VANYA ON 42nd STREET. Actor-playwright Wallace Shawn and experimental theatre director Andre Gregory made a modest but indelible mark on the film world over a decade ago when they created the fine My Dinner with Andre, a picture based entirely on a conversation. The movie lived in your mind, and Vanya on 42nd Street, which consists of a handful of actors running through the Chekov play Uncle Vanya while dressed in only street clothes, is no different. Based on a long-standing Gregory tradition that has been bringing the same actors together year after year to perform the play, the film's focus is solely on the text and on the actors' ability to make it live. Shawn, a truly unique actor, plays the title role, and his excellent accompaniment includes Julianne Moore, Brooke Smith, Larry Pine and George Gaynes.

VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED. Based on the British 1960 chiller of the same name, this John Carpenter picture follows what happens when several women in a quaint northern town mysteriously and simultaneously become pregnant. Their offspring: eight white-haired geniuses with telepathic powers and a collective mean streak. Though the material needed to be better updated to justify a remake (as it stands, it looks like a cheesy episode of X-Files), Carpenter directs with his usual immense skill, and the campy selection of players--Christopher Reeve, Kirstie Alley, Mark Hamill--give surprisingly engaging performances.

VIRTUOSITY. Brett Leonard, creator of The Lawnmower Man, once again proves his skill at making slick, futuristic movies with loads of glittery computer animation and not much else. The movie spends its first half-hour setting up an impressively elaborate explanation for how an artificially intelligent virtual-reality program might find its way into the real world, then proceeds to squander the premise's possibilities on an all-too-familiar cop-versus-killer story. Denzel Washington gives a generic good guy performance, but Russell Crowe plays the narcissistic, baby faced villain with cackling glee--he looks like Bob's Big Boy with a new suit and a mean streak. Overviolent and unimaginative, add this to the long list of films that fail to find good cinematic uses for cyber-technology.