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FEMME FATALE Director Brian De Palma has spent most of his career courting controversy, so why expect different results from his latest release? Already running the gamut of critical opinion since its opening (from an F by Entertainment Weekly to four stars from Roger Ebert), this over-the-top thriller features both the best and worst of De Palma. A convoluted, twisty yarn about a shapely thief (Rebecca Romijn-Stamos, channeling Sharon Stone) who double-crosses her criminal cohorts, assumes a new identity and makes a patsy out of a tabloid photographer (Antonio Banderas), Femme Fatale includes some terrific set pieces that remind me why I revere his style so much -- yet ultimately becomes burdened with several self-conscious sequences that make me wince at how he's frittered away much of his latter-day career. Woe to the audience member who approaches this with a straight face -- the writer-director is clearly in a playful mood here (love that blood-stained shirt, "seven years later") -- but even accepting this in the right frame of mind can only provide it with so much leniency. 1/2

FRIDA First, let us be thankful that it's the Salma Hayek version, not the proposed Jennifer Lopez one, that made it to the screen -- after all, who wants to see a Frida Kahlo biopic that would doubtless find the Mexican artist putting aside the paintbrushes (and putting a part in her unibrow) for a career as a glamorous songbird? Seriously, as far as screen biographies of artistic sorts go (always a gamble, since it's hard for film to accurately convey the creative process at work), this one apparently ended up in the right hands, as director Julie Taymor (Broadway's The Lion King) uses various colorful conventions -- an animated sequence designed by the Brothers Quay, the melding of actual people and artwork, the stunt casting of Edward Norton, Antonio Banderas and Ashley Judd in small roles -- to effectively touch upon the key incidents in Kahlo's life, from the trolley accident that kept her perpetually in pain over the years to her brief fling with Leon Trotsky (Geoffrey Rush). Still, the film's centerpiece is her long, complex relationship with husband and fellow artist Diego Rivera, and it's the robust performances by Hayek and Alfred Molina that ultimately give Frida its soul.

HARRY POTTER AND THE CHAMBER OF SECRETS The second chapter in the Harry Potter saga (following last year's Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone) concerns itself with the boy wizard's sophomore session at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. There's an evil presence lurking in the halls of the venerable institution, and, needless to say, Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) and best buddies Ron (Rupert Grint) and Hermoine (Emma Watson) find themselves smack in the middle of the mystery. As before, groundskeeper Hagrid (Robbie Coltrane) offers them friendship, schoolmaster Albus Dumbledore (the late Richard Harris) offers guidance, Professor McGonagall (Maggie Smith) offers discipline, and Professor Snape (Alan Rickman) offers opposition. And there's even a new teacher on the premises: the vain Gilderoy Lockhart (scene-stealing Kenneth Branagh), who's more interested in promoting himself as a hero-celebrity than in actually teaching the kids anything of merit. Chamber of Secrets, on a par with its predecessor, cuts no corners as far as the visual effects are concerned, yet the real magic in the series remains the interaction between its human players, most notably the three perfectly cast kids.

I SPY This tepid studio product is supposedly based on the same-named 60s TV show starring Robert Culp and Bill Cosby, but its relationship to that series is so tenuous, they could easily have called this thing Petticoat Junction or My Mother the Car and gotten away with it. Owen Wilson, charming when the role is just right (rare, indeed), is relaxed as a second-tier secret agent, while Eddie Murphy, in his patented motor-mouth mode, darts all over the screen as his civilian partner, a boxing champ whose ego is larger than Brazil and Argentina combined. This sort of "buddy comedy" is long passe, so the real surprise is that Murphy and Wilson actually make a pretty good team, each actor playing off the other's strengths. But the project surrounding them is distressingly rote, a true snoozer that finds the pair trying to stop the usual Eurobaddie (Malcolm McDowell) from selling a stolen government aircraft to the highest international bidder. The plane, incidentally, is invisible, though viewers hoping for a Wonder Woman cameo will be sorely disappointed.

PUNCH-DRUNK LOVE After the grandiosity of both Boogie Nights and Magnolia, writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson works on a smaller scale with Punch-Drunk Love. Yet while his canvas (and running time) may be significantly lessened, his imagination runs unfettered, resulting in a romantic comedy that operates by the rules of its own self-contained universe. Adam Sandler, stretching about as far here as Jim Carrey did in The Truman Show (in other words, both comedians didn't reinvent their screen personas as much as they simply toned down the expected schtick), delivers an interestingly off-center performance as Barry Egan, a toilet-plunger business owner whose lifelong mental abuse at the hands of his six sisters would seem to go a long way toward explaining his delicate emotional state and his social ineptitude. Sandler's character, an insecure introvert prone to destructive outbursts, isn't exactly cut from the Cary Grant mold, and if the film fails to use its exemplary supporting players (Emily Watson, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Luis Guzman) to their fullest potential, it still scores points for displaying how the redemptive power of love could transform even a seeming lost cause like Barry Egan.