If Lucy Fell. Sweet, sentimental and utterly stupid, this romantic comedy stars Sarah Jessica Parker and Eric Schaffer as Lucy and Joe, two friends who agree to jump off the Brooklyn Bridge if they haven't found love by Lucy's 30th birthday. Parker plays a bored psychotherapist comfortable discussing everyone's psychological shortcomings but her own, while Joe is a sensitive, guy-next-door painter committed to his five-year fantasy with the scantily clad rear-window girl (Elle Macpherson). Despite its superficial moralizing (beware lines like "Congratulations, you finally discovered the girl in your heart is not the girl of your dreams"), the dialogue is just great at times. Ben Stiller's performance as Bwick, Lucy's unlikely love interest, is downright hilarious. A welcome diversion for star-crossed lovers half-heartedly contemplating suicide.

IMMORTAL BELOVED. While Beethoven (Gary Oldman) decomposes, his faithful assistant attempts to discover the mysteries behind his late master's will, which left his entire estate to "my Immortal Beloved." A series of Gothic, overblown flashbacks ensue, each tabloidizing the life of the deaf composer while rarely touching on the powers of his music. The only saving grace is a prolonged childhood scene set to the Ninth Symphony--but then again anything looks good when set to the Ninth Symphony. Starring Isabella Rossellini and Valeria Golino.

In The Mouth Of Madness. John Carpenter's latest creepfest is a wonderfully playful mind-bender chock full of paranoid fears about mass hysteria and the death of reality. Working from a screenplay by Michael De Luca, the movie gives horror a good name, holding back on blood-'n'-guts in favor of weird, imaginative imagery where white haired beings on bicyles flash through the night, shadows creep up in the cells of insane asylums and figures in paintings turn their heads. Every scene gooses you with a surprise, every dream contains a twist, and Sam Neill, as the skeptical protagonist, makes the journey fun.

Independence Day. Good guys from Earth battle bad guys from outer space in this latest incarnation of War of the Worlds. The good guys are flawed but determined; the bad guys are tentacled and covered in slime: What could be simpler? The special effects are cool, the characters are likable, and there's never a dull moment. A thoroughly fun, mindless little vacation, Independence Day is sort of like an enema: eventful, and then you feel empty.

INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE. Anne Rice's tale of depressed, codependent vampires who stay depressed and codependent for hundreds of years doesn't exactly get the blood movin'. Directed by The Crying Game's Neil Jordan, with lots of lush sets, cinematography and special effects, the film is a feast for the eyes but malnutrition for the cranium. Brad Pitt does a respectable job with his dark-spirited role, and Tom Cruise--who, not surprisingly, plays a cocky vampire--avoids being too annoying. But without a plot, what have you got? Vampire therapy for the terminally pretentious.

I.Q. Walter Matthau stars as Albert Einstein, a sort of Cyrano de Relativity who conspires to change Tim Robbins from auto mechanic to quantum mechanic in order to provoke the affections of Einstein's niece (Meg Ryan), a talented mathematician who has trouble solving equations of the heart. As likable as the leads are, the featherweight script doesn't give them much to work with; about the funniest thing anyone can think to do with Einstein is make him say "Yahoo!" And hasn't Ryan played a few absent-minded cuties too many? But everything's relative, so if you think the idea of being set up by a frizzy-haired professor sounds romantic, this could be your slice of pi.