THE SANTA CLAUSE. At first, this Tim Allen holiday star vehicle appears to be going nowhere fast, with Allen making sarcastic anti-Christmas wisecracks to a son too cutesy to make a good comic foil. But after Allen causes the death of Santa (yes, this actually happens) and is forced to become him, the movie picks up some charm. Allen doesn't relate well to the movie camera when he's playing a character similar to himself, but covered in furry white facial hair and cloaked in a roly-poly Santa belly, he manages to elevate the movie's shrewd patchwork plot to something fun enough to sit through.

The Scarlet Letter. When the opening credits state the film is "freely adapted" from the novel, they aren't kidding. The filmmakers have taken an American literature classic and turned it into a plainly idiotic bodice-ripper that pits small-town intolerance against Hester Prynne's fiercely independent feminist sexuality. This is the second film of the year in which a woman's love is signaled by a little bird that leads the way (the other is How to Make an American Quilt). The bird leads Prynne (Demi Moore, as superficial as ever) into the arms of Gary Oldman, a minister who swims naked so as to expose his buttocks to God and anybody else who might be watching. You can bet that when the time comes for nooses to be tied around the lovers' necks, a bunch of Indians will pop out to save the day. Maybe this movie's creators should be forced to wear a big letter "A" around Hollywood--for the sin of asinine adaptation.

Senior Trip. The words "National Lampoon" on any film are a bad sign, and this movie seems designed to prove it. Working from an anachronistic, chaos-driven formula that stereotypes all teens as idiotic partiers and all adults as buffoons, the movie shoots only for the lowest gags, and actually makes Animal House (which at least had a few characters you could care about) seem sophisticated by comparison. A cast of has-beens and soon-to-be-has-beens star, including Matt Frewer (Max Headroom), Tommy Chong (of Cheech and Chong), and Kevin McDonald (of Kids in the Hall).

Sense and Sensibility. Is this ever a costume drama! Emma Thompson, Hugh Grant and practically every other British actor you can think of romp thorough the country in funny clothes in this clever adaptation of Jane Austen's novel about impoverished girls hunting for husbands. Of the recent crop of movies about Britons in by-gone eras falling in love out-of-doors, this is by far the best. The script (by Emma Thompson) is witty and well-paced; the crisp, brisk direction by Ang Lee (who made, most recently, Eat Drink Man Woman) keeps the slow-paced lives of the 19th century from ever becoming boring. This movie deals with Love and Romance like they made it in the old days--big, sweeping and stormy.

Seven. David Fincher, the mind behind Alien 3, has visual ingenuity to spare:This gruesome thriller, overflowing with pitch-black shadows, dank rain and artfully detailed corpses (each representing one of the Seven Deadly Sins), generates an unforgettably macabre atmosphere. But thematically, the movie stumbles over itself, trying desperately to shape a mechanical and brutally exploitative puzzle-piece plot into a story with deep philosophical ramifications. Led by a tremendously effective cast that includes Morgan Freeman, Brad Pitt, Gwyneth Paltrow and Kevin Spacey, watching the film is like being led into a magnificent, sepulchral library only to find stacks of National Enquirers.

SHALLOW GRAVE. When three roommates discover their mysterious new tenant has died and left a suitcase full of money, they decide to bury the body and stash the dough until later. But they slowly begin to lose their cool, and the triangle's corners come undone. This dark, tense thriller makes up with visual sense what it lacks in common sense, painting its scenes with suffocatingly deep hues of red, blue, green and yellow while the characters' personalities are gradually drained of colors of their own.

Sgt. Bilko. A made-from-TV comedy based on the series from the Fifties, Sgt. Bilko is the tale of a lovable, greedy Army man just trying to make some money and have a little fun. Bilko (Steve Martin) doesn't believe in discipline, and he encourages his men to gamble, drink and cheat. Bad casting drags this movie down--Steve Martin is just too handsome and likable to pull off his underdog role, and Phil Hartman as his arch-rival Thorne turns in an incredibly flat performance.

Showgirls. With this heavily hyped NC-17 travesty, Robocop-director Paul Verhoeven has created a new type of robo-erotica where robocharacters have robosex in the roboscummiest areas of that robocity they call Las Vegas. Roboscreenwriter Joe Eszterhas fills his inane, behind-the-scenes roboexposé with gobs of crude robosub-plots and robodialogue, creating plenty of excuses for roboactress Elizabeth Berkely and others to bare their robobreasts and robopelvises with increasing regularity. If you're a robot, you'll no doubt be turned on. (All others stay away.)

SOMETHING TO TALK ABOUT. From the screenwriter who gave us Thelma & Louise comes this insightful yet directionless tale of a Southern wife (Julia Roberts) who has to re-think her life when she learns her husband (Dennis Quaid) has been having several affairs. Crisp direction by Lasse Hallestrom, warmly vibrant cinematography and a handful of fun performances (by Kyra Sedgwick, Robert Duvall and Gene Rowlands) keep the film enjoyable long after the story has lost sight of a point. And Roberts is surprisingly good--after years of limited performances in dumb roles, she really seems to be blossoming.

THE SPECIALIST. Stone. Stallone. Stupid. They've got their James Bond-ish John Barry soundtrack, their unremarkable (and illogical) twisting plot, their cool sunglasses, their nifty gadgets, their slick commercial-style editing, and they even take their clothes off for a sex scene that looks like an Obsession magazine ad. But in a word, they suck. James Woods, as the uptight bad guy, steals the entire movie--and he doesn't even have to remove a stitch of clothing.

SPECIES. Get ready for Jurassic Park meets Alien. When an experiment with a human-extraterrestrial hybrid goes awry, the government assembles a four-man team consisting of a biologist, social scientist, empath and assassin to find the escaped E.T. Species starts off in the right vein, creating a character both humanistic enough for the audience to relate to and inhuman enough to keep you on the edge of your seat. Despite an anti-climactic, typical Hollywood ending, a half-way decent story and chilling special effects mask most of Species' flaws.

Spy Hard. A feeding-frenzy of rampant stupidity, shoddy production values and of course, fart jokes. In one particularly depressing aspect of this movie, a whole bunch of actors we haven't seen in a while reappear looking fatter, older and less talented than they ever have in their lives.

STARGATE. In this good-natured science-fiction adventure, James Spader plays a nerdy linguist enlisted to decipher Egyptian runes that will unlock the secrets to an extra-dimensional space portal. The device leads Spader and a military crew headed by Kurt Russell to a planet far, far away, where they find pyramids, multiple moons and an all-too-friendly primitive culture. They also find dog-headed bad guys with lasers, and an evil alien played by the androgynous Jaye Davidson (who couldn't have asked for a cooler role following The Crying Game). As sci-fi yarns go, this is kid stuff--laughable but likable, best seen on a Saturday afternoon.

STAR TREK: GENERATIONS. It's a mixed blessing having the cast of the Next Generation TV show take over the helm of the enterprising Star Trek movie series. Surely it was time for the first cast to move on, but the new crew brings with them the baggage of recent TV familiarity (instead of the camp nostalgia of the originals). None of the characters are as charismatic as their predecessors, and they don't really spruce up their acts for the big screen; you feel like you've paid $7 to see something you could have watched on TV. William Shatner's brief appearance livens up the proceedings, but the slopped-together script, a strained excuse to create a sci-fi metaphor arguing against drugs and escapism, doesn't make his presence pay off. No doubt fans won't mind--for some, just hearing Captain Picard say "Make it so!" in THX sound or seeing Data have emotions is probably worth admission--but the rest of the moviegoing population would be better off staying here on Earth.

Strange Days. Given the scarcity of original screenplays coming out of the Big Studio establishment, Strange Days deserves due credit. Katherine Bigelow's first noteworthy attempt since Near Dark blows away all other attempts at cyber-cinema we've seen thus far. If you're expecting a lot of high-priced special effects, you'll be disappointed. But creative use of point-of-view camera work and a dark, documentary-style vision of the year 2000--with humvies rolling down Sunset Boulevard and soundbites from the evening news bringing us up to speed on the violence and mayhem in Los Angeles at the end of the millennium--draw us into a believable future in which cop-turned-cyberdrug dealer Lenny Nero (Ralph Fiennes) and straight-laced friend Mace (Angela Bassett) fight for survival in a world gone mad with paranoia, deception and murder. Despite some snags in the fabric of believability, Strange Days is entertaining up until the last minute--which is a good 60 seconds of unforgivable drivel.

Stealing Beauty. Bernardo Bertolucci splashes around with both the MTV and the Masterpiece Theater generations in this coming-of-age movie set in the Italian country side. Beautiful shots, sets, and actors, hallmarks of any Bertolucci film, make Stealing Beauty easy on the eyes--and Liv Tyler, the gorgeous 17-year-old star, doesn't hurt either. Tyler handles herself with ease and dignity as she plays the role of an American virgin aiming to get herself deflowered while a bored group of cosmopolitan grown-ups egg her on. Sometimes though, it seems like the camera lingers a little too obsessively on the upper region of the inner seam of her tight jeans, and it's hard to escape the sensation that perhaps this is just a classy way for Bertolucci to act like a dirty old man. The screenplay, by author Susan Minot, is disappointingly flat; but Tyler is so entrancing it hardly matters.

STRAWBERRY AND CHOCOLATE. In this unlikely tale of friendship, two men--one communist, one counterrevolutionary, one straight, one gay, one chocolate-chowing, one strawberry-slurping--work past hidden agendas and emerge with a rare love and appreciation for each other. With elements of both Kiss of the Spider Woman and Threesome, this is one of the best, most balanced gays-and-straights pictures around, thanks to beautiful, three-dimensional performances by Vladimir Cruz and Jorge Perugorria.

Striptease. Demi Moore peels it off in this plodding, predictable comedy about a mother who takes up stripping in the hopes of earning enough money to finance a custody battle for her daughter. Moore's routines seem forced and overstaged, and in fact she keeps most of her clothing on most of the time even as the supporting cast frolics about topless in the background. Burt Reynolds plays to the balcony in his role as a lecherous senator with a "thing" for tittie bars; in fact, everyone seems to be trying just a little too hard in this movie for it to ever seem engaging or believable. This is a poor bet for comedy; and if it's naked ladies you want, try going down the street to Curves Cabaret and stuffing your seven-fifty into the g-strings of some real single mothers, instead of giving it to filthy rich Moore.

THE SUM OF US. In this Australian odd-couple comedy, a widower and his adult gay son struggle to coexist peaceably in the same house. The twist is that they get along fine; it's everyone else who can't handle their relationship. Though talky and dramatically limp, the performances are good-natured, and the film's example of harmony between homo- and heterosexuals is far more effective than that seen in other pictures (like Philadelphia).