SC: A pleasant surprise. Pierce Brosnan has no intention of demonstrating any range over his career, but that's fine with me as long as he continues to find intriguing costars like Rene Russo to play off of. Russo is one of Hollywood's best kept secrets. Almost every movie she's in (save that monkey mess Buddy) is a bonafide hit. But Russo tends to hide her beauty (even though, ironically enough, she once was a supermodel) by taking goofy roles--she's usually a clumsy, awkward underdog. In Thomas Crown, she leads with her sexuality, and the chemistry she ignites with Brosnan is beyond electric. And the plot of the caper isn't so shabby either; even though we expect stud and vamp to unite in the end, there's enough twists and turns to cloud the possibility. I have no doubt that they'll remake this film again in five years, so here is my recipe for another blockbuster. Keep Brosnan and Russo, add Sharon Stone as a potential rival, lose Dennis Leary, add more sweaty sex scenes. Then you'll really have a guilty pleasure.

EYES WIDE SHUT

DK: Its often been said that Stanley Kubrick has a tendency to put mood ahead of content in his films. But while such a predilection for atmosphere would be a fault in other directors, in Kubrick it was a gift, and in Eyes Wide Shut this gift comes shining through. A sort of Everyman for a sexually liberated age, Eyes Wide Shut features Tom Cruise, a sex symbol himself, as its wandering pilgrim. And the overwhelming tone of the film is certainly one of wandering. Progressing from one self-contained vignette to another, the movie moves from a theme and variations motif to an outright symphony as Cruise desperately tries to come to terms with his wife's admission of near infidelity. But he can't seem to find any answers in his encounters, be they small or monumental. More than that, he isn't even sure which questions to be asking. Perhaps only Kubrick could be astute enough to realize that the definitive movie about sex, as he himself billed this film, must, of necessity, be ambiguous. A lesser director would have tried to end his career with an exclamation point. Kubrick, true to form, has ended his with just the faintest hint of a question mark.

SC: When a movie is neither funny, entertaining, deep, sexy nor meaningful, it has to work awfully hard to keep your attention. Kubrick's final film was an exercise in mediocrity. It was supposed to be his thunderous masterpiece, a rousing conclusion to a brilliant career. But alas, it was hyped to no end and the expectations clouded reality. Tom and Nicole took their clothes off over and over for every major magazine and everyone cheered the possibilities. A real-life married couple having sex! Orgies! An intellectual movie for the masses! But it was DOA. The problem, of course, is that Kubrick forgot to give a film its center. In Schnitzler's novel, which was faithfully adapted (part of the problem), the emphasis is on the discrepancies between Tom and Nicole's dream (I call the characters by the star's names since I don't see the difference) and the fleetingness of reality. The film is supposed to come together when they say, "The reality of one night is not the whole truth. And no dream is entirely a dream." Instead, the movie ends with a thud--a curse word, no less--that proves how desperate Kubrick was to shock. But even a shock would have been welcome. Instead, we got a tame lesson in perversion from supposedly the most astute director of our time.

SIXTH SENSE

DK: It is a rare occurrence when a movie as subtle and, yes, tender as The Sixth Sense becomes a major summer hit. Billed as a riveting film about ghosts, The Sixth Sense is really an examination of what we the living need in our lives. It begins by focusing on a trio of outcasts in this world: Bruce Willis as a psychologist estranged from his wife, Toni Collette as a lonely single mom and Haley Joel Osment as her socially awkward son. But before long the film makes isolation a theme capable of transcending worlds. The ghosts in writer/director M. Night Shyamalan's world don't want to hurt the living. They just want to talk to them. And the living are just as desperate to find a willing ear. Of course, The Sixth Sense is not without the marks of a traditional horror film. There are plenty of tight close-ups into which figures can jump unexpectedly. In a movie as delicate and insightful as this one, such moments could easily have seemed ridiculous. But Shyamalan spaces them so aptly according to the emotional arch of the story that they seem as natural as the main characters many confessionals. The end result of this combination of emotional depth and pure horror is astounding. It's not just any movie that can make the appearance of a dead twelve-year-old as touching as it is frightening.

SC: For some reason, I feel sorry for the parents of Haley Joel Osment, the 11 year-old star of The Sixth Sense. He just looks so sad. Even when he's happy, he probably looks sad. I hope his parents treat him well. Or at least increase his allowance--especially considering that this movie has chomped up the box office like nothing since Titanic since opening in early August. The reason The Sixth Sense has been so successful is because it's wonderfully tricky--not since The Crying Game have we been so utterly fooled that we must see the movie a second time to figure out its secrets. Bruce Willis finally produced a non-stinker and he has M. Night Shyamalan to thank; the Indian writer-director carefully wove together the necessary elements of reality and fantasy to create a truly spooky moviegoing experience. It's movies like these, the ones that open out of nowhere and slowly build a following sans hype, that restore our faith in the public--especially in a summer where The Haunting and Wild Wild West both manage to rack up almost $100 million despite being universally loathed.