"Stonewall" (18s) Screen at D'Olier Street, Dublin,

Nigel Finch's Stonewall is an involving picture of the run up to the 1969 riots in New York's Greenwich Village area, which became a pivotal event in the gay liberation movement. The film takes its name from the Stonewall bar which was frequented by gay men and drag queens at the time and the screenplay by Rikkie Beadle Blair is a semi fictional spin on Martin Duberman's social history book of the same name.

The events depicted in the film are seen through the eyes of Matty (Frederick Weller), a handsome, idealistic, young gay man who leaves his rural home for Manhattan and soon discovers the Stonewall bar which is run by a secretly gay Mafioso. Even though the police are paid protection money by the owner, they raid the Stonewall and harass the clientele on Matty's first visit to the bar. Jailed for the night, Matty is befriended by LaMiranda (Guillermo Diaz), a young drag queen.

They become lovers, but Matty is also drawn to Ethan (Brendan Corbalis), a member of the Mattachine Society, a group of older, conservative gay men. The movie culminates on the night in June, 1969 when the drag queens are in mourning after the funeral earlier that day of Judy Garland, an icon to some gay men. There is another police raid on the Stonewall, but this time the drag queens fight back.

Nigel Finch's film is an illuminating picture of its time, and although it tends to over simplify events at times and it features a few songs too many, it is charged by the courage of its convictions and the work of a committed cast, and Finch works wonders on a very small budget which shows only in the under populated "crowd" scenes.

Stonewall was the first cinema film directed by Finch, who made many fine documentaries most notably on Robert Mapplethorpe, the Chelsea Hotel and the Rolling Stones - for the BBC series Arena, and directed the gaythemed BBC film, The Lost Language of Cranes. Finch died on St Valentine's Day last year at the age of 45, while he was editing Stonewall.

Showing on the same programme as Stonewall is Ger Philpott's sensitive short film, Change, which chronicles in flashbacks how a gay relationship was ended by AIDS.

"Moonlight and Valentino" (I5s), Savoy, Omniplex, UCIs.

Elizabeth Perkins plays a young woman shellshocked by the sudden death of her husband in this none too convincing weepie based on a stage play by Ellen Simon (daughter of Neil). Despite the support of her closest, female friends, Perkins finds it impossible to unlock her deepest feelings and grieve fully, until she has a brief, cathartic dalliance with a handsome housepainter (the surprisingly impressive Jon Bon Jovi).

Simon's original play was apparently based on her own experiences after her husband was killed in a road accident in 1988, and the three other main roles - the troubled younger sister (Gwyneth Paltrow), the eccentric best friend (Whoopi Goldberg) and the domineering stepmother (Kathleen Turner) are similarly based on her own closest female friends.

It seems that the producers felt the need to introduce a little testosterone into this all female mix hiring David Anspaugh, better known for such sports jock movies as Hoosiers, to direct. Anspaugh provides a competent, TV movie feel to the production, but never really gets the most out of his strong cat, who just go through the motions most of the time. The characters don't seem rooted in any kind of reality; their day to day lives and problems are articulated in explanatory dialogue rather than cinematic detail; reflecting the film's pedestrian writing and theatrical origins.

Perkins and Paltrow make valiant efforts, and provide the best performances, but does the world really need yet another variation on Whoopi Goldberg's kooky earth mother schtick? Fans of Body Heat will be dismayed to find that Kathleen Turner has finally given up the ghost and plumped (literally) for the sort of matronly role that used to be the preserve of Angela Lansbury.

Two Deaths IFC, members and guests only.

If it's not too, blasphemous to talk about a Nicolas Roeg formula, the latest film from this singular British director may be seen to conform to type. In addition to the distinctive visual style - the palette of deep blues and ochres, the abrupt temporal shifts, cross cutting and fragmented narrative there is his characteristic preoccupation with obsessive and destructive sexual, passion, with heightened emotion and a polarised vision of men and women locked, implacably, into a power struggle.

Recapitulating some of the themes of Bad Timing and Eureka, Roeg has placed his characters in extremes, against the backdrop of the Romanian revolution in 1989, which continually erupts into the frame but is not allowed to overshadow the personal melodrama.

Based on a novel by Stephen Dobyns, this is the story of a school reunion dinner which becomes a nightmare, as the evening's host, Dr Pavenick (Michael Gambon) draws his three, male guests (Ion Caramitru Nickolas Grace and Patrick Malahide) into the drama of his obsessive desire for the woman whom he employs as his housekeeper (Sonia Braga). "The moment I touched her I was damned, he declares, and since she determinedly resists him, he has virtually enslaved her.

A bout of uncomfortable soul baring ensues, which becomes so overwrought that absurdity is never far away. As one lavish course follows another through the long evening, each man reveals stories of sexual humiliation, hypocrisy, vanity and confusion, encouraged and coerced by their charming, bullying host, who uses honesty as a weapon.

It's a fine performance from Gambon as a man who has recognised, even embraced, his own demons, but it's all so theatrical and static, with pompous, self conscious dialogue, that despite the tantalising underlying shadow of a more subtle, questioning film, we eventually lose interest.

"Down Periscope", (125), Savoy, Virgin, Dublin.

"Oh my God, there's a woman on board!" That's about the level of the humour in David Ward's bland comedy, set on board a US navy submarine. The fact that Lt Commander Thomas Dodge (Kelsey Grammer) sports a tattoo on his penis means that when the time comes for him to command his own submarine, he's presented with a clapped out, second World War left over and a crew of navy misfits - yes, one female - to match. But, hey, that won't defeat him.

Kelsey Grammer does his best with an anodyne script, but this is lazily predictable gulf, packed with cliches about the triumph of an end against a stuffy institution.