Gabriel Beristain

Among expatriate Mexican filmmakers, cinematographer Gabriel Beristain is the veteran in the crowd. Unlike other Mexican filmmakers in Hollywood, Beristain left Mexico in 1975, opting for Europe rather than the United States. "Instead of landing in El Paso, I landed in Southampton," he says. "In Mexico there was such a lack of creativity in filmmaking. Unfortunately there is still a terrible crisis." But after 16 years in Europe as a filmmaker, Beristain returned to his Mexican roots.

Among expatriate Mexican filmmakers, cinematographer Gabriel Beristain is the veteran in the crowd. Unlike other Mexican filmmakers in Hollywood, Beristain left Mexico in 1975, opting for Europe rather than the United States. "Instead of landing in El Paso, I landed in Southampton," he says. "In Mexico there was such a lack of creativity in filmmaking. Unfortunately there is still a terrible crisis." But after 16 years in Europe as a filmmaker, Beristain returned to his Mexican roots.

"K2" keeps it simple. A formidable mountain, howling winds and blinding snows, lionhearted climbers who know nothing of fear. Even as you're watching it you can imagine the ad campaign this might have inspired once upon a time: "Six Against the Snows! An Avalanche of Emotions! The Wind Was Cold . . . But the Women Were Warm!" In truth, "K2" (selected theaters, rated R for language) is something of a throwback, but a very sure-handed one.

Shirley MacLaine plays a sexy grandma in "Waiting for the Light" (throughout San Diego County)--actually, a sexy grand-aunt--and it is a mark of the movie's confused attack that it keeps waving her at the audience like a piquant flag.

"The Sentinel" is an unassuming thriller, a nifty piece of genre filmmaking without frills or self-importance. It's a throwback, if you will, to the days of B pictures, when formula movies were made with a maximum of skill and a minimum of pretense. Set in the no-nonsense domain of the U.S. Secret Service, where smiling on duty is apparently a capital offense, "The Sentinel" is made by people who not only believe in telling these kinds of stories, they believe in telling them right.

"The Courier" (Music Hall) is a mixture of two sensibilities, two kinds of movies: Irish gritty urban naturalism and pseudo-American thriller. It was co-directed by Joe Lee and scenarist Frank Deasy, and it's about a hero trapped and traveling between two worlds: Dublin's criminal underworld and the realm of law and order.

Most big-budget, dream-cast comedies are a lot like pea soup: A creamy mass, with the occasional lump of ham. "Trial and Error," starring "Seinfeld's" Michael Richards (in a very Kramer-esque performance), is a pretty soupy mess, but the croutons are fabulous--i.e. the statuesque Charlize Theron ("Two Days in the Valley"), with whom director Jonathan Lynn is either madly in love or knows a good thing when she comes into focus.

"There Be Dragons," most of which is set during the Spanish Civil War of the late 1930s, is supposed to be about the intersecting lives of a saint and a sinner. But it is a third man, a revolutionary, who nearly steals the show. Which might have been all right if writer-director Roland Joffé hadn't been so conflicted about whose story he wants to tell. But indecision can be deadly, and it proves to be here. The British director has done very well in the past with sprawling epic tales of religion (1986's "The Mission")

Kirk Douglas is so good in "Greedy" (general release) that you're tempted to forgive this wildly uneven satire its overkill script and often ponderous direction. Douglas is cast as an aged but vigorous self-made scrap-metal tycoon whose declining health neither prevents him from going to work nor taking tremendous relish in watching his various nephews and nieces currying slavish favor in hopes of inheriting his $20-million fortune.

Derek Jarman's "Caravaggio" (at Beverly Center Cineplex) is a kinky ode to chiaroscuro and the dark side of the Renaissance, a luxuriantly eccentric look at the Bad-Boy-as-Artist. It's a film that rhapsodizes over the textures of paint and the textures of flesh--and the passions that join them together.