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THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE TWO TOWERS Last year's The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring proved to be one of those rare films that actually improves with each viewing; that may turn out to be the case with The Two Towers as well. After an initial watch, however, this second chapter doesn't quite match the majesty of its predecessor, though that's hardly meant as a knock -- a rousing, far-reaching spectacle of unlimited ambition, TTT scores on enough fronts to ensure that it will ice the rest of the holiday competition. But whereas Fellowship did a nice job of balancing quieter moments with the bombast, this installment is largely all action all the time, with the few expository scenes practically presented as asides (too many good actors -- Ian McKellen, Cate Blanchett, Miranda Otto -- are given the short shrift in this outing); what's more, the movie doesn't deepen or expand the tale's themes as masterfully as The Empire Strikes Back added to Star Wars's mystique. But as a stirring story of unsullied heroism, it's a winner, and as an action epic, it features some of the best battle sequences ever created on film. And while the planned campaign to win a Supporting Actor Oscar for the CGI-created Gollum (voiced by Andy Serkis) seems far-reaching, he turns out to be the best special effect in a movie crammed with them.

MAID IN MANHATTAN Maid In Manhattan obviously wants to be Jennifer Lopez's own monogrammed version of Pretty Woman, but the end product is more like Pretty Woeful. As far as actor-singers go, Lopez isn't rancid like, say, Madonna -- she hits her marks and conveys the proper emotions -- but as a vibrant on-screen personality, there's simply no there there, resulting in characters about as flavorful as tepid tap water. In Maid, she plays a hotel employee who, in one of those "mistaken identity" crises that were pulled off with more elan by Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers back in the day, finds herself wooed by a compassionate Republican (or is that an oxymoron?) who erroneously believes she's another hotel guest. Ralph Fiennes plays this politician, and it's nice to see the tormented star of The English Patient and Red Dragon in a more relaxed mode; otherwise, this unimaginative effort moves with martinet precision through the usual cringe-worthy circumstances, including the expected moment where Lopez and her sisters-in-service shimmy to the Golden Oldie Flavor of the Month. In this case, it's Diana Ross's "I'm Coming Out," though reaction to the movie itself brings to mind an earlier Ross tune: "Run, Run, Run." 1/2

STANDING IN THE SHADOWS OF MOTOWN Hardly the comprehensive Motown documentary that many music fans might be expecting, this is nevertheless terrific entertainment, an endlessly captivating movie that pays tribute to a group of largely unknown musicians known as The Funk Brothers. Basically Berry Gordy's "house band" during the heyday of the Detroit sound, these men backed up such Motown luminaries as Smokey Robinson, the Supremes, Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye as they produced hit after hit between 1959 and 1972. Director Paul Justman (miles removed from his first directing credit, something called T&A Academy 2) doesn't rely simply on talking heads, though in this instance that would have been entirely justified, given the rich anecdotes spun by the surviving musicians; instead, he mixes present-day interviews with archival photos, a few dramatic reenactments and footage from a recent concert in which most of the Funk Brothers reunited to play Motown classics fronted by the likes of Ben Harper, Bootsy Collins and Joan Osborne (soaring through a lovely version of "What Becomes of the Broken Hearted"). Gordy's rocky relationship with his employees is treated with kid gloves, but this is a mere quibble when juxtaposed against the film's utter success in bringing alive the music of Motown -- and the memories of the men who orchestrated its success behind the scenes. 1/2