Though the tag-line of Scary Movie promised "no mercy, no shame, no sequel", the original film's success made this hasty follow-up inevitable. Even by the 10-to-one ratio of dud to hit gags in the first film, this is a poor showing--cut back to under 80 minutes plus end credits, it barely manages three laughs in its entire running time, and a lot of the strained routines go beyond being unfunny into actual torture.

It opens with a skit of The Exorcist as priest James Woods, taking over a role written for Marlon Brando, plays duelling vomit with Natasha Lyonne. Then, it turns into a redundant parody of the quite-bad-enough remake of The Haunting as returnees from the first film (Anna Faris, Shawn Wayans, Marlon Wayans, Regina King) and some new blood (Tim Curry, Chris Elliott, Kimmy Robertson, Tori Spelling) take part in a paranormal investigation in an old haunted house, pestered by a foul-mouthed parrot, a kung-fu cat, a horny ghost, a giant marijuana plant, an evil puppet and pointless jibes at Charlie's Angels and Hannibal. Director Keenen Ivory Wayans, backed up by a parcel of credited scriptwriters (some not even related to him), demonstrates the now-familiar rule that the more Wayanses there are credited in a film the less amusing it is likely to be.

On the DVD: Scary Movie 2 is a rare disc that allows the viewer to reconstruct what went wrong. There are about 40 minutes (half the running time of the feature!) of deleted or alternate scenes (including a better Sixth Sense-style ending, an elaborate What Lies Beneath bathtub sketch and other snippets that seem no worse than the jokes that did make it) and four rough behind-the-scenes featurettes, which reveal that James Woods improvised one of the very few actually funny moments in the film and that effects were designed for even more scenes that didn't make it into the cut. --Kim Newman

Ingmar Bergman's Scenes from a Marriage opens with a couple--Marianne (Liv Ullmann) and Johann (Erland Josephson)--being interviewed for a magazine. Every moment seems to teeter on the brink of some rupture; just as they start to get comfortable, the interviewer has them freeze for a photograph. After making some bland, general statements, they both start admitting intimate details, confessing that they were brought together by mutual misery, then cheerfully claiming that theirs is a model marriage. The entirety of Scenes from a Marriage--which chronicles their emotional relationship even after a divorce and marriages to other people--continues to have these contradictions, moments of honesty and self-deception, of cruelty and kindness, concern and self-obsession, all laid bare by the skilful actors and the subtle, constantly shifting screenplay. Every scene is a small movie unto itself; in fact, Scenes from a Marriage was originally a six-episode TV show, carefully edited down into a unified film. This is one of Bergman's most immediate and accessible works, concerned more with the facts of human behaviour than symbolism or abstract themes. Bergman understands how to balance what could be horrible pain and despair with the characters' earnest efforts to improve their lives. His imitators reduce everything to sheer suffering and alienation; Bergman sees the best in his characters, even when their actions are terrible. This 1973 film won numerous awards, including several acting honours for Ullmann. --Bret Fetzer

A ten year old marriage. Ceaseless love for each other. Just when it appears to be THE perfect marriage, things start breaking out. The shocking discovery about the husband's affair, gets the lady into introspection?