Fans of Ricky Martin will need no encouragement to buy One Night Only other than knowing it exists, so it's commendable that what they will get is a pretty good package after all. On the down side, without the kind of slick studio production accorded to his albums it's clear that Martin's voice is, well, rather ordinary. But on the up side, he's beautiful, he's great fun, he's not short on stage presence, and his enthusiasm for the Latin music of his native Puerto Rico is entirely genuine. There's a spooky moment in the opening number of this huge 1999 gig (which took place in Liberty State Park in New York) as the backdrop artfully falls to reveal the twin towers of the World Trade Center framing Martin like Samson's pillars. Once this frisson passes it's good times all the way, with the inevitable "Vida Loca" and "La Copa de la Vida" as highlights, plus guest spots from Carlos Santana and José Feliciano. -Roger Thomas.

Fred Astaire plays a fashion photographer based on real-life cameraman Richard Avedon, in this entertaining musical directed by Stanley Donen (Singin' in the Rain). The story finds Astaire's character turning Audrey Hepburn into a chic Paris model-not a tough premise to buy, especially within this film's air of enchantment and surrounded by a great Gershwin score. Based on an unproduced play, this is one of the best films from the latter part of Astaire's career. -Tom Keogh.

Richard Donner's 1978 epic about the Man of Steel showed how a film about a superhero could be a moving and romantic experience even for people who long ago gave up comic books. Beginning on the icy planet Krypton, the story follows the baby Kal-El, whose rocket ship lands in Smallville, Kansas. He is found there by a childless couple and raised as the shy Clark Kent (the young Kent is played by Jeff East). The film is perhaps most touching in these sequences, with expanses of wheat fields blowing in the wind and with a young man who can't figure out what part in destiny his great powers are meant to play. The second half, with Reeve taking over as Clark/Superman, is bustling, enchanting (the scene in which Superman flies girlfriend Lois Lane-played by Margot Kidder-through the night sky is great date material), and funny, thanks largely to Gene Hackman's sardonic portrayal of nemesis Lex Luthor. -Tom Keogh.

Sophisticated to a point, this well-executed wolf-man tale works due to its clever setting and enormous star power. We all know Jack Nicholson can go nuts, but the script makes his character aware of his changes, sometimes for the better, early on. The setting, a publishing house in the middle of a takeover, gives the characters dramatic life before the horror elements kicks in. A senior editor about to get the boot, Nicholson's character becomes a new man after being bitten by a wolf. He takes on challenges at work, lives a more robust life, and attracts a new love. But will his newfound energy consume him? Director Mike Nichols keeps the action alive in the first half, but the film peters out at the end with cheap theatrics and the overuse of slow motion. Michelle Pfeiffer has little to do as simply the love interest with a grittier than average personality. Better is James Spader as a smarmy colleague. Nicholson is in fine form, relying on his keen gift to spark interest (a twitch of the head, a look in the eyes), instead of heavy doses of movie makeup. Giuseppe Rotunno's sweeping camerawork sets the mood quite well. [+]

The fantastic visions of Belgian filmmakers Marc Caro and Jean-Pierre Jeunet find full fruition in this fairy tale for adults. Evoking utopias and dystopias from Brazil to Peter Pan, Caro and Jeunet create a vivid but menacing fantasy city in a perpetually twilight world. In this rough port town lives circus strongman One (Ron Perlman), who wanders the alleys and waterfront dives looking for his baby brother, snatched from him by a mysterious gang preying upon the children of the town. Rising from the harbor is an enigmatic castle where lives the evil scientist Krank (Daniel Emilfork), who has lost the ability to dream and robs the nocturnal visions of the children he kidnaps, but receives only mad nightmares from the lonely cherubs. Other wild characters include the Fagin-like Octopus-Siamese twin sisters who control a small gang of runaways-turned-thieves-Krank's six cloned henchmen (all played by the memorable Dominique Pinon from Delicatessen), and a giant brain floating in an aquarium (voiced by Jean-Louis Trintignant). Caro and Jeunet are kindred souls to Terry Gilliam (who is a vocal fan), creating imaginative flights of fancy built of equal parts delight and dread, which seem to be painted on the screen in rich, dreamy colors. -Sean Axmaker.

Canadian import. 75 min. 16 clips: Roxanne, Can't Stan d Losing You, So Lonely, more.

Young Clark Kellog (Matthew Broderick) had no idea film school would drop him into the hands of a real-life Godfather, but after a street punk robs him his first day in New York City, that's just where the road leads. Marlon Brando let everyone know he was in on the joke with his hammy, good-humored performance as the bulldog-jowled Mafioso Carmine Sabatini, the man Clark's prissy, self-important professor swears was the real life inspiration of Don Corleone. Carmine has a modest proposal for the naive kid from Vermont involving Carmine's gorgeous daughter Tina (Penelope Ann Miller) and the illegal importing of an endangered lizard. Andrew Bergman's tongue-in-cheek comedy keeps the spoofing in a low key, underplaying the outrageous situations even as he piles them higher: if the sight of a six-foot-long lizard scattering shoppers as it runs wild through a New York City mall doesn't do it for you, there's always Bert Parks's rousing rendition of Bob Dylan's "Maggie's Farm. " -Sean Axmaker.

Set during the Chinese takeover of Hong Kong in 1997, this fascinating film uses that urgent and grandly ceremonial political backdrop for an intimate study of personal transition. Jeremy Irons plays a seasoned journalist who discovers he is terminally ill, causing him to be torn between his obsessive love for a former prostitute (Chinese film star Li Gong) and a streetwise hustler (Maggie Cheung) whom he has chosen as the subject of a video documentary. Through his involvement in the lives of these two very different women, director Wayne Wang (The Joy Luck Club) creates a cinematic "love-hate letter" to his native Hong Kong, where each character is allegorical and suffers an identity crisis much like Hong Kong itself. The film's love story is somewhat aimless and ultimately unimportant, but Chinese Box (even the title suggests a place that holds secrets within its borders) remains a fascinating film in the semi-documentary tradition, capturing the psychology of its time and place with compelling immediacy. Musician/actor/politician Ruben Blades is featured in a memorable supporting role. -Jeff Shannon.

One of Clint Eastwood's mid-1980s experiments in change of pace, this melancholy attempt at comedy confirmed something Clint already had shown in Paint Your Wagon: he's not a very good singer. In Honkytonk Man, which he also directed, he plays a has-been who never was, a would-be country singer who dreams of performing at the Grand Ol' Opry. As he works his way to Nashville with his nephew in tow (played by Eastwood's son, Kyle), he also battles with tuberculosis in a movie more interested in creating soggy handkerchiefs than musical credibility. What little there is of the latter is provided by real-life music stars such as Marty Robbins (who didn't live to see this movie released). -Marshall Fine.