VIDEOS

Contact (PG). Few filmmakers have done more for the self-esteem of the IQ-deprived than Robert Zemeckis. Forrest Gump allowed idiots to feel good about being stupid; Contact, his version of the Carl Sagan novel, allows them to feel smart. A fervent, universe-wide search for intelligent life that itself contains none, the film reeks of Zemeckis's monomania, his reductionist tendencies, and his persistent belief that verisimilitude equals import (real-life CNN reporters make cameo appearances, as does a superimposed Bill Clinton). New Age hokum packaged as sincere, serious entertainment, this is the most irritating kind of Hollywood spectacle: dull, pompous, and patronising from start to finish. The movie conjoins earnest space-gazer Ellie Arroway (Jodie Foster) and patently ridiculous spiritual consultant Palmer Joss (an embarrassingly bad Matthew McConaughey). The former represents science, the latter religion, but the film's ideological tussle is rigged: poor, foolish, agnostic Ellie doesn't stand a chance.

187 (18). The problem, as previously dramatised ad nauseam: kids in ghetto high schools are ruthless thugs. The solution, as Kevin Reynolds's casually racist movie would have it: arm the teachers. A skilled actor increasingly ill-served by his choice of roles, Samuel L Jackson plays, to all intents and purposes, Charles Bronson. His character, a very pissed-off high-school teacher, is eventually reduced to elaborate schemes of torture, and a preposterous climactic game of Russian roulette. Reynolds's pointlessly flamboyant direction makes it all even more unbearable. There's something seriously wrong with a film when it makes Dangerous Minds (Michelle Pfeiffer's blackboard-jungle vehicle) seem like a work of great social vision.