By Steve Ramos

The 1,000 Eyes of Dr. Mabuse

Home cinema offers local audiences a welcome chance to play catch-up with numerous films that bypass Cincinnati. Devoted movie buffs know that many of the best specialty movies can't be found at a suburban multiplex. Now, daring couch potatoes have the opportunity to turn their living room into a personal cinemathèque.

Video Flashback

The 1,000 Eyes of Dr. Mabuse

Unrated

1960, Kino

The final chapter of director Fritz Lang's great Dr. Mabuse trilogy makes a welcome return appearance. The 1,000 Eyes of Dr. Mabuse begins its complex suspenser with a mysterious assassination in the midst of rush hour traffic. A police investigation uncovers an international conspiracy led by the criminal mastermind Mabuse. Believed killed in the 1930s, Lang's famous villain is brought back for a final film appearance.

Lang's final film is a sly commentary on video and television. Mabuse's 1,000 eyes are the hidden cameras and video screens he uses to watch the city's inhabitants. Voyeurism steps into the spotlight whenever Lang slowly dissolves from the action itself to the video image of the action. A complex crime drama, the film is a worthy finale to a director's career that spanned German theater, silent cinema, German studio movies and Hollywood productions. -- Steve Ramos (Grade: A)

Art House

Beautiful People

Rated R.

1999, Trimark

Writer/director Jasmin Dizdar's ensemble drama follows several Londoners whose lives interconnect during October 1993. England is focused on the World Cup, but for many Eastern European refugees, the Bosnian War has their attention.

Bosnian-born Dizdar begins his drama with a Serb and Croat attacking each other on a London bus. While the two thugs end up in the hospital, a Bosnian couple is traumatized by the arrival of their firstborn. It seems the child is the result of a vicious gang rape. The film grows more complex with additional characters. A pretty female doctor befriends a young refugee and a teen-aged junkie is mistakenly airdropped into the war zone.

Beautiful People keeps its storytelling succinct by telling a simple message: Beauty can be found in the most unlikely places. -- SR (Grade: B)

It Came From Hollywood

The Talented Mr. Ripley

Rated R.

1999, Paramount

Matt Damon brings a handsome face to evil as wannabe playboy Tom Ripley. Damon's boyish psycho is the linchpin in director Anthony Minghella's stylish adaptation of the Patricia Highsmith novel. A cash-strapped young man who'd rather be a fake somebody than a real nobody, Ripley is hired by a wealthy American shipbuilder to travel to Italy and talk his spoiled son Dickie (Jude Law) into returning home. Of course, deceit and murder stand in the way. Gwyneth Paltrow is icy cool as Dickie's debutante girlfriend. But it's Damon who steals the show in unsettling fashion. -- SR (Grade: A)

It Came From Hollywood

Hanging Up

Rated PG-13.

2000, Sony

Three competing sisters, magazine publisher Georgia (Diane Keaton), soap opera actress Maddy (Lisa Kudrow) and caterer Eve (Meg Ryan) come to terms after their father (Walter Matthau) is hospitalized. But this sibling-rivalry melodrama, based on screenplay by sisters Nora and Delia Ephron, fails to make an emotional impact by spending too much time with the comic antics of the sisters' distinct lifestyles. It's testament to Ryan's growth as an actress that Hanging Up does not squelch her undeniable charisma. But the sad truth is that even Ryan can't salvage the film's trite melodrama. -- SR (Grade: D)

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