Denzel Washington, Vicellous Reon Shannon, Dan Hedaya, Liev Schreiber

Featured attraction

Playing Rubin "Hurricane" Carter, a real-life boxing champ who spent nearly 20 years in prison for murders he didn't commit, Washington has his richest role. And he plays it to perfection, albeit not in a showy way (aside from an awesomely chiseled set of abs). Like Tom Hanks, Washington has mastered being the still center of a film, waiting, waiting and waiting for his moment. Take the scene in which a teenager (Shannon) who has taken up Carter's cause after reading his autobiography comes to see the fighter for the first time at his New Jersey prison. Carter sits quietly in a rear corner of the visitors' room and, by sheer force of will, draws the young man to him.

Although powerful and ultimately quite moving, Hurricane dawdles in getting to the heart of its story, which is the transforming relationship between Carter and the youth, who, like Carter, comes from an impoverished background. Both must find resources deep within to survive. "It's very important to transcend the places that hold us," Carter counsels the teen, who, along with a trio of righteous Canadians who have befriended the fighter, will discover evidence that will finally overturn Carter's conviction. (R)

Bottom Line: Washington is a knockout

Animated

In both Fantasia (1940) and this tardy sequel, a stentorian announcer says, "You will see various abstract images that might pass through your mind if you sat in a concert hall listening to this music." Or if you were looking for a way to boost Disney products. How else to explain, while hearing Elgar's Pomp and Circumstance, envisioning Donald Duck waddling up the gangplank of Noah's Ark, as he does in Fantasia/2000? There are six other new segments (plus the Mickey Mouse romp from the original), but 2000 is rarely adventurous enough to seem like more than a do-gooder's attempt at shoving classical music down kids' throats by wrapping it in cartoons. (G)

Bottom Line: Muzak toons

Matt Damon, Gwyneth Paltrow, Jude Law, Cate Blanchett

Tom Ripley has committed that gravest of sins against the rich: He has ceased to amuse. "You can be quite boring," wealthy American expatriate Dickie Greenleaf (Law) tells Ripley (Damon) dismissively, not fully aware of how desperately besotted Ripley has become with both Dickie and his sybaritic lifestyle in late-1950s Italy. Ripley will not be discarded so easily. Instead he will get rid of Dickie and attempt to become him.

The Talented Mr. Ripley is about reinventing one's self, that oldest of American dreams. A shimmering thriller with more on its mind than just whether psychopathic Ripley will get away with murder, the film is based on Patricia Highsmith's 1955 novel. Director-adapter Anthony Minghella (The English Patient) displays a finely tuned appreciation for character and style, not to mention the influences of Hitchcock and writers F. Scott Fitzgerald and Theodore Dreiser. Ripley's second half goes a little limp as plot mechanics clank, but the movie is fascinating, helped enormously by dazzling performances by both Damon and Law and a thoughtful one by Paltrow as Dickie's girlfriend. (R)

Bottom Line: Rippingly good

Jim Carrey, Courtney Love

In the opening scene of this bio about put-on comic Andy Kaufman (who died of lung cancer at age 35 in 1984), Carrey appears onscreen doing an eerily brilliant impression of Kaufman and orders us all to go home. It's so wonderfully weird, and so essentially Andy, that you find yourself rooting for director Milos Forman to do a comic rumba with Kaufman's life similar to the one he did on Hustler's publisher in 1996's The People vs. Larry Flynt. What a disappointment to find that what follows instead is a standard biopic, little better than a TV movie. Man re-creates Kaufman's career but fails to answer the key question of what made him tick. (R)

Bottom Line: Tank you veddy much, but no thanks

>Any Given Sunday Football as war. Director Oliver Stone dresses up his conventional tale of an aging coach (Al Pacino), a veteran quarterback (Dennis Quaid) and a hotshot young QB (Jamie Foxx) with fancy, in-your-face camera work and bone-crunching sound effects. Stone makes gridiron action as chaotic as the landing on Normandy's beaches in Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan. (R)

Bicentennial Man Robin Williams plays a robot who longs to become human in this drawn-out comic drama. Deep if you're a 12-year-old. Way too long and way too much sex talk for young kids. (PG)

Cradle Will Rock Passionate, ambitious drama by writer-director Tim Robbins about artistic ferment during the Great Depression. The talented cast includes John Cusack as a young Nelson Rockefeller and Ruben Blades as painter Diego Rivera. (R)

The Green Mile The distance never seemed so long as the 3 hours and 10 minutes it takes director Frank Darabont to tell Stephen King's would-be inspirational story about a death row inmate (Michael Clarke Duncan) who can perform miracle healings. Less would be more here. Good performances, though, by Tom Hanks and crew. (R)

Liberty Heights Director-writer Barry Levinson returns to Baltimore for a sentimental journey back to his youth, where he encounters such unsentimental topics as anti-Semitism and racism. Assured work from a top filmmaker. Joe Mantegna stars. (R)

Stuart Little The titular mighty mouse is chased endlessly by nasty cats in a movie kids will like and parents will tolerate. Michael J. Fox provides snappy vocals for Stuart. (PG)