1998) would stick to the text. This `Road to' buddy movie was always going to sidestep the butchery perpetrated by Hernán Cortés and his gold-grabbing conquistadores. But to couch the exploitation of the various `New World' civilisations in such a cosy Hope and Crosby way is not only an offensive trivialisation of the Renaissance equivalent of ethnic cleansing, but also does a gross disservice to younger viewers, who are being both patronised and misled by such arrant dumbing down.

It's 1519 and Tulio (Kevin Kline) and Miguel (Kenneth Branagh) have stowed away on Cortes's transatlantic expedition, armed with a map to the fabled treasure city of El Dorado, which they won in a crooked dice game. So far, so Bing and Bob. Forced to abandon ship, they head into the interior aboard a purloined wonder horse, named Altivo. But, rather than being able to waltz off with the booty, they are mistaken for gods by the Aztec king, Tannabok (Edward James Olmos), and his high priest, Tzekel-Kan (Armand Assante).

Less convinced, however, is Chel (Rosie Perez), a feisty temple maiden, whose price for silence is a passage to Spain and a share of the profits.

In keeping with a tale about the plundering of riches, this is a veritable magpie of a picture, that filches ideas from countless recent animated hits - not to mention John Huston's monumental adaptation of Kipling's The Man Who Would Be King (1975). Indeed, it's so short of original incident that it has to pad out the action with a protracted Aztec `basketball' game and an earth-rumbling battle with a reanimated stone monster.

Considering it bears all the hallmarks of ex-Mouse Kingdom courtier, Jerry Katzenberg, and is supposed to showcase the talents of the finest artists outside Disney, this is hugely disappointing fare, both visually and dramatically and merely confirms the dullness of digitisation. Even the songs, by the decorated Lion King duo of Tim Rice and Elton John, are lacking in inspiration. The vocalisations at least have spirit. Clearly undeterred by their teaming in Barry Sonnenfeld's execrable Wild Wild West (1999), Kline and Branagh bounce lines off each other with abandon. But, being the quality actors they are, they clearly recognise the awfulness of the dialogue and overcompensate with their often strained exuberance.

Yet, the film's most problematic aspect is Chel, who, in these politically correct times, pulls off the almost unheard of double of being both racist and sexist. She's depicted as a moody mix of Betty Boop and Tinkerbell, whose feminism is totally out of keeping with both her society and her times and is further undermined by her laddish willingness to go along with fleecing her own people. Moreover, rather than emulating Dorothy Lamour in one of her sarongs, she dresses and flirts like something from a hentai porn flick. Yet this is totally in keeping with El Dorado's salacious strategy to keep the grown-ups happy, which includes a skinny-dipping sequence (complete with cartoon buttocks) and a double entendre quotient that would satisfy Austin Powers. Clearly, DreamWorks believes the coarsening of family entertainment is a step in the right direction. But, on the evidence of this lacklustre production, they're careering down a dead end.

SNOW FALLING IN CEDARS (1999).

Having garnered such acclaim for Shine (1996), Australian director Scott Hicks was on a hiding to nothing with his second picture. So he deserves credit for tackling something as difficult as David Guterson's bestseller.But, just as Alan Parker discovered with Come See the Paradise (1990), America's shameful treatment of its Japanese citizens during the Second World War is an intractable topic. Hicks was clearly aiming for something along the lines of Robert Mulligan's adaptation of To Kill a Mockingbird (1962). But, instead of a film about lingering racial loathing, he gives us a lyrical love story, in which laying the ghost of a doomed liaison is given priority over more profitable themes like naturalisation, cultural diversity and the hollowness of the American dream.

The son of idealistic newspaperman Arthur Chambers (Sam Shepard), Ishmael (Ethan Hawke) had never questioned the rights of his Japanese neighbours. But, having been disabled in combat, he finds it hard to be objective while reporting on the trial of Kazuo Miyamoto (Rick Yune), the first-generation US war hero, who is accused of killing the Caucasian fisherman who duped him in a land swindle. But, more significantly, Kazuo is married to Hatsue (Youki Kudoh), the girl Ishmael was secretly dating in the days before Pearl Harbor.

Cinematographer Robert Richardson subtly mixes his stocks and shades to capture the sublime beauty of the Pacific Northwest. But, considering the film's visual poetry and the impressionism of its drama, there's a surprising lack of soul either in the flashbacks to happier times or in the courtroom triumph of right over prejudice. Although faithful to the book's shifting perspectives and unreliable memories, the incessant time shifts distance the viewer from both the characters and the principles at stake, which are sometimes further undermined by the very lustre of the imagery (notably at the internment camp, which hardly reeks of despair or degradation).

Hicks is also ill-served by his star, whose all-purpose expression leaves too much to be surmised. More effective is defence attorney, Max Von Sydow, although his dialogue drips with a liberal sentimentality that, along with the clumsy ethnic delineation, renders this a worthy picture, but a dubious and dull one.

THE TAO OF STEVE (2000).

What happens to old slackers? Well, they turn into pot-bellied thirtysomethings with a yen for settling down if Jenniphr Goodman's romantic comedy is to be believed. They may crack wise about the pulling power of your average American Steve (as in McQueen), but confronted with someone playing hard to get their quip-spouting assurance disintegrates and they become just another Stu (as in geek) seeking acceptance.

Once the hot shot of his peer group, Dex (Donal Logue) is now a part-time, pot-smoking kindergarten teacher with a motivation problem that delights his mates and infuriates his firebrand mistress. But then Syd (Greer Goodman), a forgotten one night stand-turned-choosy set designer comes breezing back into Santa Fe to cast doubt over his most fervently held opinions.

With so much dumbed-down dross on offer, it's a pleasure to watch a film that has the confidence to toss Kierkegaard, Mozart, Lao Tzu and Josie and the Pussycats into the same postmodernist melting pot and still come up with an unforced screenplay that's studded with wit and wisdom. Greer Goodman is not only the star and the co-scenarist, but she's also the director's sister. Nepotism may have had something to do with her casting here, but such is the cool assertiveness of her performance that her future (if only on the indie circuit) must be assured. Similarly, after years of stealing scenes in supporting roles, Donal Logue should also have alerted a few casting directors to his leading man potential - especially after taking a special prize at Sundance for his efforts. However, once again the mainstream's reliance on empty glamour may mean he will have to take his chances down indie way.

With its blend of sex and psychology, philosophy and feel-good, this is a film of easy intelligence and insouciant charm. However, even something as acute as this can still stumble into the odd pitfall. Too much emphasis is placed on the Tao of Steve itself, especially as its tenets are bogus in the extreme and somewhat lacking in novelty and insight. The scenes in which Dex extolls their virtues to his puppyish roommate, Dave (Kimo Wills), prove unwelcome diversions from the Dex-Syd scenario, while the attempt to slip in a little slapstick during a camping trip to the wilds is equally specious.

In the final analysis, this is a rites-of-passage variation on the men-will-be-boys theme. However, what the film possesses that so few others do is a relaxed approach to its characters and an unassuming confidence in the quality of its script. Goodman can't be blamed for pushing for that little bit extra. But, as Dex never tires of telling us, in most cases less is more.

TITAN AE (2000).

The name Disney has become so synonymous with blockbusting animation that you'd be forgiven for thinking everyone else out there was an envious wannabe. But, contrary to popular misconception, not every development in the field derives from the House of Mouse. Indeed, away from the world of saucer-eyed critters and gushing ballads, there's a cartoon counterculture that's every bit as cutting-edge.

When Titan AE was released in 2000, Japanimation was still somewhat marginalised in this country, with only films like Katsuhiro Otomo's Akira (1988) and Satoshi Kon's Perfect Blue (1997) reaching our cinema screens. Indeed, British audiences were even denied the opportunity to see Hayao Miyazaki's runaway international success, Princess Mononoke (1997). But the influence of anime is growing and it's clearly evident amidst the CGI backdrops and comic-book caricatures of Don Bluth and Gary Goldman's post-apocalyptic adventure.

It's 3042 and Cale (Matt Damon) is still smouldering from being abandoned 14 years earlier by his father, as he piloted the Titan eco ark into deep space to prevent the invading Drej aliens from destroying the very building blocks of existence. Thus, it's with reluctance that he joins the Valkyrie mission, led by his pa's old pal Captain Korso (Bill Pullman), to find the ship and create a replica Earth.

A vast improvement, plotwise, on such recent sci-fi misfires as George Lucas's Star Wars Episode One: The Phantom Menace (1999) and Roger Christian's infamously awful Battlefield Earth (2000), the screenplay still suffers from indifferent dialogue and predictable characterisation. Cale's sulky heroism is well sustained, but his romance with the feisty navigator, Akima (Drew Barrymore), is less persuasive. Similarly, the comic relief trio of Stith (Janeane Garafolo), Gune (John Leguizamo) and Preed (a Jar-Jar-a-like oddity voiced minus Snowbell sneer by Nathan Lane), prove more irksome than endearing. There are huge gaps in narrative logic, too, with the Drejes (who are supposedly an invincible race that exists only as pure energy) conveniently materialising whenever they're most imperilled, while a rogue crew member performs a cheapjack volte face at the height of the denouement.

But this is designed to be more of a visual than an intellectual experience and Bluth and Goldman's animation is a sight to behold. From the explosive Armageddon onwards, the directors take every chance to exploit animation's limitless potential for wonderment. The seedy ghetto of New Bangkok, the fiery hydrogen flora of Sesharrim and the ice crystal rings of Tegrin are dazzlingly inventive environments, which achieve a thrilling illusion of three-dimensionality. It's all the more disappointing, therefore, that such ingenuity is undermined by the cartoonish flatness of the dramatis personnae.

THE VIRGIN SUICIDES (1999).

Forget the comparisons with her dad. The old man Sofia Coppola is more indebted to for her directorial bow is her husband, Spike Jonze, whose own debut, Being John Malkovich (1999), drew similar gasps of admiration. Although less surreal and subversive than Jeffrey Eugenides's source novel, The Virgin Suicides is still a bittersweet memoir of pang-filled adolescence and an astute commentary on the emotional gulf between the sexes during the wonder years.

Raised by a timid maths teacher his uptight Catholic wife (James Woods and Kathleen Turner), the Lisbon girls - Lux (Kirsten Dunst), Cecilia (Hanna Hall), Bonnie (Chelse Swain), Mary (A.J. Cook) and Therese (Leslie Hayman) - are visions of suburban innocence that fill the fantasies of every neighbourhood boy. Yet, envious adults regard this idyll with suspicion and offer only gloating sympathy when Cecilia commits suicide. The Lisbon hatches are battened down. But not quite securely enough, as high-school heartthrob Trip (Josh Hartnett) wangles the girls an invite to the homecoming dance and keeps the amorous Lux out after curfew. As the domestic regime becomes even more rigorous and the dysfunction is cranked up to busting point, the Lisbons, ravenous for another taste of life, take the ultimate step towards freedom.

With its lyrical visual style being reinforced by an ethereal score from the French band, Air, this twisted teenpic has the distinct feel of a 70s fairytale. But, lurking behind the impeccably reproduced period artefacts, there's clearly a good deal more going on. This is the era of Watergate and defeat in Vietnam, when all of America's illusions about itself came tumbling down - rather like the tree outside the family home, which is afflicted with Dutch Elm Disease in much the same way that Cecilia was infected with suicidal tendencies by a diminutive Italian oddball. The death of the Lisbons is the end of the WASP Dream. But was it bourgeois conformity, religion, school, sex, curiosity or just plain disappointment which killed them?

Brilliant in its surfaces and enigmatic in its intimations, this is as sinister a portrait of suburbia as Sam Mendes's American Beauty (1999) and bodes just as well for its director's future (which the later success of Lost in Translation, 2003; Marie Antoinette, 2006; Somewhere, 2010; and The Bling Ring, 2013 would confirm)..

WHERE THE MONEY IS (2000).

At the anything but ripe old age of 75, Paul Newman announced his retirement. He said he would do one more picture, with his wife Joanne Woodward (which he didn't), and then it would be nothing but salad dressing and slippers (which it wasn't). Nevertheless, this amiable, but low-key caper had a swan song feel to it.

A far cry from the complex character dramas of his youth, it was designed to give mainstream audiences a last chance to marvel at the insouciant charm that illuminated the George Roy Hill duo of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) and The Sting (1973). A tricksy tribute to the Method by a practitioner whose mastery has often been undervalued by those worshiping at the shrines of Brando, Dean and Clift.

Newman is Henry Manning, a habitual criminal set to spend the remainder of his days behind bars. However, by focusing his will, he has fooled everyone into believing he's been paralysed by a stroke and, consequently, has been transferred to a low security pensioners' home. But nurse Carol Ann McKay (Linda Fiorentino) isn't convinced and, having roused him from his torpor, persuades him to participate in the armored car robbery she hopes will save her marriage to her indolent high-school sweetheart, Wayne (Dermot Mulroney).

High concept hokum, perhaps. But, mercifully, the influence of co-producer Ridley Scott seems to end there. Instead, Marek Kanievska is able to indulge the flair for character he demonstrated in Another Country (1984). Just about every scene is underplayed. Fiorentino and Newman achieve a playful relationship that, while not overtly sexual, has sensual undertones, particularly during a juke-box dance sequence. Relying on the smoky-voiced langour that made her so irresistible in John Dahl's The Last Seduction (1994), Fiorentino gives as good as she gets, although she's careful to ensure it's never better. It's as selfless a performance as Newman's is quietly calculated.

Kanievska even keeps the lid on the heist. There are a couple of tense moments, but nothing to quicken the pulse. No one expected Rififi (1955), but a few Palookaville (1995) mishaps might have raised the ante. Co-scenarist E. Max Frye wrote Something Wild (1986) for Jonathan Demme and it's tempting to imagine that some of the sting was drawn from his screenplay by Topper Lilien and Carroll Cartwright. But, the result is a story without complexities. We learn nothing about Newman's past or Fiorentino's reasons for standing by such a deadbeat. Or why she thinks a bullion blag is the only solution to their marital ennui. But this is a film that doesn't bear close scrutiny. It's fun to watch and easy to swallow. Just don't expect to remember too much about it the next day.

WOMAN ON TOP (2000).

As films as different as Gabriel Axel's Babette's Feast (1987) and Campbell Scott and Stanley Tucci's Big Night (1996) have shown, cinema has a surprising affinity for food. In more delicate hands, this whimsical romantic comedy might have been a sensual delight. But Venezuelan director Fina Torres's heavy-handed combination of the ingredients that made Alfonso Arau's Like Water for Chocolate (1992) such a crowd-pleaser - sex, cuisine and magic realism - proves merely a recipe for disaster.

Because Isabella (Penelope Cruz) suffers from motion sickness, she has to dominate her couplings with Brazilian restaurateur-husband Toninho (Muriloo Benicio). So he hops into the bed of a more accommodating wench and Isabella decamps to San Francisco, where she takes a vow of celibacy. So much for the sex. Moreover, there's precious little magic (beside Isabella's fidelity to a goddess of the sea) and even less realism. Such is her fragrant beauty that flowers snap to attention whenever she passes by, while the aroma of her cooking has men acting on impulse like the fluffy-faced woodland creatures who frolicked after Snow White in Disney's classic cartoon.

So that only leaves the cookery - and because most of that is done either in a night school class or in a television studio (after Isabella lands a primetime lifestyle show), it's robbed of any poetry and presented as a feminine wile necessary to keep a man satisfied. Torres and screenwriter Vera Blasi clearly intended to send-up the cliché of the Latin Lover by presenting him as a chauvinist with an irrevocable faith in the seductive powers of the bossa nova. The casting of a Brazilian soap star as the errant hubby confirms their intentions.

But the tactic backfires because Toninho is presented from the outset as such a macho jerk that, rather than hoping Isabella takes him back, we end up dreading the moment she succumbs to his shallow charm. Had there been a hint of romance things might have been different, but Cruz and Benicio's passion is about as spicy as a stale tortilla.

Isabella's capitulation sends a decidedly mixed message, as it suggests she is anything but the independent woman of the title. She gets her show because of her sex appeal and she's clearly happier with a man than without. Even her female confidante is a bloke (a wildly exaggerated, but welcomely amusing performance from Harold Perrineau Jr. as a row-of-tents transvestite).With Cruz distinctly uncomfortable with both the language and the triviality of the scenario, this is far from a soft-centred confection, but a date movie guaranteed to give you the pip.