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The following, rated on a system of 0 to 4 stars, are by Rick Groen, Liam Lacey and Ray Conlogue. Full reviews appeared on the dates indicated. Amélie*** Amélie is a feel-good flick with artsy ambitions -- sentimentality with an aesthetic veneer. The plot does little more than follow our spritely heroine over a long weekend of elaborate good deeds. Instead, the real star is Jean-Pierre Jeunet's direction -- it's breathlessly paced, brightly hued, reverent of its Parisian setting, and spiced with flecks of humour. Yes, his spell works admirably -- at least until the third act. AA (Nov. 9) -- R.G. A Beautiful Mind**½ An uncommon man like John Nash deserves more than a common movie like this. Nash (Russell Crowe doing some upper-case ACTING) is a math genius whose innovative theories earned him the Nobel Prize; he's also a diagnosed schizophrenic burdened by paranoid delusions. PG (Dec. 21) -- R.G. Blade II**½ Flashy surfaces and gore galore make for an effectively mindless package in director Guillermo del Toro's slick-as-spit Marvel Comics-derived tale of a half-human, half-vampire killer who sets out to hunt and kill the undead. In this sequel, the vampires and humans alike combine to destroy a new, even more lethal species of bald creatures with grotesque jaws, who don't even have vampire ethics. Wesley Snipes's solid presence, and strong supporting work by Kris Kristofferson as his macho mentor, make this an exercise in watchable carnage. R (March 22) -- L.L. Clockstoppers** A throwback to the science-comedy kids' films of the early sixties, Clockstoppers is about a teen (Jesse Bradford) who takes a watch from his scientist father, and discovers it has the ability to make everyone except himself move very slowly. The freeze-frame effects are pretty but the comic pranks are banal, and the movie soon degenerates into too many long chases. PG (March 29) -- L.L. Death to Smoochy** Danny DeVito directed this loud assault of a comedy about assorted venal types trying to get rid of a noxiously sweet children's entertainer (Ed Norton) in a rhino suit. Foul-mouthed, violent and occasionally funny in a twisted way, the film seems aimed neither at children (too dark) nor adults (too easy a target). Robin Williams is abrasive as a deposed rival, with DeVito as a sleazy agent and Catherine Keener as an ambitious network executive. AA (March 29) -- L.L. E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial: The 20th Anniversary Edition**** Steven Spielberg's small ($10-million U.S.) domestic tale of a boy's friendship with an alien is, more clearly than ever, the Peter Pan of the late 20th century, a children's tale with a mythic resonance about life, death and the Beyond. A couple of previously deleted scenes add something to the arc of Elliott and E.T.'s friendship, though Spielberg's revisions smack of dubious retrospective political correctness: the suppressing of the word "terrorist" and the digital removal of guns from the policemen's hands. PG (March 22) -- L.L. Festival in Cannes**½ Writer-director Henry Jaglom brought his casual style and his portable cameras to Cannes for the 2000 film festival. There, shooting on location, he made a movie about (what else?) the making of movies. At its best, Jaglom's work is breezy without being slight. Here, he can't quite get that tricky balance right, and the result is a picture as charmingly insubstantial as the world it invokes. PG (March 29) -- R.G. Gosford Park*** Robert Altman has always been adroit at giving tired genres an innovative twist, and he's up to his old tricks again. The time is 1932, the place is a country manor in England, and the toyed-with genres are the upstairs/downstairs period piece along with the Agatha Christie murder mystery. But, as ever, Altman is less interested in neat solutions than in messy lives. AA (Dec. 26) -- R.G. Iris**½ Based on John Bayley's memoirs, Iris is less a fully developed movie than a recurring pair of before-and-after snapshots. Before: See the writer Iris Murdoch in the prime of her youth. After: Look at the shell of poor Iris ravaged by Alzheimer's disease. The irony is both obvious and tragic, but, despite the note-perfect acting of the principals, the film offers nothing to contemplate except that transparent irony. AA (Feb. 22) -- R.G. Last Orders*** Adapted from Graham Swift's Booker Prize-winning novel, Fred Schepisi's prismatic memory film features a wonderful, understated cast -- Michael Caine, Bob Hoskins, David Hemmings, Tom Courtenay and Helen Mirren -- as long-time Cockney friends, on a trip to the seaside to cast a friend's ashes in the water. Partly a generation portrait and a memory play, the film is at its best when the actors, all icons of the Brit wave of the sixties, are bellied up to the various pub bars, and the sad-funny banter crackles. AA (March 29) -- L.L. L.I.E.**½ Earnest and determinedly important, L.I.E. (an acronym for the Long Island Expressway) is about a confused teenager (Paul Franklin Dano) who is targeted by a charismatic pederast (Brian Cox). First-time director Michael Cuesta's film features strong performances but suffers from a disjointed tone and is overwhelmed by the presence of Cox, who makes his paternal pervert easily the most sympathetic, and preposterously entertaining, character in the drama. R (March 29) -- L.L. Life and Debt**½ Stephanie Black's damning and persuasive documentary explores the effect of the International Money Fund and other international debt organizations on the economy of Jamaica, makes its case, and occasionally wonders into some poetic overkill as it targets plump, ignorant tourists. The film also fails to explain where Jamaica would be if it had never borrowed the money it needed. NA (March 1) -- L.L. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Rings*** Director Peter Jackson's first instalment of Tolkien's epic, three-volume tome meets and surpasses high expectations at least on a technical level, faithfully recreating the characters and environment of Middle-earth with a combination of New Zealand's varied landscape and computer-generated imagery. AA (Dec. 19) -- L.L. Men With Brooms** Paul Gross, star of television's Due South, directs, stars in and co-wrote this comedy about a prodigal son returning to his Ontario hometown to lead a local curling team to victory. Molly Parker and Leslie Nielsen are co-stars. AA (March 8) -- L.L. Monsoon Wedding*** This is an India you've never seen before. In an upper-class suburb of cellphones and e-mails, an extended family gathers for a massive wedding, whereupon the plot splinters off on multiple tangents while the tone shifts neatly from comic to dramatic and back again. All the characters speak in a delightful babel of English and Hindi, and director Mira Nair skips the movie along to a similarly unique beat. Ultimately, Monsoon Wedding is itself a genial marriage of Western ironies and Eastern melodrama -- think Robert Altman meets Bollywood. AA (March 1) -- R.G. Monster's Ball*** As befits an American film that touches on the open sore of racism, Monster's Ball is raw in emotion, graphic in direction, and intense in performance (especially from Halle Berry). Yet if the Southern tale is explicit in its gothic content, it's admirably restrained in the telling, and that tension makes the movie gripping. Thus, it's easy to overlook a central flaw: Ultimately, the picture is a thematic cheat -- it ends up simplifying a complex subject. R (Feb. 1) -- R.G. 101 Reykjavik*** Imagine, if you dare, Ingmar Bergman as a consummate slacker with a wicked sense of pop humour. Manage that feat and you'll begin to appreciate the peculiar pleasures of this buoyantly bleak little comedy. Set in wintry Iceland, it revolves around the non-doings of a twentysomething layabout, a sort of existential antihero whose outlook is Bergmanesque but whose wit is Allenesque -- yes, as in Woody. Weak ending, but getting there is great fun. R (March 22) -- R.G. Panic Room*** David Fincher is a talented director, and he stoops to conquer here. Starring Jodie Foster and Forest Whitaker, Panic Room is a straight-ahead suspense flick, a Hitchcockian exercise designed solely to put a shiver up the spine and push bums to the edge of seats. Its single purpose is to entertain. Nothing wrong with that goal, but how's his aim? Pretty good -- not unerring, but he does have his dead-eye moments. AA (March 29) -- R.G. Resident Evil*½ Someone should invent a computer game based on the quest to make a good movie out of computer games. Because, so far, every adaptive attempt has failed, and Resident Evil -- in which bad zombies give chase while good people run like hell -- is no exception. PG (March 15) -- R.G. The Rookie*** Once in a long while, a good Hollywood movie sneaks in beneath the radar, underpromoted and undervalued. This is such a movie. Rarer still, it's a sports flick, a notoriously unreliable genre, especially when the story embraces that most cornball of athletic myths -- aging jock gets one last shot at the majors. But it works for three reasons: (1) naturalistic dialogue; (2) actors (notably Dennis Quaid) who can deliver it well; (3) direction that underplays the big moments, giving us what we need from any resurrection myth -- a reason to believe. F (March 29) -- R.G. Showtime* The attraction of this slender spoof of cop buddy films is the pairing of Robert De Niro and Eddie Murphy. Alas, it proves to be -- from beginning to end -- a paint-by-numbers movie. There's a mildly entertaining climax, but most of Showtime is a layering of tired pop-culture tropes by actors who aren't especially interested in what they're doing. AA (March 15) -- R.C. The Time Machine**½ Yep, another remake -- in this case, of George Pal's 1960 adaptation of the H. G. Wells novel. Pal's take on the book was visually delightful and occasionally clever; here, the result is merely workmanlike and mainly pedestrian. The hero gets to travel through time, but the viewer is stuck in the eternal present of Remake-Land -- watching look-alike flicks over and over again. AA (March 8) -- R.G. Tortilla Soup** It's another remake, "inspired" by Ang Lee's superb Eat Drink Man Woman. Translation: The writers have swiped Lee's basic premise and main characters, while pretty much ignoring his ingenuity and sensitivity. As the master chef losing his taste buds, Hector Elizondo carries the picture with grace -- but it hardly seems worth the heft. PG (March 29) -- R.G. We Were Soldiers**½ This ambitious, if corny, movie -- based on the first major battle of the Vietnam War -- has strong connections to Black Hawk Down, both in the situation (Americans greatly outnumbered in a massive shootout) and the intense, kinetic violence of the action. To its discredit, the movie concentrates to an unjustifiable extent on the character and domestic life of the commander played by Mel Gibson (portraying the man whose memoirs are the foundation of the script), who seems less a brave leader than a divinity. AA (March 1) -- L.L.