"ABC Africa" is Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami's first feature on digital video, a documentary about children in Uganda with AIDS. Henry Bean's "The Believer," about a conflicted neo-Nazi kid, burns with Ryan Gosling's performance despite fairly incoherent psychologizing. For his fourth feature, Doug Liman directs the Matt Damon-starring, France-set espionage thriller, "The Bourne Identity." Can a pulp plot withstand the same sort of restless stylishness as "Go"?

"Cinema Paradiso" returns with almost an hour of sugar and tears restored, presenting Giuseppe Tornatore's original Italian cut. "Thelma & Louise" screenwriter Callie Khouri makes her directorial debut in "Divine Secrets of the Ya Ya Sisterhood," while "American Movie"'s Chris Smith releases the quirk-heavy "Home Movie," about people who live in peculiar places. (It's preceded by one of the most deserving of underground hits, Jeff Krulik's offhandedly brilliant "Heavy Metal Parking Lot." )

Eighty-two-year-old Eric Rohmer depicts the conflicts of the heart of headstrong young women once more, this time at the time of the French Revolution in "Lady and the Duke," and the almost four-hour Indian cricket epic "Lagaan" finds its way out of Indian neighborhoods. John Woo recovers from the he delirium of "Mission Impossible: 2" with the serenely simple, Sam Fuller-style World War II picture, "Windtalkers," while Steven Spielberg goes for the dark side in the Philip K. Dick-derived "Minority Report," starring newcomer Tom Cruise.

Also by Ray Pride

OEDIPUS WRECKS
A giddy light-saber duel near the end of "Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones," full of glowers, pacing, feints, fakeouts and deliriously impossible action, bears an important lesson: George Lucas doesn't have to make a silent movie, but if he had made a mute one, minus an introductory hour of tedious, even superfluous self-mythologizing, the action sequences in this damn thing would sing.
(2002-05-16)

TIP OF THE WEEK
While comparisons to Hitchcock and Mamet were made on the festival circuit, writer-director Fabian Bielinsky's first feature has the cool classicism of directors like Wilder: The story is where the faces are.
(2002-05-09)

REAL SEX
Drawing from Claude Chabrol's 1968 classic, "La femme infidele," Lyne fashions one more cautionary tale against letting your knickers down. It's deeply mature work, with some of the most transportingly happy sex to be seen in an American-made movie in ages.
(2002-05-09)

SCREEN KISS
At the sight of her massively swollen belly, you can only inquire, How are you? "I'm eight months," she says, leaning back in her chair. "Any time. I'm very sensitive, y'know. I'm very pregnant. We take things very personally."
(2002-05-02)

TIP OF THE WEEK
(2002-05-02)

WORLD WIDE WEB
(2002-05-02)

TIP OF THE WEEK
(2002-04-25)

PLUG & PLAY
(2002-04-18)

TIP OF THE WEEK
(2002-04-18)

TIP OF THE WEEK
(2002-04-11)

CRAZY LOVE
(2002-04-11)

TIP OF THE WEEK
(2002-04-04)