New Films

ANALYZE THIS (15, 104 mins)

Director: Harold Ramis

Starring: Robert De Niro, Billy Crystal

See The Independent Recommends, right.

West End: ABC Tottenham Court Road, Clapham Picture House, Odeon Camden Town, Odeon Kensington, Odeon Leicester Square, Odeon Marble Arch, Odeon Swiss Cottage, Ritzy Cinema, The Tricycle Cinema, UCI Whiteleys, Virgin Fulham Road and local cinemas

ELECTION (15, 108 mins)

Director: Alexander Payne

Starring: Reece Witherspoon, Matthew Broderick

See The Independent Recommends, right.

West End: Barbican Screen, Plaza, Screen on Baker Street, UCI Whiteleys, Virgin Trocadero And local cinemas

GIRL (15, 95 mins)

Director: Jonathan Kahn

Starring: Dominique Swain, Sean Patrick Flanery

Girls take note: a diet of sex, drugs and rock'n'roll will hurt your grades and jeopardise your place at college. Just look at Dominique Swain's teen angel, whose life turns upside-down when she falls barnet-over-trainers for a Kurt Cobain-style rock star (Patrick Flanery). Meantime, Jonathan Kahn handles his indie material as if his mind's on other things, and the acting is drab and muted. Swain's irksome voiceover unnecessarily puts us in the picture.

West End: ABC Piccadilly, Virgin Trocadero

THE HAUNTING (12, 112 mins)

Director: Jan De Bont

Starring: Liam Neeson, Catherine Zeta Jones

De Bont's dunderheaded fright-movie reduces Shirley Jackson's marvellous source novel to its most imbecilic nutshell - a coterie of misfits in a remote Gothic mansion. Not content with that, it then cracks it under a ton of special effects. The whole thing's like a ghost-train with the brakes on: spectral kids wriggle in the bed-clothes, the furniture comes to life and a jiggly skeleton flops out at the camera. Certainly the latter exhibits more animation than its flesh-and-blood counterparts. Neeson acts like a statue, while Zeta Jones lollops around in lacy negligee with a look of perpetual bovine bemusement. Horrible, scary stuff. And for all the wrong reasons.

West End: Empire Leicester Square, Odeon Marble Arch, UCI Whiteleys, Virgin Fulham Road, Virgin Trocadero And local cinemas

A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM

(PG, 115 mins)

Director: Michael Hoffman

Starring: Michelle Pfeiffer, Kevin Kline

Shakespeare's most playful and delicate production winds up a tad over- egged here; re-routed to the forests of 19th-century Tuscany, and spreading out to encompass a cast of familiar faces (Pfeiffer, Kline, Anna Friel, Calista Flockhart, Rupert Everett, et al). Keen playing, plus a fairy- tale allure helps to smooth out the wrinkles.

West End: ABC Shaftesbury Avenue, Odeon Camden Town, Odeon Kensington, Odeon Swiss Cottage, UCI Whiteleys, Virgin Chelsea, Virgin Haymarket And local cinemas

THE THEORY OF FLIGHT (15, 100 mins)

Director: Paul Greengrass

Starring: Helena Bonham Carter, Kenneth Branagh

A disease-of-the-week movie with faux fire in its belly, The Theory of Flight finds a reinvented Bonham Carter chewing the scenery as a frustrated sufferer of motor neurone disease. Ex-paramour Branagh is the zany artist who helps her live a little. But the film's ballsy gestures are a ruse, and the last half-hour sees it sliding into familiar hankie country.

West End: Curzon Minema, Odeon Mezzanine, Odeon Swiss Cottage, Virgin Fulham Road