Under Milk Wood is an imaginative, cinematic rendering of Dylan Thomas's famous "play for voices," typically read on stage by a handful of actors expressing the dialogue of more than 50 characters living in a small, Welsh fishing village. Filmmaker Andrew Sinclair sets the story in a real seaside community and visually complements the text's lengthy, opening narration by enlisting Richard Burton both for his brooding voiceover and a mysterious, on-screen role as a drunken gadabout soaking in the very soul of the town Thomas' words describe. Once the narration ends, the film breathes freely with a succession of lively vignettes, some funny, some dramatic, but all rooted in the peculiar circumstances of characters who either feel trapped by or ensconced in their home. Peter O'Toole plays the wizened, blind Captain Cat, haunted by memories of drowned sailors but so attuned to the sounds of village life outside his window he can identify the children screaming in a park. Elizabeth Taylor (Burton's wife at the time) makes a brief appearance as Rosie Probert, and the other players include Glynis Johns, Vivien Merchant, and Victor Spinetti. -Tom Keogh.

"I would've gotten away with it if weren't for you meddling kids!" Equal parts remake and spoof, this tongue-in-cheek live-action resurrection finds the old Saturday-morning-cartoon gang reunited to investigate the zombie teens of a haunted amusement park. Frantic action and big-screen special effects stand in for logic, but for a while it makes for a spirited send-up. Freddie Prinze Jr. , under a blond hairdo and an ascot, turns Fred into a preening pretty boy, and Sarah Michelle Gellar plays with her own Buffy image as eternal damsel-in-distress Daphne (in magenta mini-dress and maxi-boots, no less), but this show belongs to gangly Matthew Lillard, who is the adenoidal beatnik Shaggy. His loyal-to-the-end friendship with the computer-animated Scooby-Doo is the most convincing relationship in the whole two-dimensional goof. Some of the supernatural nasties may be scary for young kids and the humor careens from winking self-awareness to Scooby doo-doo gags, but otherwise this is as harmless as a Saturday-morning chapter and as substantial as a Scooby snack. -Sean Axmaker.

It's Valentine's Day! What will the Ham-Hams do for their Valentines? Auntie Viv sure needs help giving a big gift to her special someone. Will the Ham-Hams be able to help?.

Written, composed, and directed by Indian master Satyajit Ray (Pather Panchali), The Chess Players presents a stylized world in which the landed gentry lounge about, endlessly pulling on hookahs and engaging in the "king of games. " Outside their gilded doors, the order that allows them this luxury-let alone their marriages-is crumbling. They couldn't be more oblivious. As the narrator notes, "Mr. Meer and Mr. Mirza are only playing at warfare. Their armies are pieces of ivory. Their battlefield: a piece of cloth. " Set in 1856 Lucknow, the noblemen (Saeed Jaffrey and Sanjeev Kumar) are situated in one of the few Indian territories not ruled by Britain's East India Company. The British, meanwhile, are also playing a game of chess, and equally oblivious Oudh ruler Nawab Wajid Ali Shah (Amjad Khan) is the king they intend to capture. [+]

There are hundreds of thousands of companies in modern Tokyo, but only one Phantom Quest Corporation, a firm that specializes in exorcisms and troublesome spirits. Its founder and CEO is Ayaka Kisaragi, a red-haired klutz whose lipstick turns into an enchanted sword when she needs to dispatch vampires, demons, or ghosts. She's assisted by the exorcist Rokkon, the medium Madame Suimei, the innocent-looking Nanami, and Mamoru, a long-suffering computer whiz who tries to reconcile Ayaka's profligate spending with her limited income. The tone of Phantom Quest suggests Ghostbusters remade for Bette Midler-Ayaka drinks too much, oversleeps, and murders songs in karaoke settings, but she comes through in the end. Her tongue-in-cheek adventures juxtapose supernatural villains with slapstick comedy, much of it involving her put-upon beau, Detective Karino. In "Kiss of Fire," they defeat Count Dracula (whose coffin has been purchased as a novelty by a Japanese businessman) but trash Tokyo Tower in the process. The most satisfying of the four adventures is "Love Me Tender," in which the ghost of an archeologist tries to protect his former fiancée from beyond the grave. Possible sequels are hinted at in the DVD extras. Rated 13 and up for nudity, violence, sexual situations, and occasional profanity. -Charles Solomon.