Puck fair

William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream (12) General release

Set in an idyllic Tuscan landscape at the end of the last century, Michael Hoffman's lush, star-studded take on one of the most frequently-filmed of Shakespeare's plays is an engaging romp which is very easy on the eye and ear. The presence of so many well-known faces in the cast is not simply for dressing, although in one or two cases it can be distracting ("Is that really Sophie Marceau?" one wonders, as the French actress drifts past once or twice in the background).

But, for the most part, the casting is spot-on. Michelle Pfeiffer has the looks, grace and sensuality to play the fairy queen, Titania, and Rupert Everett, as her estranged king, Oberon, looks as if he has walked straight out of an Aubrey Beardsley drawing, while Stanley Tucci steals the show as a cynical, slightly boozy Puck.

Of the mortals, Anna Friel and Calista Flockhart as the lovelorn damsels, and Christian Bale and Dominic West as their increasingly bewildered suitors, handle the romantic confusion with plenty of energy, and Kevin Kline plays Bottom as a sad-eyed romantic in the tradition of Marcello Mastroianni; his love scene with Pfeiffer is superbly handled.

Visually, the film mingles the mortal world of bicycles and gramophones with the forest domain of satyrs and fairies to good effect - the night-time scenes in the enchanted wood are beautifully lit by Oliver Stapleton. The choice of setting is dramatically and commercially astute - this, after all, is northern Italy at the turn of the century, so beloved of the middle-class, middlebrow audiences who are the prime target for the thriving Shakespeare movie mini-industry.

It also gives Hoffman the opportunity to saturate his soundtrack with a selection of arias straight from The Best Opera Album in the World, Ever . . . Nothing wrong with that; A Midsummer Night's Dream is all about pleasure, and this production is a handsomely-crafted slice of light entertainment.

- Hugh Linehan

Election (18) General release

Suddenly, high-school comedies seem to be getting better - much better, in fact. In the wake of Rushmore's geeky charms comes Election, Alexander Payne's delightfully spiky political satire set against the backdrop of the campaign for "student government presidency" in a mid-west school.

Matthew Broderick, as the nicebut-morally-flawed teacher, is determined that the apparent shooin for the post, Reese Witherspoon, shouldn't have it all her own way. To Witherspoon's fury, he inveigles dumb-but-popular sports jock Chris Klein to stand against her. But Klein's anti-establishment, lesbian sister (Jessica Campbell), angry at her brother for stealing her girlfriend, decides to enter the campaign as well, on a nihilistic, don't-vote platform.

Things spin rapidly out of control, with Broderick's mid-life crisis culminating in a disastrous extramarital affair, while Witherspoon's determination to win at all costs sees the campaign degenerate into a vicious, dirty, hilarious battle which culminates in corruption and vote-rigging.

Tom Perrotta's original novel was apparently inspired by the 1992 US presidential election, but Payne has toned down those parallels and concentrated on developing the characters in their own right. Witherspoon, with her jutting jaw, fixed smile and unnaturally bright eyes, is a hellishly brilliant creation, and Campbell a sympathetic anti-heroine. But Broderick, as the hapless teacher, Jim McAllister, is the real revelation.

Watching him in this milieu, one can't help being reminded of his performance on the other side of the desk 13 years ago in Ferris Bueller's Day Off. Election plays expertly on the contrasts: where Ferris was cocky, McAllister is deflated; Ferris drove a red sports car, but McAllister is sardined into a Japanese sub-compact (the ultimate symbol of failure in modern American movies). Swaddled in bad anoraks and sad ties, he's a compendium of thirtysomething nightmares of life gone wrong.

Election has none of the artificial prettiness of most mainstream high-school movies. The school is bleak and ugly, and most of the action takes place under lowering winter clouds - which may alienate some of its prospective audience (it didn't do particularly well on its US release). But it's one of the best American comedies of the year, and really shouldn't be missed.

- Hugh Linehan

The Haunting (12) General release

Jan De Bont's turgid, effects-driven horror movie updates Shirley Jackson's novel The Haunting of Hill House (previously filmed in 1964 by Robert Wise) to the present day, with Liam Neeson as the scientist who brings three people to an eerie, deserted mansion to observe their reactions. The three, not surprisingly, turn out to be stock characters: Lili Taylor is a sensitive loner, Catherine Zeta Jones a hedonistic fashion victim, and Owen Wilson a wisecracking cynic. Soon, the creaks in the night turn into something scarier, and they're all running for their lives, but it's impossible to give a damn.

Unlike Wise, De Bont chooses to make his ghosts all too visible, and the film is swamped in absurdly excessive production design and effects that seem intended to impress the viewer with their expense rather than their scariness. Described by its designer as "Citizen Kane meets The Shining", it's more "The Abyss meets The Munsters", but without the jokes.

- Hugh Linehan

Made in Hong Kong (Club IFC, Dublin, opens Sunday)

Directed on a minuscule budget, with a tiny crew and non-professional cast, Fruit Chan's portrait of teen rebellion and petty crime on the mean streets of Hong Kong is a stylistically fresh, visually audacious and clearly heartfelt film, which owes more to the early films of Wong Kar-Wai than anything else, but which stays true to Chan's own highly individual vision. Much of this is due to a remarkable central performance from Sam Lee Chan-Sam, as the young anti-hero living on the fringes of the law, but too independent-minded to fall completely under the sway of the local triad gang. Haunted by erotic dreams of death, he befriends a local girl (Neiky Yim Hui-Chi) who needs a kidney transplant to stay alive.

Meanwhile, the retarded Wenbers Li Tung-Cheun, whom Sam Lee protects from street bullies, finds the body of another young woman who has committed suicide, and takes two bloodstained letters he finds on her body. Keeping one of the letters, Sam Lee finds himself faced with increasingly difficult decisions as his mother, frustrated by his dissolute lifestyle, abandons him, and the pressure from the local crime boss to join the triad increases.

Chan fuses melodrama, fantasy and thriller with great confidence, using slow-motion, extravagant tracking shots and other devices to craft an imaginative, compelling portrait of Hong Kong on the cusp of the handover to China. If the last few minutes are predictably melodramatic, that's a small price to pay for a memorable movie from a clearly talented film-maker.

- Hugh Linehan

The War Zone (members and guests only) IFC, Dublin

In one of the earlier scenes of The War Zone we fear the worst when a pregnant woman is on her way to hospital with her husband, daughter and son, and their car crashes on a narrow road and turns upside down. However, this startling scene ends with their survival and the birth of a baby. The worst is yet to come.

The story, adapted by former film critic Alexander Stuart from his 1989 novel of the same name, is seen through the eyes of the 15-year-old Tom who resents his family's move from London to desolate Devon. Arriving home early one day, he looks through the bathroom window and sees his sister, Jessie, sharing a bath with their father. His most dreaded suspicions are founded when he follows Jessie and her father to an abandoned bunker on a cliff top - and he observes them engaged in rough sex. The War Zone is an austere and harrowing film, a sobering chamber piece which tackles its difficult theme with an unsettling candour and an often unbearable intensity. It is a serious, sincere and socially concerned piece of work which marks a distinctive directing debut for the English actor, Tim Roth. Like his fellow actor and former co-star, Gary Oldman - who turned director recently with another tough English family drama, Nil By Mouth - Roth was a protege of the late, radical British television director, Alan Clarke, whose influence is apparent on both their films, and the connection with Oldman is emphasised by the casting of Ray Winstone as the threatening male adult at the centre of their two films. In The War Zone Roth offers more questions than answers in relation to its pivotal incestuous relationship, how long it has been going on, what degree of willingness is involved on the daughter's part, and whether the mother completely misses what's going on or closes her eyes to it. An altogether more troubling element is the explicit sex scene in the bunker which borders on the prurient and is horrible to watch. Presumably Roth feels we need to see it to realise how horrible it is, but we don't, as was demonstrated by way of powerful suggestion in two outstanding recent films on a similar theme, Happiness and Festen. Roth saves employing the power of suggestion for the creepily ambiguous final scene.

Working with the richly talented young Irish lighting cameraman, Seamus McGarvey, Roth establishes and sustains a claustrophobic and ominous atmosphere, which at times takes on an eerie beauty in McGarvey's immaculately lit and framed visual compositions. Roth elicits vivid performances from his four actors, Winstone and Tilda Swinton and the wholly inexperienced Lara Belmont and Freddie Cunliffe as their children. The Irish actress, Aisling O'Sullivan registers strongly in the supporting role of a friend Jessie and Tom visit in London.

- Michael Dwyer

Analyze This (15) General release

After a string of mostly undemanding and forgettable movies (Sleepers, The Fan, Great Expectations, Ronin) the overworked Robert De Niro agreeably loosens up and reveals his comic flair in Harold Ramis's very funny odd couple comedy, Analyze This. In a gleefully overplayed spin on some of his previous screen incarnations, De Niro plays Paul Vitti, a leading Manhattan mafioso whose increased responsibilities bring on panic attacks and fears of impotence. Billy Crystal co-stars as the unfortunate Jewish psychiatrist, Ben Sobol, to whom Vitti brings his problems, initially pretending that he's there on somebody else's behalf. The divorced Sobol is preoccupied with his imminent marriage to a Miami-based TV reporter (Lisa Kudrow) and feels underwhelmed that his parents are too busy to attend the wedding because of his pompous father's signing commitments for his selfhelp books. Sobol has no idea just how demanding his new patient will prove. The keys to the film's success lie in the sharp, one-liner-strewn screenplay penned by director Ramis with Peter Tolan and Kenneth Lonergan, and the timing and panache with which those lines are delivered by De Niro and Crystal, who are ideally cast against type, with De Niro in much the showier and juicier role and Crystal displaying unimagined restraint - at least until the finale when he gets to do his shtick brilliantly.

Following her revelatory performance in The Opposite of Sex, Lisa Kudrow shines again as the truly single-minded bride-to-be, and the deadpan, pizza-faced Joe Viterelli (recently seen in another Mafia comedy, Mickey Blue Eyes) is a treat as Vitti's henchman.

- Michael Dwyer