Lauren Holly

Spirited Away begins with the young Chihiro reluctantly accompanying her family as they explore a deserted amusement park. The girl's parents are seduced by a feast set up in one of the park's food stands and eventually turn into pigs. At sunset Chihiro is transported into an alternate phantom universe filled with lumbering radish men, the shrill and controlling witch Yubaba (voiced by Suzanne Pleshette in her finest performance since Oh God, Book II), and a trio of bouncing, disembodied heads. Looking for a way to free her parents and find a way home keeps Chihiro exploring this world long enough to uncover enough strange and amazing creatures to keep us glued to the screen for the duration.

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Something like The Big Chill meets Generation X, Beautiful Girls is one of those ensemble character movies that really defies description in terms of plot points. The ostensible main character is Willie (Timothy Hutton), who is ambivalent about girlfriend Tracy (Annabeth Gish) so heads back home to Knight's Ridge, Massachusetts to sort things out during his 10-year high school reunion. Here, he hooks up with old pals Tommy (Matt Dillon) and Paul (Michael Rapaport), each of whom is also flailing helplessly in his own romantic mess.

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You know how in testosterone-charged action movies an explosion will be shown over and over again in slow motion, and from four or five different angles? The ultimate sign of a guy movie, right?

Well, in "What Women Want" -- a romantic comedy starring Mel Gibson as a man who can hear women's thoughts -- director Nancy Meyers shows, on more than one occasion, Mel passionately kissing Helen Hunt in slow-mo and from four or five different angles.

Yes, what I'm saying is that "What Women Want" is very possibly the chickiest chick flick of all time.

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There's only about 22 minutes of plot in "Any Given Sunday," Oliver Stone's innovative, bone-crunching ballet of sound and fury football, so lets get that out of the way right now:

Al Pacino stars as the embattled, old-school coach of a fictitious pro football team. Cameron Diaz, is the willful, profit-zealous daughter of the franchise's recently deceased owner. Jamie Foxx is a hotshot young quarterback whose know-it-all attitude and colossal ego threaten team unity. He's just replaced the injured, aging, Elway-esque veteran QB Dennis Quaid, whose compound back injury has spelled curtains for his career -- if only his ruthlessly ambitious, harpy of a wife (Lauren Holly) would accept that fact.

During the last two minutes of the fourth quarter of the Big Playoff Game that serves as the film's climax, each of these characters (especially the selfish ones) will have an epiphany about what's really important in their lives.

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