THERE'S SOMETHING ABOUT MARY (18) DIRECTORS: PETER AND BOBBY FARRELLY 119 MINS STARRING CAMERON DIAZ, MATT DILLON AND BEN STILLER

LABOUR MPS were dismissed by the Tories as "Alastair Campbell's glove puppets" last night, after a Commons committee was split by a dispute over government spin-doctors.

1 Tomorrow Never Dies (12)

"It is suicidal for the nation to drive the mother to earn money in industry, at the expense of so neglecting the children that they grow up, if they grow up at all, stunted, weak and untrained."

1 / LA CONFIDENTIAL

Times are for today's films in London. Films marked (P) are also showing outside London.

John Hodge combines a career as a doctor with that of a successful screenwriter - the title of his latest, A Life Less Ordinary, could sum up the man himself

`A Life Less Ordinary' is a strange film. Even its screenwriter thinks so. But then, as Ben Thompson discovers, that's just the kind of creative dissent you'd expect from the trio that made `Trainspotting'

CHARLES RUSSELL's The Mask (PG) is an adventure-comedy crafted out of the future. Seeing it may make you feel like that startled audience, nearly 100 years ago, who first watched Louis Lumiere's image of a train and, when it hurtled towards them, as relentless and palpable as a nightmare, fled the cinema in fright. The Mask isn't that scary, yet it is a vision of cinema to come that may appal some viewers, even as it dazzles them. It takes a step further the computer sorcery of Robert Zemeckis's Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (1988), which allowed cartoon figures and actors to interact. The Mask's hero switches between flesh-and-blood mortality and cartoon malleability with polymorphous aplomb. When computers are so dextrous, what price human invention? The microchips are down for the movies.

Any honest filmgoer, surely, will admit the profound pleasure to be had from special effects. It isn't just a matter of indulgent childhood memories, the first magical viewing of King Kong or The Wizard of Oz. 2001: A Space Odyssey, Brazil, Prospero's Books and The Naked Lunch are not what you think of when you think of special effects movies, but where would they be without their boxes of tricks?

Claims that British history will give way to multiculturalism in the new national curriculum are false, the Government's most senior education adviser said yesterday.

A TWO-TIER licensing system for all taxis and minicabs should be established to rid the trade of illegal operators, an all-party committee of MPs suggested yesterday, writes Christian Wolmar.