O

We’ve had so many reinterpretations of Shakespeare’s classics in recent years, and so many that have been surprisingly fine (I’m thinking of 10 Things I Hate About You, the Ethan Hawke Hamlet, and the genre’s standard-bearer, Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet), that you’re inclined to give O, which sets Othello in the world of high-school basketball, the benefit of the doubt.

JAY & SILENT BOB STRIKE BACK

Kevin Smith’s Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back, the fifth and reportedly final installment in his View Askewniverse series, is less a movie than a live-action thank-you note to his fans.

THE OTHERS

Alejandro Amenabar’s ghostly The Others feels like the film version of some beautifully chilling short story by Lovecraft or Shirley Jackson, where “Boo!”-style thrills take a back seat to dread and psychological complexity; it’s a savvy, entertaining piece.

A.I.: ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

Steven Spielberg proves too accomplished at mimicking the famously clinical, detached Stanley Kubrick style; this sci-fi adventure is stunningly well-designed, technically miraculous, and so emotionally neutral that it rates little more than a shrug. You can enjoy individual sequences tremendously and still find it shallow, just as you can love watching Haley Joel Osment and Jude Law and still feel that the movie’s Pinocchio-meets-Orwell storyline isn’t shaped, or performed, properly. Still, it’s a movie that deserves to be seen, though few did; like many a Kubrick enterprise, it might be more interesting in 10 years than it is now.

RUSH HOUR 2

I didn’t care for the smash hit Rush Hour when it came out in 1998, and so the arrival of Rush Hour 2, needless to say, didn’t fill me with excitement. But the prospect of seeing the great John Lone and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon’s Zhang Ziyi in supporting roles piqued my interest, and you never know when star Jackie Chan is going to pull off some miraculous stunts, so an open mind seemed appropriate.