The Movies

The world is not enough

$7.4 million 1 week in release $7.45 million to date

PLOT James Bond races across the world trying to stop someone from blowing up an oil pipeline.

MESSAGE The Playboy Philosophy translated to celluloid: The handsome man with no conscience can do anything.

CAUTION Rated PG-13 for bad language, violence, and sexual situations. The sex content is cranked up, so this is definitely not for children.

$6.33 million 2 weeks in release $13.15 million to date

PLOT A rootless, shallow suburban family heads down the road to destruction, then steps on the gas.

MESSAGE Suburbia as existential nightmare. Seemingly normal people live lives of quiet desperation.

CAUTION Rated R for bad language, nudity, sexual situations, drug use, and violence.

$4.03 million 2 weeks in release $8.56 million to date

PLOT Two days and three nights in the life of a New York City paramedic.

MESSAGE Post-Christian angst: Cage's EMS driver has a spiritual crisis because his patients are dying.

CAUTION Rated R for bad language, violence, and drug use.

$3.85 million 3 weeks in release $15.81 million to date

PLOT A bunch of actors from a Star Trek-like TV show are thrust into space by aliens who think the drama is real.

MESSAGE Some people take television far too seriously-but non-heroic folks, even actors, can step up in a crisis.

CAUTION Rated PG for violence.

$3.81 million 8 weeks in release $89.12 million to date

PLOT Exorcising the boy's demons with counseling doesn't work, showing that secularism doesn't have a clue about dealing with spiritual issues.

CAUTION Rated PG-13 for bad language, violent images, gore, and typical ghost-story ghouliness.

Once upon a time there was a TV show called Mission Impossible. It was memorable enough to become a feature film-except the translation destroyed the whole thing and turned it all into a vehicle for Tom Cruise. Now there's a sequel, which brings back the star with a Hong Kong wunderkind director. M:I-2 (Paramount; rated PG-13 for violence, bad language, and sensuality) has Cruise and a couple of sidekicks chasing an evil virus across Australia. Around for the ride is a wannabe Bond Girl (Thandie Newton), the ex-girlfriend of a rogue spy who holds the keys to the whole caper. Director John Woo, the acknowledged master of the kung fu action film and a professing Christian, directs this whole mess in one-trick pony fashion, giving us endless slow-motion sequences, drawn-out chase scenes, and shiny guns. Devotees of his work won't see anything new here. He even beats his own dead horse by having characters put on masks pretending to be one another to show the good guy/bad guy role reversal, as he did in his other American movie, Face Off. In a few sequences, M:I-2 catches the spirit of the original TV series, but the rest is terribly generic. The trouble with this movie (and its predecessor) is that it is too busy trying to be cool to have any fun.