A FUNERAL THAT IS NO PICNIC

"The Funeral" (18) Screen at D'Olier Street, Dublin; "The Addiction" (members and guests only) IFC, Dublin

The provocative and regularly controversial Abel Ferrara is at the peak of his form with the intriguing - and, be warned, violent - gangster saga, The Funeral, which is scripted by his regular writer, Nicholas St John, and brings them back to the gangster milieu of King of New York, their most potent previous collaboration. It also reunites them with the brilliant star of that film, Christopher Walken, who delivers an edgy and electrifying performance that The Funeral with Ferrara's first period film, it is set in 1930s New York and focuses on three criminal brothers, the Tempios, who, as young boys, were initiated in violent retribution by their cold blooded father. They are played by Walken Chris Penn and Vincent Gallo, and one of the brothers becomes corpse for the eponymous funeral.

Following, a pre credits sequence set in a cinema where Humphrey Bogart is starring in The Petrified Forest, Ferrara cuts to the wake for the murdered gangster and the preparations for his funeral. The priest advises one of the Tempio wives (Annabella Sciorra) that the only way things will change is if the brothers change, if they renounce violence. "They're criminal," she comments later, "because they've never risen above their heartless, illiterate upbringing."

This is a moral tale populated by amoral characters who share a hypocritical avowal of Catholicism. Sex for these men is, like their violence, cold and functional and designed solely to satisfy their masculine urges. Mage with a very keen sense of period, Ferrara's stylish, visceral and often startling, drama is an utterly compelling picture of guilt and redemption, for characters steeped in a tradition of violence and revenge.

This is Ferrara's Godfather, albeit on a substantially smaller scale than Coppola's great epic. It is played by an exemplary cast which, in addition to the sublime Walken, features fine performances from Penn, Gallo, Sciorra, Isabella Rossellini and Benicio Del Toro.

The Funeral is the first Ferrara film to achieve a cinema release in Ireland since King of New York in 1990. His next films, Bad Lieu tenant and Dangerous Game, were both banned here, while the merely routine remake, Body Snatchers, went directly to video, and The Addiction, first seen at the 1995 Dublin Film Festival, belatedly arrives today on a club basis at the IFC.

Ferrara is distinctly off form with The Addiction, which again is scripted by Nicholas St John and again, draws on preoccupations familiar from Ferrara's earlier work (specifically Ms 45 and Body Snatchers in this case) to fashion a cold and, gory contemporary horror movie of vampires in New York City. Shot in stark black and white, this episodic effort begins as Kathleen (Lili Taylor), who is studying for her doctorate in philosophy at NYU, is attacked by a vampire (an unrecognisable Annabella Sciorra).

Kathleen is deeply traumatised by the attack and its consequences, but she now has the addiction. Ferrara intercuts her neck biting with images of the Holocaust, Vietnam and Bosnia, and he litters the screenplay with references from Nietzsche to Kierkegaard to Baudelaire to Burroughs. The redoubtable Christopher Walken lifts The Addiction in an all-too-brief cameo as a more experienced and philosophical vampire.

"Everyone Says I Love You" (12) Screen at D'Olier Street, Virgin, Ormonde Dublin

Tunes from 1930s musicals have regularly figured prominently on the soundtracks of Woody Allen's movies, and they come to the forefront in his 26th feature, Evervone Says I Love You, a sunny and exuberant song-and dance romantic comedy Following the often inter-related romantic complications among different generations, the movie features Allen himself as an uptight sexually frustrated New Yorker. So what else is new?

Well in addition to the obligatory Manhattan, there is location footage shot in Venice and Paris. There are even some sparingly - used special effects - and a large, capable and ostensibly unlikely Allen cast led by Goldie Hawn as - Allen's ex wife, who remains his best friend. There's Julia Roberts as the new object of his desire, and the scenes where he attempts to seduce her by blowing on her neck are hilarious.

There's the gifted young Edward Norton - an Oscar nominee this year for Primal Fear and one of the stars of the current release, The People vs Larry Flynt - in a sharp performance precisely modelled on Woody himself. And there's also Tim Roth, Drew Barrymore, Lukas Haas, Nathalie Portman, Natasha Lyonne and the only leading player from an earlier Allen picture, Alan Alda.

All of the actors provided their own singing voices except for Drew Barrymore, who chose to be dubbed, and while the standard of their singing is variable, to say the least, even that works for the film's charm. The result is a beguiling entertainment which invests a great deal of fun into the singing and dancing numbers.

"The Saint" (12) Savoy, Virgin, Omniplex, UCIs, Dublin

Thirteen years ago Val Kilmer was aptly deadpan in his movie debut as an over eager American rock star causing chaos in the former East Germany in Top Secret!, an entertaining spoof on spy movies from the team.

Impressive as Jim Morrison in The Doors and Elvis Presley in True Romance, outstanding as a tubercular Doc Holliday in Tombstone, engaging as the Caped Crusader in Batman Forever and comfortably holding his own with De Niro and Pacino in Heat last year.

Kilmer goes back to square one with The Saint, a glossy and convoluted big budget espionage yarn which in its sheer preposterousness recalls Top Secret! time and again. The difference is that The Saint is not played for laughs Mission Impossible meets The Nutty Professor in this big screen treatment very loosely based on the Leslie Charteris creation, Simon Templar, the urbane master of theft and disguise, who is played by Kilmer.

A pretty pointless prologue sketches in the childhood Simon's guilt and loneliness, and his propensity for assuming the names of saints as aliases; later he claims to be Thomas More, Martin de Porres et al. The movie is set primarily in what a caption tells us is "Moscow... tomorrow", where a Communist turned corrupt billionaire, Ivan Tretiak (Rade Srebedzija from Before The Rain) is scheming to crown himself the first Czar of the new Russian Empire.

To this end, he hires Templar to steal a vital energy generating formula from an Oxford scientist. She is uncomfortably played by Elisabeth Shue, who was so touching in Leaving Las Vegas and is reduced here to a stereotypical woman in peril who does all the stupid things women are expected to do in thrillers. Kilmer himself has not much to do beyond parading a succession of disguises and accents, while Valery Nikolaev as Tretiak's son makes a menacing and balletic villain. Phillip Noyce directs the action sequences at a fairly lively pace and he makes maximum use of the movie's extensive Moscow locations. But all involved remain hopelessly defeated by the risibly over plotted screenplay.

Hugh Linehan adds:

"Metro" (18) Savoy, Virgin, Omniplex, UCIs, Dublin

After watching his career take a nosedive in the 1990s, Eddie Murphy's status as a bankable star was suddenly revived by last year's hit remake of The Nutty Professor. Whether Murphy can now re establish himself as an A list star is open to question, though, on the basis of his new film, which sees him falling back into the bad old habits which made him box office poison for so long.

Playing a police hostage negotiator who finds himself playing a game of hide and seek with a psychotic killer, in Metro he gets a chance to indulge in the sort of mock heroics usually indulged in by the likes of Bruce Willis or Mel Gibson. Unfortunately, Metro has neither the narrative drive nor sense of fun of the best action movies. Instead, we get another wearying dose of the star's patented ladies' man schtick in a romantic sub plot which recalls all those awful Murphy vehicles of the last few years. Meanwhile, too many of the action sequences look like out takes from other movies (it doesn't help that the film is set, on the over familiar streets of San Francisco). Competently but unexcitingly directed by Thomas Carter, Metro represents yet another downward curve for its rapidly fading star.