The Monitor Movie Guide

Sex/Nudity: 5 scenes with sex and/or nudity. Violence: 2 scenes, including a self-inflicted wound and a punch. Profanity: 25 mostly mild expressions. Drugs: 22 scenes with alcohol and/or tobacco, 3 with prescription-drug abuse.

U-571 (PG-13) *** Director: Jonathan Mostow. With Matthew McConaughey, Harvey Keitel, Bill Paxton, Jon Bon Jovi, Jake Weber, David Keith. (120 min.)

You can't keep a good submarine story down. Our heroes are American sailors ordered to pose as Germans and capture a top-secret encryption device from a Nazi U-boat. Things get interesting when they find themselves stuck on the enemy vessel, unsure how it works and sitting ducks for any genuine Germans who happen to steam their way. The movie is full of old tricks - cuts between worried faces and overheated gauges inching into the red zone - but director Mostow pulls most of them off with conviction and pizazz. *** Sheer entertainment, not much sub-text, action-packed.

Sex/Nudity: None. Violence: 9, often prolonged, scenes with violence, including gunfights, fistfights, and torpedo attacks. Profanity: 50 expressions, mostly mild Drugs: 3 scenes with alcohol, 2 with tobacco.

Where the Money Is (PG-13) ** Director: Marek Kanievska. With Paul Newman, Linda Fiorentino, Dermot Mulroney, Susan Barnes, Anne Pitoniak. (89 min.)

Where the excitement isn't. A crafty old crook fakes a chronic illness to facilitate a jailbreak, then plans a new crime with his nurse and her suspicious husband. Newman's magnetic face isn't enough to raise this intermittently amusing thriller above the ordinary caper-comedy crowd. *** Entertaining, some surprises, Newman was terrific.

Sex/Nudity: 3 instances of implied sex; 1 scene with brief nudity; some innuendo. Violence: 6 scenes, including a car crash and an armed robbery. Profanity: 23 mostly mild expressions. Drugs: 11 scenes with alcohol and/or tobacco.

OUT ON VIDEO

(In stores May. 2)

Anywhere But Here (PG-13) *** Director: Wayne Wang. With Susan Sarandon, Natalie Portman, Bonnie Bedelia, Shawn Hatosy. (113 min.)

A single mom heads from Wisconsin to Los Angeles with dreams of Hollywood stardom for her teenage daughter, who'd rather be exactly what the title says. *** Touching, sad, edgy, funny lines.

Being John Malkovich (R) **** Director: Spike Jonze. With John Cusack, Cameron Diaz, John Malkovich, Catherine Keener. (112 min.)

Hilarious, utterly unpredictable comedy about an out-of-work puppeteer who finds a secret passageway into the famous actor's mind and decides to make a few bucks off his discovery. ***1/2 Weird, entertaining, boldly creative, comical.

Dogma (R) ** Director: Kevin Smith. With Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, Linda Fiorentino, Chris Rock. (115 min.)

Wildly irreverent fantasy about two fallen angels who hope to reenter Heaven by exploiting a loophole in a feel-good version of Roman Catholic dogma being promoted by a New Jersey church. **1/2 Piercing one-liners, ambitious, issue-based, shocking.

Galaxy Quest (PG) *** Director: Dean Parisot. With Tim Allen, Sigourney Weaver, Alan Rickman, Tony Shalhoub. (102 min.)

A delegation from a faraway planet recruits the cast of a "Star Trek"-type TV show to help them win an intergalactic war, not realizing the Earthlings are just actors who've defeated all their "aliens" with plastic rayguns and camera tricks. *** Warp-speed spoof, affectionate "Star Trek" parody, more amusing than hilarious, wouldn't change a thing.

(c) Copyright 2000. The Christian Science Publishing Society

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