Disney's Recess: School's Out dipped in and out of cinemas faster than fans of the cable TV show could snap their lunch boxes shut--kind of nice for parents whose idea of grown-up detention is sitting through such fly-by-night features for children. Now that home screenings are an option, though, plan for the ages 5-and-older set to settle in for reruns. Also plan to get sucked in yourself--if the screwball plot doesn't do it, the soundtrack will. While TJ and Principal Prickly (the latter the unfortunate bearer of the "saggy butt" that becomes this movie's clunkiest running gag) bust in on a crew of fiendish would-be teachers during summer break, slices of vintage grooviness--Steppenwolf's "Born to be Wild,"Strawberry Alarm Clock's "Incense and Peppermints," and Robert Goulet's "Green Tambourine" among them--get you cheering along, whether you're 3 or 43. The reason for all the retro funkiness revolves around the chief bad guy, Phil Benedict, a one-time educational visionary and former Prickly schoolmate. Benedict was a radical school revolutionary, but his manifesto for better test scores misfired when it called for a ban on recess, a concept so barbaric it got him canned from a cushy government job. Now, undeterred in his mission to make life miserable for children, he's hatching a "switcheroo" scheme that will forever pull the shade on summer and thus summer vacation. Predictably, right at trigger time, TJ, Prickly, and the gang roar in to the rescue. It's an ending that's as pat as any on the TV show, but so what--this is a movie that aims for summer-linen lightness. Just as the Fifth Dimension promise on the soundtrack, it lets the sunshine, as well as a few well-timed chuckles, in. --Tammy La Gorce, Amazon.com

An arrogant young man is taught the values of life by an ethical old doctor in a charity hospital, where he learns that earning money is not all?

Using a faulty thriller for his soapbox as an outspoken critic of China, a devout follower of the Dalai Lama, and an influential supporter of Tibetan freedom, Richard Gere resorts to the equivalent of propagandistic drama to deliver a heavy-handed message. In other words, Red Corner relies on a dubious strategy to promote political awareness, but director Jon Avnet appeals to the viewer's outrage with such effective urgency that you're likely to forget you're being shamelessly manipulated. Gere plays a downtrodden TV executive who sells syndicated shows on the global market, and during a business trip to China he finds himself framed for the murder of the sexy daughter of a high Chinese official. Once trapped in a legal system in which his innocence will be all but impossible to prove, Gere must rely on a Chinese-appointed lawyer (played by Bai Ling) who first advises him to plead guilty but gradually grows convinced of foul play. Barely attempting to hide its agenda, Red Corner effectively sets the stage for abundant anti-Chinese sentiment, and to be sure, the movie gains powerful momentum with its tale of justice gone awry. It's a serious-minded, high-intensity courtroom drama with noble intentions, but one wonder if it has to be so conspicuously lacking in subtlety. --Jeff Shannon, Amazon.com