Girls, break out your jammies and slam books--it's slumber party time! Practical Magic is one to see with the chicks, if you can bear it. Sisters Sally and Gillian Owens are born into a family of witches. Sally tries to fit into a small New England town, while Gillian looks for love in all the wrong places. The familial curse is that a man who loves one of the Owens' witches will meet an untimely death, as Gillian's abusive boyfriend does at the hands of Bullock. Right. Now, it never promises to be Citizen Kane, and it provides some good laughs and a feel-good finale. If you want a braincandy slumber party movie, rent Practical Magic, by all means. Just don't expect it to work any magic on you.   Meredith B. Osborn

Slam

If Slam were a book instead of a film, it would read like a three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle. As the story of a gifted young black man's struggles on the streets and in the jails of Washington, D. C., the main piece of this puzzle is undoubtedly Raymond Joshua. The film poses some fabulous questions. Can a man be justified in selling drugs if he has to support his family in the projects? Who is to blame for the overpopulation of young black men in America's jails today? The point that this film tries to drive home is that solutions to these problems require action, and action requires personal responsibility. Slam is recommended to anyone who wants to see how a great film can be made about a subject as complex as the struggle of modern African-Americans in an oppressive urban environment.   J.T. Marino

There's Something About Mary

Though outrageous and crude, the jokes in the Farrelly Brothers' most recent sideshow attraction are also intensely predictable, which keeps the movie from lifting off. Cameron Diaz, Ben Stiller and Matt Dillon all give their best shot to keeping the ball in the air, but for one thing, their presence is almost arbitrary in many scenes to the extent that Mary's humor is all visual and only rarely connected to dialogue; poor Cameron could be reciting Rilke beneath those "hair gel"-enhanced bangs and no one would know the difference. Then again, everyone else seems to have had a ball. Whatever there is about Mary, I didn't really get it.   Nicholas K. Davis

What Dreams May Come

Robin Williams, fresh from his Academy Award, again leaves his comedic training behind him in his role as Chris Nielsen, who dies in a car accident and must travel from heaven to hell to save his wife (Annabella Sciorra) after she commits suicide in her despair over his death. Although the plot is the standard quest situation, it demands that the film deal with the question of religion, God and the afterlife. Somehow they drop God from the plot. They're good. How's God just going to be absent from heaven? A better question is how Robin Williams can become sullen and morose in a place decorated in grand color-by-number style where a person's every wish is fulfilled? Cuba Gooding, Jr. breathes some life into the story. His energy actually recalls some of Williams' early comedic work, and serves as a constant reminder of what Williams lacks in What Dreams May Come.   Jeremy J. Ross