In this fast-paced, sci-fi/horror shoot-'em-up based on the Dark Horse comic book, Jamie Lee Curtis plays the navigator of an ocean-going tug. When a typhoon cripples their boat, the crew sails into the eye of the storm, where they discover a high-tech Russian communications and research vessel adrift. Only one Russian crewmember is still alive, raving about "intelligent lightning. " They soon discover that an alien life form has taken over the ship's computers and is churning out biomechanical warriors. With their own boat destroyed, the crew must battle the creature as the ship reenters the storm. If the basic story and characters all sound familiar, it may not surprise you that producer Gale Anne Hurd's other films include The Terminator and Aliens. This movie and its derivative screenplay aren't nearly as good as those were, and director John Bruno (who won an Oscar for best visual effects for The Abyss) seems more skilled at action choreography and special effects than character and story. Curtis plays another variation on her "scream queen" persona, while Donald Sutherland gives a deliciously hammy performance as the tug captain (in his words, "the dominant life form") who smells salvage money if he can claim the Russian ship for his own. For all the picture's flaws, the effects are good (and gory) and it moves at top speed for a brisk 100 minutes. A trivia factoid: at one point on this troubled production, film footage was seized at the airport because the shipping box was prominently marked with the film's title! -Geoff Miller.

Cherry Falls, the eponymous small town in Cherry Falls, has some dirty secrets-secrets that come to light when a psychotic killer starts killing teenagers. But the killer has an unusual criterion: only virgins are marked for death. Cherry Falls is a striking movie that never got released in cinemas, probably because marketers didn't know what to do with it. It's not a winking, smirk-while-you-shriek twist on the genre like Scream, nor is it a broad parody like Scary Movie-instead, Cherry Falls tries (and largely succeeds) at trying to turn the clichés of slasher movies into something that will do more than make you jump in shock. It's still scary; few things are creepier than wandering the empty hallways of a high school after hours, and Cherry Falls takes full advantage of that. It's also often funny, mostly because the mechanics of a slasher movie have become just a little too much and you can't help laughing. But it also makes you think twice about attitudes towards sex-moments such as parents breaking into a brawl while talking about their children's sex activity, or an "experienced" girl's pep talk to an assembly of girls eager to lose their virginity, are both funny and caustic. Brittany Murphy (Clueless, Girl, Interrupted) shines as the sheriff's daughter caught in the middle of it all; Michael Biehn (The Terminator) is great as the earnest sheriff who knows more than he lets on; and Jay Mohr (Jerry Maguire) smoothly handles the part of a teacher with an unhealthy interest in Murphy. Cherry Falls doesn't tell you when it's funny or scary, which makes many viewers uncomfortable. But if you're interested in watching a slippery, layered examination of sexual attitudes that is also a successful, spooky slasher flick, then this movie is for you. [+]

It was inevitable that Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut would be the most misunderstood film of 1999. Kubrick died four months prior to its release and there was no end to speculation about how much he would have tinkered with the picture, changed it, "fixed" it. We'll never know. But even without the haunting enigma of the director's death-and its eerie echo/anticipation in the scene when Dr Bill Harford (Tom Cruise) visits the deathbed of one of his patients-Eyes Wide Shut would have perplexed and polarised viewers and reviewers. After all, virtually every movie of Kubrick's post-US career had; only 1964's Dr. Strangelove opened to something approaching consensus. Quite apart from the author's tinkering, Kubrick's movies themselves always seemed to change-partly because they changed us, changed the world and the ways we experienced and understood it. And we may expect Eyes Wide Shut to do the same. Unlike Kubrick himself, it has time. So consider, as we settle in to live with this long, advisedly slow, mesmerising film, how challenging and ambiguous its narrative strategy is. [+]