Short takes

Caveman is very funny for about five minutes. Then you realize how silly it's going to be -- I mean silly -- and your grim kind of freezes into place, and you wonder if you can endure these foolish yoks for another 85 minutes or so. I did, but I couldn't recommend the experience to anyone else, even if you're 10, like my childrem, who loved it all. The leading man is Ringo Starr, whose gentle manner helps offset the brash amd sometimes offensive vulgarity that snorts from the depths of the Stone Age plot. The dialogue, incidentally, is in Neanderthal.

Mark Rappaport is a rising filmmaker with a personal style and a growing audience. In his latest feature, Imposters, he again takes highly romantic material and treats it with cool, mannered detachment. The contrast is fascinating, but the darkly comic subject matter -about a pair of twin brothers, an elusive treasure, and a lot of skullduggery -doesn't justify either the stylized approach or the constant talk that goes along with it, spoken by such talented performers as Charles Ludlam and Ellen McElduss. Rappaport is a director to watch, but he hasn't yet hit his stride