Spooky visions, a visionary's latest and a new-look action hero

PREVIEW: SIGNS (Touchstone Pictures)

Directed by M. Night Shyamalan

Recent widower Graham Hess (Mel Gibson) is losing his religion. Living on a farm in Pennsylvania with his two young children and his brother, Merrill (Joaquin Phoenix), Hess finds himself running around in circles--crop circles--which are possible navigation indicators for an impending alien invasion. Shyamalan is up to his subtle tricks once again, working nerves and raising hackles, and Signs shows every sign of being the smartest--and scariest--movie in a season of clamor. Henry Cabot Beck

PREVIEW: XXX (Sony Pictures)

Directed by Rob Cohen

Vin Diesel reunites with Cohen, his director from The Fast and the Furious, to play a flamboyantly tattooed extreme sports star who's recruited by a government agent (Samuel L. Jackson) to infiltrate Anarchy 99, a band of no-goodnik Russians bent on .causing global chaos. Everybody's yelling blockbuster," which it better be--Diesel's reportedly signed on for the sequel at a salary of $20 million. Diane Baroni

REVIEW: FULL FRONTAL (Miramax Films)

Directed by Steven Soderbergh

One of Soderbergh's experimental efforts, Full Frontal cleverly enfolds a smarmy studio flick, shot on 35mm, about a vain TV star called Nicholas falling in love with a celebrity profiler (Julia Roberts), within a sly critique of L.A.'s emotional dystopia, shot on digital video. Catherine Keener exudes bitter genius as a human resources executive who's cheating on her writer husband (David Hyde Pierce) with the actor playing Nicholas (Blair Underwood). Mary McCormack, David Duchovny and Nicky Katt also impress, but coming after Short Cuts (1993) and Magnolia (1999) this bird's-eye view of Hollywood soullessness and desperation seems like much-trampled terrain.

Graham Fuller

REVIEW: TADPOLE (Miramax Films)

Directed by Gary Winick

If Mike Nichols and Wes Anderson made an after-school special, it might look like Tadpole. In this beguiling coming-of-age tale, a precocious 15-year-old Manhattan boy (newcomer Aaron Stanford) falls for fetching stepmom Sigourney Weaver, but is bedded by her sassy seductress friend (scene-stealing Bebe Neuwirth). Improbable situations and shoddy digital cinematography fail to diminish Winick's endearing New York story.

David Bahr

REVIEW: WHO IS CLETIS TOUT? (Paramount Classics)

Directed by Chris Ver Wiel

Christian Slater returns to shaggy leading man form as an amiable forger conspiring to retrieve a long-buried treasure with a diamond thief (Richard Dreyfuss) and his daughter (Portia de Rossi), before confronting a movie-obsessed assassin (Tim Allen), who forces the petty criminal to pitch the story of his life in order to save it. Call this playful postmodern comedy Sheherezade via Tarantino.

Thelma Adams

RELATED ARTICLE: WELCOME BACK TO SEQUEL SEASON

SPY KIDS 2: THE ISLAND OF LOST DREAMS (Dimension Films)

Directed by Robert Rodriguez

STUART LITTLE 2 (Sony Pictures)

Directed by Rob Minkoff

HALLOWEEN: RESURRECTION (Dimension Films)

Directed by Rick Rosenthal

AUSTIN POWERS IN GOLDMEMBER (New Line Films)

Directed by Jay Roach

It seems like every summer an outbreak of sequelitis brings hordes of moviegoers to the megaplexes to catch the follow-ups to old favorites. Maybe it's the arctic-inspired air conditioning. Maybe there's something in the popcorn. Or maybe there's a genuine desire on the part of audiences to reconnect with the characters they already know and love--love, of course, being measured in box office receipts.

This summer, we've already gone to a galaxy far, far away--for the fifth time. We've revisited those fellows in black and embraced another Jack Ryan movie, let alone another Jack Ryan. But this month, at the height of the season, we witness the height of the onslaught, with four additional sequels set for release.

If Ritalin and day camp have failed, Spy Kids 2's kooky antics should keep the young'ns occupied for a couple of hours. Same goes for the follow-up to 1999's Stuart Little, a big hit with the rugrat set.

For older children (of all ages) Halloween comes early this year. Resurrection indeed: After years of declining grosses, the success of the franchise's seventh picture, Halloween H20 (1999), gave Dimension more than 55 million (domestic) reasons to unearth Michael Myers for an eighth time. But if a built-in audience is the sequel's raison d'etre, Austin Powers' comeback is a no-brainer. The series' third installment features Beyonce Knowles as the spy's sexy sidekick and Michael Caine as his dad. Yeah, baby!

Andrea Meyer

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