Red Letters has all the makings of a classic Hitchcock thriller: a hapless hero who thinks he's smarter than he is, an unpredictable femme fatale, snaky plot twists, and an all-around excellent cast. Professor Dennis Burke (Peter Coyote) wrote a sizzling erotic novel called Red Letters 20 years ago--but since then his wife has died from a protracted illness and he's been fired from a job because of an affair with a student. So he's grateful to be given a second chance at a small California college where he lectures on Hawthorne--only all his students are more interested in Burke's own writing than Hawthorne's.

Burke starts receiving letters for the former resident of his apartment that are from a woman in prison named Lydia (Nastassja Kinski) with a 30-year sentence for murder. Burke writes back and their correspondence takes a turn for the intimate when she asks him to visit her. Burke isn't sure what he's getting into, and his life is further complicated when the daughter of the college Dean (Fairuza Balk) starts making advances. Suddenly Lydia has escaped, his best friend (Jeremy Piven) is arrested for hacking into the prison computer system, and the Dean suspects Burke of trifling with his daughter.

The movie loses focus at the very end, but until then it's a smart, well-written, subtle, and unpredictable film that actually gives its characters some depth and grit. Even the more implausible moments are fun and engaging, making this well worth checking out. --Bret Fetzer

In Red Planet the only thing thicker than the Martian atmosphere (which is breathable, by the way) is the layer of clichés that nearly smothers a formulaic beat-the-clock plot. Science fiction fans are sure to be forgiving, however, because the film is reasonably intelligent, boasts a few dazzling sequences, and presents fascinating technology in the year 2057.

We don't know how the Mars-1 spaceship gets to Mars in only six months (newfangled propulsion, no doubt), but we do get some cool diagnostic read-outs on tinfoil scrolls, an abundance of well-designed hardware, and a service-robot-turned-villain that's a high-tech hybrid of RoboCop, Bruce Lee, and a slinky panther with plenty of lethal attitude. The oxygen in the Martian atmosphere has resulted from nascent efforts at terraforming, made necessary by Earth's over-polluted condition. Mars-1 has been dispatched to determine why the terraforming is failing, and upon arrival everything goes inevitably haywire. Nearly two hours, three deaths, and multiple crises later (including the discovery of a Martian life form), "space janitor" Val Kilmer and his ultra-competent commander (Carrie-Anne Moss from The Matrix) have collaborated to set things right, capped off by second dose of the wretched narration that bookends the movie. Hoary material, to be sure, and as a veteran of TV commercials making his feature debut, director Anthony Hoffman is clearly more comfortable with flashy visuals than depth of character. Still, he keeps things humming right along. A perfectly suitable companion to another Y2K sci-fi thriller, Pitch Black, Red Planet is a fine way to kill a couple of hours. --Jeff Shannon, Amazon.com