Mission Impossible II (15) General release

Where can the cool, clean super-agent go in post-Austin Powers cinema? Even further over the top - according to the dictum of Mission Impossible II - and there is no better director than John Woo to propel the series towards such ultra-stylised extremes. The old TV series which served as the inspiration for this lucrative movie franchise was a creaky, none too memorable effort first recycled for cinema by Brian De Palma in a big-budget 1996 movie which traded on a phoney nostalgia and pumped it up with hi-tech set-pieces and special effects.

Precious little remains from the old TV series in Mission Impossible II. Toned up and teeth gleaming, Tom Cruise returns as agent Ethan Hunt, looser and more reckless than in the first big-screen instalment, and offered another supposedly daunting mission, should he choose to accept it. Lalo Schifrin's thumping signature tune from the TV series is integrated into Hans Zimmer's dramatic new score. The only other character retained from the first cinema instalment is the fashion-conscious computer whizz, played by Ving Rhames.

The screenplay for the new film is credited to the renowned and highly paid Hollywood script doctor, Robert Towne, who was one of three writers credited on the convoluted and incoherent screenplay for De Palma's Mission Impossible. Towne's narrative is altogether leaner for the new film, even though the plot is full of holes again.

For the record, it concerns a dastardly scheme to steal a lethal virus and market its antidote, and pits Hunt against a rogue agent and former colleague, Sean Ambrose, played by Dougray Scott - whose fellow Welshman, Anthony Hopkins, pops up uncredited for a couple of scenes to outline Hunt's mission. This time, the token woman is a glamorous, globe-trotting jewel thief (Thandie Newton) who used to be involved with Ambrose and becomes entangled 007-style with Hunt in Seville, where they engage in a ridiculously contrived car chase. And Brendan Gleeson features as a shady Sydney pharmaceuticals tycoon.

Not that the narrative matters much in a movie whose raison d'etre is to pile on the flamboyant action sequences, which Cruise, who performs most of his own stunts, introduced while hanging precariously by his fingertips from a steep cliff face in Utah. This, apparently, is what super-agents do when they're on holidays in between incredibly dangerous secret missions.

The movie thoughtfully offers several useful tips for aspirant agents: never be without a parachute when breaking into skyscrapers; stay cool when dealing with crucial against-the-clock operations (of which there are two in this movie); and always carry a stock of remarkably accurate latex masks to impersonate your antagonists. Woo, who played with face-switching to more powerfully dramatic effect in Face/Off, piles on the style to camouflage the lack of substance at the core of Mission Impossible II, and he steers the super-sleek production into overdrive for the last couple of reels, when it becomes The John Woo Show for an extravaganza of explosions, motorbike athletics, two-handed gunplay and slo-mo kick-boxing.

The pyrotechnics are dazzling, and although the movie falls far short of Woo's best work in Asia (Bullet in the Head) or the US (Face/Off), it's certainly more accomplished - and more entertaining - than the first Mission Impossible movie.

Jesus' Son (members and guests only) IFC, Dublin

It has taken six years for the New Zealand director, Alison MacLean, to follow her promising cinema debut, Crush, with her new feature, Jesus' Son. Between making the two movies, MacLean honed her craft on episodes of the US television series, Homicide Sex and the City.

Jesus' Son, based on the eponymous collection of short stories by Denis Johnson, is an intense and edgy serious comedy set among drifters and junkies in early 1970s small-town America. A refreshingly relaxed Billy Crudup appealingly plays the rootless, essentially innocent FH, who has a propensity for doing the wrong thing and being in the wrong place, as he ambles stoned and bemused through life. The versatile young English actress, Samantha Morton, plays the fiery heroin addict with whom he gets caught up in a doomed relationship.

Although the material is overstretched and Maclean is too often tempted to dwell on superfluous incident, there is an engagingly diverting quality about her film as it amusingly cuts back and forward in time, sometimes stopping a scene dead mid-way and promising to pick it up again later, as FH continues to stumble his way towards a possible redemption. The solid cast also includes Holly Hunter, Dennis Hopper, Will Patton and Greg Germann (from Ally McBeal), and the soundtrack is chock-full of wellchosen hit singles of the period.

Brother/Brat (members and guests only) IFC, Dublin, from Monday

The first of two films set in St Petersburg and directed by Alexei Balabanov to open here in the week ahead, the robust and immensely assured thriller, Brat (Brother), which plays at the IFC for an all-too-short, four-day run, was made in 1997, a year ahead of his subsequent feature, Of Freaks and Men, which arrives here next Friday.

On the evidence of Brat alone, the 39-year-old Balabanov - who made his debut in 1992 with a film of Beckett's Happy Days, shown recently at Triskel Cinematek in Cork - is one of the most interesting and exciting film-makers to emerge from Eastern Europe in many years. His principal character in Brat is the ostensibly charming and boyish Danila (Sergei Bodrov) who is fresh out of the army where he claims to have worked as a clerk. We learn that his father died in prison and Danila's mother urges him to emulate his older brother, Viktor (Viktor Sukhorukov), who is prospering in St Petersburg.

Danila moves from his rural home to the city, where it transpires that Victor is a ruthless member of the Russian Mafia, and as Danila casually reveals his own capacity for cold-blooded murder, it becomes clear that he gained more than experience as a clerk in the Chechan conflict.

A laconic nihilist in the tradition of The Man With No Name of Sergio Leone's westerns and the Travis Bickle character in Taxi Driver, Danila firmly, unblinkingly deals with the criminals who cross his path. And he tackles the abusive husband of a tram driver with whom he becomes sexually involved, and takes on Chechan fare-dodgers, between shopping for Russian rock CDs for his prized possession, his Discman.

Director Balabanov tightens up the film's dramatic tempo by regularly fading to black and eliminating ephemeral information in this tightly coiled and simmering drama which builds in intensity. Its bleak, disturbing picture of St Petersburg reveals this beautiful city as a lawless, violent world of extortion, protection rackets and an escalating murder rate. Frowned upon by the old guard of Russian cinema, Brat struck a chord with millions of younger audiences who turned it into one of the country's most successful indigenous productions of recent years.

Danila is played in an expressive and understated performance by the talented young Russian actor, Sergei Bodrov, who impressively featured in two recent Oscar-nominated films - his father's Chechan drama, Prisoner of the Mountains, and the virulently anti-Communist East-West, which opens here later this year. Bodrov also stars in Brat 2, Balabanov's sequel which takes the Danila character to Moscow and Chicago.

After its four-month run on the IMAX screen in Dublin, Fantasia 2000 opens at regular cinemas across the country from today. This engaging sequel to Walt Disney's landmark blending of animation and classical music in Fantasia restores the Sorceror's Apprentice sequence from the original and adds seven new animated segments inspired by Beethoven, Respighi, Gershwin, Shostakovich, Saint-Saens, Elgar and Stravinsky.