



*** Below (Dimension; 105 minutes; rated R for language and some violence; priced for rental; $29.99 for DVD): "Haunted World War II submarine."

That's all you need to know to make up your mind if you want to see Below.

But if you're interested, you might want to know that this is a haunted sub movie from David Twohy, the guy who made Pitch Black, and co-written by Darren Aronofsky, who made Requiem for a Dream.

That means it's not your everyday haunted sub thriller.

In the middle of the Atlantic in 1943, the USS Tiger Shark is sent to pick up three survivors of a sinking. Word races around the boat.

"Three teabags [Brits], one's a skirt."

The "skirt" is Claire -- played by Olivia Williams. She tells their tale. Their hospital ship was torpedoed. But the trauma of the days at sea in an open boat is merely the beginning of her problems.

Something isn't right about Claire's sinking or this sub. Phantom warships hunt them. Phantom noises give away their position. Phantom faces show up in reflected surfaces.

You're going to guess who is haunting whom and over what pretty quickly in this one. But the blunt, direct performances, hard-bitten dialogue and stylish dark-on-dark photography and special effects do a lot to alleviate problems caused by an unsurprising plot and cheap scares.


** I Spy (Sony; 96 minutes; rated PG-13 for action violence, some sexual content, language; priced for rental): Supposedly based on the 1960s TV series that starred Bill Cosby and Robert Culp, this big-screen dud is purely superficial.

Eddie Murphy stars as middleweight boxing champ Kelly Robinson, and Owen Wilson is secret agent Alex Scott. They travel together to Budapest to stop a fiendish arms dealer (Malcolm McDowell) from selling an invisible airplane to a terrorist.

What made the I Spy show a classic was the casual interplay between Culp and Cosby, whom TV historians call the first black actor to star in a noncomedy series. Back in the '60s, the interracial casting made the show vaguely cutting edge. And even beyond that, the banter between the two stars was something special.

An interracial team is pretty standard today, but the bigger issue here is the utter lack of rapport between Murphy and Wilson.

Director Betty Thomas is hopeless when it comes to staging action scenes. Things keep being blown up and shot at, but you're not always sure what or why.


*** Moonlight Mile (DreamWorks; 123 minutes; rated PG-13 for some sensuality, brief strong language; priced for rental; $29.99 for DVD): Jake Gyllenhaal stars as Joe, a passive young man apparently still in shock over the death of his fiancee, Diana. He stays with her parents, Ben (Dustin Hoffman) and JoJo (Susan Sarandon), to attend her funeral. And he stays on afterward, trying to give people who have lost everything someone to hold onto.

JoJo is a writer who can't write after Diana's death. But she's more annoyed than angry, more lost than bereaved.

Her husband, Ben, is a hyper-organized Realtor in the small New England town where the film takes place. He's the one who realizes that wedding invitations are in the mail and need to be intercepted.

But it's left to Joe to march down to the post office to intercept the offensive invitations. And that's where he meets Bertie (Ellen Pompeo), the funny and cute postal clerk who recognizes a fellow member of the walking wounded.

The sterling performances don't entirely cover up the film's lack of confidence in its subject. Director Brad Silberling undercuts much of the real emotion here with moments of cuteness.

The individual parts of the film are much better than the whole. But it's high-minded and worth experiencing for those parts.


** Swimfan (Fox; 85 minutes; rated PG-13 for mature thematic elements, sexual content, disturbing images and language; priced for rental): Here's a high school Fatal Attraction. It's about a once-troubled boy who risks his now-bright future for one night of sin with the sexy, aggressive and creepy new girl on campus.

Ben, generically played by Jesse Bradford, could lose his girlfriend, his after-school job, his Stanford swimming team scholarship and his life. And all because he submitted to the wrong girl's advances -- in the pool, no less.

Subtle metaphor, there.

Swimfan takes a full hour to plunge into the mess that Ben's life becomes thanks to a woman scored/a woman scorned. That wouldn't be so bad if Aussie actor-turned-director John Polson were showing us sides of high school life or teen romance that we haven't seen before. He doesn't, and that hour of foreplay seems like nothing more than a tease, with cheap scares and no thrills.

It's visually amusing to see Polson force Ben to choose between his virtuous, Ali McGraw look-alike girlfriend (Shiri Appleby) and the vixen (Erika Christensen), who is a cross between Reese Witherspoon in Election and Glenn Close in Fatal-you-know-what.

There isn't much that adults haven't seen before. Teenagers, however, should appreciate the traps, tricks and overly obvious twists that lead us to the inevitable finale.


Inspector Gadget 2 (Disney; 88 minutes; rated PG; $22.99 VHS, $29.99 DVD): In this direct-to-video sequel, Riverton City is patrolled by Inspector Gadget (French Stewart) and his trusty dog, Brain, and all seems well. When Gadget's many crime-fighting accessories go awry, however, he reports for a checkup -- and finds himself taking a backseat to Riverton's newest crime-stopping robot, G2 (Elaine Hendrix). Gadget is thrown for a bigger loop when he finds himself attracted to his robotic rival. Gadget's niece Penny (Caitlin Wachs) announces that she has taken up fighting crime as well, but that's not enough to stop the new threat to the city -- the villainous Claw (Tony Martin) has escaped prison and is back to his dastardly ways.


Keeping Up Appearances: Hyacinth in Full Bloom (BBC Video; rated PG-13; $79.98 for four-disc DVD set): Hyacinth (Patricia Routledge), a tireless social climber, always puts her best foot forward, going to incredible lengths in her quest for perfection and admittance to the upper echelon of society. Hyacinth busies herself performing selfless acts of charity for the lower classes (including her sisters), doling out invaluable advice to her husband, Richard, and acting the adoring eldest daughter to her incapacitated Daddy.

Malevolent (Buena Vista; 95 minutes; rated R for violence, language and sexual content; $29.99): Jack (Lou Diamond Phillips) is a rogue cop under investigation for a job-related shooting. Betrayed by a friend (Edoardo Ballerini) and facing murder charges, he turns to an exotic dancer (Kari Wuhrer) who may know more about the charges against him than she lets on.

Motorcycle Gang (Buena Vista; 84 minutes; rated R for violence including rape, language, sexuality, drug content; $29.99): Leann (Carla Gugino) is on a family trip to California that takes a serious wrong turn when her family runs into an outlaw motorcycle gang led by Jake Busey. It's a fatal attraction when he decides he has to have Leann.


Building the Great Pyramid (Warner; not rated; $9.95 VHS, $14.98 DVD): Tells the story of the Great Pyramid through the eyes of one of the men who built it, Nakht -- not a real figure but based on historical evidence. Nakht and his brother are conscripted in their village, taken up the Nile and put to work until the completion of the Great Pyramid. Omar Sharif narrates.

Lost Treasures of Tibet (WGBH Boston Video; 60 minutes; not rated; $19.95 VHS): Located in present-day Nepal, Mustan contains some of the last remaining relics of ancient Buddhist culture. Across the border in Tibet, Chinese occupiers have destroyed up to 10,000 monasteries since taking control of the country in 1950. Therefore, the survival of Mustan's monasteries -- called gompas -- is especially important. But preservation is extremely difficult because of centuries of neglect, weather and earthquakes that have brought many buildings to the brink of collapse.


Bob the Builder: The Knights of Fix-a-Lot (Hit Entertainment; 45 minutes; rated G; $14.99 VHS, $16.99 DVD): An animated adventure with Bob, Wendy and their colorful crew of construction vehicles is filled with high jinks, history and the positive "can-do" spirit that has endeared Bob to children and parents alike.

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