Pa-Bo Ayanokoji believes she's a typical high school girl who likes to hang out with her friends. Her world is shattered when the mysterious warrior Yakumo reveals she is not a human girl, but Pai, the last surviving Sanjiyan or holy demon. The rest of the Sanjiyans were exterminated 300 years ago when their king, Kaiyanwang, turned to evil. Now he is about to rise again, and his servants are trying to kill Pai, who can challenge him. Pai's memories of her past life in the blessed realm of Kunlun have been blocked by a spell; Yakumo takes her to Tibet for help breaking it. Along the way, he fights assorted villains led by the sniggering Choukai. Pai and Yakumo cross the barrier to Kunlun with the aid of treasure hunter Jake Macdonald and some Tibetan monks. In Kunlun, they battle Choukai and Kaiyanwang's chief henchman, Benares. The drawn-out climax proves disappointing. Pai and her friends never confront Kaiyanwang, just his servants (which probably means sequels are in the offing). [+]

Enzo Matrix, who has grown up to be a sullen, muscular hero, continues to search for Bob, his Defender friend and hero. He's accompanied by Andraia, now a curvaceous babe in a revealing costume. They take up with Capitain Capacitator, a. k. a. Crimson Binome, a pirate of the "aargh, matey" school; his motley crew; and "web surfer" Ray Tracer, whom Matrix regards as a potential rival. As they journey through cyber-dimensions, Andraia receives a life-threatening bite from a "web creature," then Capacitator's ship, the Saucy Mare, is attacked by a host of strange-looking "Web Riders," whose leader turns out to be Bob. After reviving Andraia, Bob heads the ship back to continue the war against the evil Megabyte. The animation lacks any sense of weight-a problem with motion-capture computer graphics: despite all the elaborate visual patterns, tracking shots, and reflections, the characters move like marionettes. There are also numerous story problems: e. [+]

A visual knockout, Titan A. E. is an ambitious animated feature that combines traditional animations, computer-generated imagery, and special effects in the service of a science fiction adventure plotted with narrative conventions familiar from Star Wars and Star Trek. Credit directors Don Bluth (An American Tail, The Secret of NIMH, Anastasia) and Gary Goldman with crafting a vivid, convincing look to this deep space saga, which conjures some stunning images. A tense opening sequence climaxing in the destruction of Earth, a watery planet where delicate but deadly hydrogen trees float, joyriding in a starship while pursued by playful "space angels," and a nerve-wracking journey through a lethal maze of massive ice crystals each qualify as mesmerizing sequences in any film context. What's visually stunning proves intermittently stunted on the narrative front, however. Orphaned when the evil Drej atomize Earth, protagonist Cale (voiced by Matt Damon) must journey across space to unlock the mystery of his late father's final project, the Titan spacecraft, in a test of faith and filial identity that echoes Star Wars. The Titan itself ultimately poses a cosmic potential familiar to admirers of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. Comical sidekicks (Nathan Lane, Janeane Garofalo, John Leguizamo), a sultry love interest (Drew Barrymore), and a roguish mentor (Bill Pullman) all verge on the generic, narrowly redeemed by dialogue from a writing team including Buffy the Vampire Slayer creator Joss Whedon. It's likely that Titan's target audience of young males prompted the filmmakers to walk a tightrope between softer family features and more violent, hard-edged anime. [+]

The winter adventures of an errant young Irish duck who loses track of his family on their annual southbound flight make for a charming tale voiced in accents from the British Isles with appealing animation reminiscent of the Little Bear series. If our hero Sean were human, he would probably be diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder. But he's fowl, so his mother (Carol Kane) makes her own diagnosis: he's "a duck running amok. " So it's no surprise when he strays from the family formation and gets knocked back to earth to face winter alone. He is ably tutored by a good-natured, riverdancing vole (Tim Curry) who imparts some handy survival wisdom before he hibernates. The last 10 minutes of this 27-minute story are crammed with a series of short-lived perils involving a storm, a fox, and Sean's inability to find his parents as the ducks return in the spring. It all ends well, but very young and/or sensitive children may have a few anxious moments along the way. -Kimberly Heinrichs.

" The verdict from the O. J. Simpson trial shattered perceptions of the American justice system, issues of race, domestic violence, and the relationship between celebrity, money, and justice. Here, experts who watched the trial from beginning to end examine the legal strategies and the many bizarre twists and turns. Why did the prosecution lose this ""winnable"" case? Take a hard look at how the dream defense team turned the mountain of evidence against O. J. Simpson into a pile of dust. Defense attorney Barry Scheck details how he built his case against Mark Fuhrman and the Los Angeles Police Department. Get a unique view of what went wrong for the prosecution from Jeffrey Toobin of the New Yorker, who was in the courtroom for the entire trial. And Paul Witteman, who covered O. [+]