Latest video: Bard times

By Ewan McDonald

Much ado about something: Shakespeare in Love, the highly praised story of the Bard that takes many of the quotes and puts them in different mouths to come up with a witty, amusing twist on the poet-playwright's life, arrives in the video stores.

You don't have to know your Prospero from your Caliban or your Henry from your Hamlet to find all's well that ends well in this rollicking tale, which stars Joseph Fiennes as Will Shakespeare and Gwyneth Paltrow, Geoffrey Rush and Dame Judi Dench (who else?) as the other dramatis personae in his fictional history.

The story goes that it's fairly early in Shakespeare's career and he's got writer's block. Bad time: he's got bills to pay and is trying to write and stage a comedy called Romeo and Ethel the Pirate's Daughter.

Personal problems, too: he's not at home in Stratford-upon-Avon but down in London working and becoming entangled with a drama groupie, Lady Viola (Paltrow). She's dressed herself as a man, auditioned and got the part of Romeo in Will's new play.

Much to the annoyance of her highly connected husband-to-be, Lord Wessex (Colin Firth). Very highly connected: the wedding has been set up by Queen Liz, who drops by just long enough for Dame Judi to collect her Best Supporting Actress Oscar.

You could call it a comedy of errors and you wouldn't believe a word of it as history or literature. Forget all those niceties. This is a witty, charming, gorgeously presented and very highly recommended film.

* Max Fischer is a student at Rushmore Academy, one of America's finest private schools. Max likes being a schoolboy. Max's personal and social development stopped at age 7.

Then he won a scholarship to Rushmore after writing a play about Watergate, and has stayed ever since, becoming editor of most things, founder of other things and president of almost everything else. What Max doesn't like is the thought of growing up and having to go out into the adult world.

But Max isn't as smart as he thinks he is. In fact, Max is one of the school's dumbest students and - shock, horror! - he's going to be expelled.

Up turns Herman (Bill Murray), rich guy and father of two of Max's classmates. Somehow Max (Jason Schwartzman) and Herman fall for the widowed primary school teacher, Rosemary (Olivia Williams).

This is Rushmore, which sounds like a thousand other teenage high school comedies, but is actually quite a skewed little story with great performances by Schwartzman (who is, like Nicolas Cage, a nephew of Francis Ford Coppola), Murray (recently voted by a 7Days staff meeting as A Very Funny Man) and Williams (The Postman). Worth a look.

* From a coming-of-age movie to a coming-out movie. The Hanging Garden is the story of Sweet William, returning to his small Canadian home town for the first time in 10 years for his sister's wedding in the family garden.

Home hasn't changed but William has. The timid, overweight piece of putty who left has become slim, together - and out, which is not quite what the family was expecting at Rosemary's wedding. (She's played with great relish - well, she hits the sauce and the saucy language - by Kiwi Kerry Fox).

A story worth telling, though the movie is downbeat and becomes a tad disjointed as it swings between memories of the teenage William (Troy Veinotte), abused by his drunken father, Whisky Mac, and the William in town today (Chris Leavins).

* Uh-oh, Baldwin Brother sighting. Stephen (The Usual Suspects) plays decorated cop Bo Dietl, an NYPD hero who becomes a target for an FBI Internal Affairs investigation in one of those endlessly circular rows between American police agencies, in One Tough Cop.

Based on fact, it tells how Dietl was busting bad guys but the bureau was questioning his relationship with friends in the Mob and blackmailed him. Much more fiction than fact, one suspects.

* Also around: Incognito has Jason Patrick as the world's greatest art forger, a man who wants to paint one more Rembrandt and then go straight. But he's double-crossed and set up in a theft and murder case. To get out he must prove that many of the world's greatest paintings are his fakes ...

Woody Harrelson and Billy Crudup are cowboys in New Mexico in the late 40s in The Hi-Lo Country - Crudup the country boy who dreams of owning his own ranch, Harrelson his best friend, gun-toting, whisky-swilling, rodeo-riding, high-stakes gambling. Trouble comes when both fall for the same woman (Patricia Arquette) ...

Oh, look, here's Joseph Fiennes again, alongside Rufus Sewell and Tom Hollander in The Very Thought of You, a romantic comedy about three self-obsessed young Brits who fall for the same woman (Monica Potter) ...

Dawson's Creek fans will head for Varsity Blues, a coming-of-age comedy-drama with series star James Van Der Beek. He plays Jonathan Moxon, backup quarterback for the college football team who's promoted from the bench to the starting lineup and into conflict with his hot-head coach (Jon Voight) and girlfriend. Pushes all the right marketing buttons with Green Day, Foo Fighters, Collective Soul, Van Halen and Sprung Monkey on the soundtrack.