THE EMPEROR'S NEW CLOTHES Why should fictional movie characters be the only ones to have any fun in being placed at the center of madcap "mistaken identity" farces? The Emperor's New Clothes, adapted from Simon Leys' novel The Death of Napoleon, dumps the legendary French leader into an innocuous comedy that largely stays afloat through the considerable efforts of Ian Holm. Holm has essayed the role of Napoleon on two previous occasions (Time Bandits and a television production) and he slips comfortably into the part yet again, investing the diminutive ruler with ample reserves of sweetness and sensitivity. Set after Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo and his exile to the island of St. Helen, the film posits that a peasant with a remarkable resemblance to the emperor managed to switch places with the conqueror, thus enabling him to escape undetected from his island prison and make it back to the streets of Paris to wait for his chance to regain power. But a series of events ends up altering Napoleon's plans, and instead he finds himself spending quality time with a young widow (Iben Hjeile) who knows nothing of his true identity. The historical slant provides this with a small measure of inventiveness; otherwise, it's nothing you haven't seen (and seen done better) on AMC or TCM. 1/2

K-19: THE WIDOWMAKER Not to be confused with K-9 (a Jim Belushi bomb), K-2 (a mountain-climbing dud) or even K-PAX (a Kevin Spacey disaster), the fact-based K-19 is nevertheless strictly DOA. If there's anything to add at this late date to the venerable sub-genre of sub flicks, hack director Kathryn Bigelow (Point Break) and writers Christopher Kyle and Louis Nowra don't even come close to finding it, preferring instead to trot out a creaky vessel that seems stitched together, Frankenstein-style, from past underwater adventures. Sean Connery was smart enough not to bother to attempt a Russian accent in The Hunt for Red October, but here are Harrison Ford and Liam Neeson limply using now-you-hear-them-now-you-don't accents as the two top dogs on a Soviet submarine sent out to sea under perilous conditions during the height of the Cold War. What ensues is a half-hearted Mutiny On the Bounty, with the no-nonsense captain (Ford) squaring off against his more compassionate second-in-command (Neeson) as they both profess to do what's best for the sailors under their command. The usual themes pertaining to honor among men and courage under fire are repeatedly brought to the surface, along with the expected scenes featuring malfunctioning machinery, unsettling water leaks and a bombastic score that tries to bully our emotions at every turn. It's all too familiar to be even remotely effective.

LOVELY & AMAZING Six years ago, writer-director Nicole Holofcener made her feature debut with Walking and Talking, the sort of off-the-radar charmer that nobody ever hears about unless they happen to take a chance on a bargain rental at the video store (at which point they then rave about it to friends who couldn't care less). Her belated follow-up may meet the same fate, but regardless of this auteur's obscurity, here's clearly a filmmaker who cares about exploring what ordinary people do and say in the course of trying to improve their lot in life. Less satisfying than Walking but still overwhelmingly generous in spirit, this stars Catherine Keener as a struggling artist who's merely one eccentric cog in a self-doubting family that also includes her mother (Brenda Blethyn), who's recovering from liposuction; her cute sister (Emily Mortimer), who wonders if she physically has what it takes to become a big actress; and her 8-year-old sibling (Raven Goodwin), an adopted African-American girl mulling over the things that make her different from the rest of her family. Holofcener doesn't gloss over her characters' insecurities and occasionally antisocial behavior, meaning their actions aren't always easy to take; on the contrary, she believably details how each person's lack of self-confidence creates problems where none may otherwise exist and makes the struggle to connect with others all that much more difficult to navigate. Keener is excellent (though she largely plays the same role in the upcoming Full Frontal), but it's Mortimer who steals the show with an emotionally and physically bare (talk about full frontal) performance. CURRENT RELEASESEIGHT LEGGED FREAKS Superb sound effects have enhanced many a sci-fi flick or war epic, but has a motion picture actually ever been ruined due to an ill-advised aural decision? Eight Legged Freaks certainly makes the case for such a claim. There's never been a truly great "spider" movie (1955's Tarantula probably comes closest, though even that pales next to many of the era's more accomplished sci-fi outings), and it's fun to imagine what a filmmaker like Paul Verhoeven could have done with this subject matter and an R rating. But as befits its title, this PG-13-rated piffle is ultimately as threatening as that Snuggle Fabric Softener bear, and except for an isolated scene here and there, even arachnophobes shouldn't have a hard time sleeping after sitting through this thing. In depicting its tale of a small town overrun by overgrown spiders (mutation courtesy of a radioactive spill), the movie features all jokes all the time, a ploy that worked well in Abbott and Costello's monster mashes but one that often falls flat here. As far as the actual spiders go, the special effects are decent enough, and just the sight of these creepy-crawlies bouncing all over the screen might have been enough to elicit a shiver or two were it not for those infernal sound effects. Rather than stalking in silence, these arachnids continuously make non-threatening yelps and chirps that bring to mind the Star Wars saga's Jawas and Ewoks as well as those Gremlins chatterboxes. It may be true that children should be seen and not heard, but it's safe to say that this idiom also applies to cinematic super-spiders.

LILO & STITCH Give the Disney studio credit for fashioning an animated feature that steps outside the boundaries of their traditional fare, then take it away for coming up with a maddening work as lumpy and unwieldy as this one. Lilo and Stitch certainly aren't your everyday Disney heroes like Aladdin or Simba; instead, Lilo is a troubled Hawaiian girl who at the outset looks like she could use a good child psychiatrist, while Stitch is an outer space visitor whose only instinct is to destroy everything around him. Naturally, these two bond, but their mutual journey of self-discovery is disrupted by various elements, including other aliens hell-bent on taking Stitch back to his home planet. The old-fashioned animation is fine, but the screenplay is remarkably rough, with little regard for smooth transitions or believable character arcs. Stitch's antics eventually grow tiresome -- it's more fun to watch the old Warner Bros. toon gang get wild and crazy than this Gremlins toss-off -- and the film's message about family unity (the oft-repeated motto is "No one gets left behind," which kept flashing me back to Black Hawk Down's tagline) is clumsily presented. On the plus side, the soundtrack at least provides us with Elvis Presley classics rather than dreadful new Oscar-bait tunes by Phil Collins or Sting.

MEN IN BLACK II It's almost a given that most sequels aren't going to retain the freshness of their predecessors, but this follow-up to the 1997 smash disappoints deeper than most simply because of the high quality of the original picture. Most of its spark comes courtesy of Will Smith, who's all easygoing swagger in his reprisal of his role as Agent J, forced to bring his mentor and former partner, Agent K (Tommy Lee Jones), back into the fold to help defeat an evil alien who's disguised as a lingerie model (dull Lara Flynn Boyle) and her moronic sidekick (tiresome Johnny Knoxville). What made the first picture so special was the interplay between Smith and Jones, but the latter is largely neutralized here, not turning up until well into the film and then forced to tread water as his brainwashed character must wait to regain his dominating demeanor. Makeup artist Rick Baker's various alien creations are for the most part merely brought out for display rather than integrated into the story, and the presence of Linda Fiorentino (excellent as the kinky morgue attendant in the '97 original) is sorely missed (Rosario Dawson as Smith's love interest is a poor substitute). There are a few laughs and clever sight gags scattered about, but not enough to make this anything more than another big-budget bust.

MINORITY REPORT Isn't there something a tad obscene about the fact that, while most moviemakers are lucky to helm even one motion picture that will be remembered through the ages, here we have a director who creates enduring gems about as frequently as the LA Lakers win championships? Steven Spielberg's Minority Report, a dazzling adaptation of the 1956 short story by Philip K. Dick, may not quite belong on the same exalted level as past Spielberg classics, but it's so markedly superior to most everything else that's been in theaters over the past several months, it instantly reduces the competition to also-ran status. Set in Washington, DC in the year 2054, the complex script by Scott Frank and Jon Cohen centers on the Pre-Crime Unit, whose law enforcement officers, guided by the visions of three "Pre-Cogs" who have the ability to see murders before they even occur, are able to arrest the killers before they've actually killed anybody. The unit head (Tom Cruise) believes it's a perfect system -- or at least until he's pegged as a murderer, destined to assassinate a man he hasn't even met. Minority Report succeeds as a sci-fi yarn, a film noir drama and an adventure romp, and in a post-9/11 environment in which polls show many Americans are willing to sacrifice some of their personal freedoms for the sake of feeling safer, it gains additional relevance by presenting a future world that shows the frightening price of this way of thinking. Working as both a popcorn picture and a message movie, Minority Report shows once again that perhaps no other director since Alfred Hitchcock has been able to so masterfully (and so consistently) blend art and entertainment into one irresistible package as Steven Spielberg.

MR. DEEDS The latest Adam Sandler vehicle is a remake of 1936's Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, but watching it, I was less reminded of that Frank Capra heartwarmer than I was of AC/DC's "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap." After all, here's a studio quickie so threadbare in every department, one can only assume the entire budget went toward its star's exorbitant salary. And here's a comedy so low-brow, it removes much of the wit and pointed social commentary of the original and replaces it with gags involving wayward tennis balls and pizzas made out of Oreo cookies. And yet, while Mr. Deeds rates merely as a mediocrity, that's certainly a step up from Sandler's past two pictures, the I-wouldn't-wish-them-upon-my-worst-enemy pair of Big Daddy and Little Nicky. Sandler's in easy-going Wedding Singer mode here, playing a scruffy doofus who inherits $40 billion yet retains his small-town appeal as he goes up against unfeeling New York sharks. Winona Ryder is far too talented to be slumming in the slender role of the hard-hearted journalist who falls for Deeds (given her current off-screen travails and her recent choice of parts, can this career be saved?), and the movie features a plethora of pointless cameos by the likes of John McEnroe and Al Sharpton. Yet if this disposable tissue has one wild card, it's John Turturro, who's simply fab as a Spanish butler with a foot fetish; you may find yourself wishing for a sequel if only to watch him reprise his role.

THE POWERPUFF GIRLS MOVIE Alas, this job doesn't pay enough to get me to sit through Hey, Arnold! The Movie or Recess: School's Out, but as far as big-screen adaptations of crudely drawn TV toons are concerned, the appeal of this wildly popular Cartoon Network series gave it a better fighting chance than most. It certainly turns out to be a worthy effort, even if (as with many spin-offs of boob tube fodder) it doesn't quite sustain its feature-film length. This picture relates in detail the origins of the title trio, showing how Professor Utonium accidentally created three super-tykes -- the smart Blossom, the sweet Bubbles and the surly Buttercup -- and how they had to learn to use their powers to protect the city of Townsville from the nefarious machinations of the evil monkey Mojo Jojo. Employing the same vibrant color scheme and short-hand animation style that work so well for the TV show, this 80-minute effort swoops along when focusing on character dynamics yet drags during the woefully overlong action sequences. Still, it's hard to resist a movie in which the main headline on the daily paper reads, "Freaky Bug-Eyed Weirdo Girls Broke Everything." 1/2

REIGN OF FIRE Eschewing the gee-whiz approach of Dragonslayer and forsaking the downright silliness of Dragonheart (with Sean Connery as the voice of a talking dragon), Reign of Fire may well be the most grim dragon movie ever made -- and it's all the more effective for the filmmakers' decision to play it straight. Working from a script by Matt Greenberg and newcomers Gregg Chabot and Kevin Peterka, director Rob Bowman (The X-Files) paints the world of 2020 as hell on earth, with hordes of dragons out to kill the few remaining pockets of humans that have managed to avoid the deadly beasts ever since they were awakened from their slumber approximately two decades earlier. One survivor (Christian Bale), a sullen young Brit who witnessed the creatures' resurrection as a 12-year-old lad, figures it's best to lay low and count on all the dragons perishing through starvation, but his course of action gets waylaid by the maneuverings of a macho American (Matthew McConaughey) who figures he knows a way to violently put an end to the fire-breathing menace. Reign of Fire holds no real surprises in either its plotline or its characters (when one guy states to Bale, "Look, Quinn, I'm your best friend...," we can all figure what's going to happen to him), but as a rush of pure entertainment on the gritty side, it can't be faulted, and it's buoyed by some truly exciting action sequences as well as arguably the best dragons ever created for the big screen.

ROAD TO PERDITION The screen version of Road to Perdition may be paved with good intentions, but that may not be enough to appease fans of the acclaimed 1998 graphic novel penned by Max Allan Collins and illustrated by Richard Piers Rayner. And yet, I doubt most will mind the liberties taken by director Sam Mendes (in his sophomore effort following American Beauty) and scripter David Self (Thirteen Days) as they bring this stark story to the screen. Renowned for its involving storyline and eerily atmospheric black-and-white imagery, the Perdition novel tapped into near-mythic elements on its own pulp level, yet the movie not only manages to reproduce that sentiment but also to improve on it, adding additional levels of portent to its weighty tale of family dysfunction in the gangster era. In one of his finest, most subtle performances, Tom Hanks stars as a soft-spoken mob hit man who, along with his 12-year-old son (Tyler Hoechlin), hits the road seeking revenge after his wife and other son are murdered by the rash offspring (Daniel Craig) of his employer (Paul Newman). This is that rare film that improves on its source material, thanks partly to the three-dimensional tweaking of Newman's crime lord and the addition of a new foil for Hanks' hit man: a crime scene photographer (Jude Law) who doubles as an assassin-for-hire. Conrad L. Hall's cinematography is outstanding, yet even the visual panache takes a back seat to the absorbing father-son dynamics that resonate throughout the picture. 1/2