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By EWAN MCDONALD

Pray the power doesn't give out on December 31, or go figure a way to run your video off batteries. Major companies are stacking some of the most popular titles of the year on to the new-release shelves just when most of us are hoping for a long, hot summer break.

Numero Uno on the list is Roberto Benigni's magical Life Is Beautiful; box-office hits like Austin Powers 2: The Spy Who Shagged Me and Notting Hill are arriving this week, too.

* You've seen him at the Oscars, every inch the cartoon image of the crazy Italian, the broken English tumbling out, the gestures, what remains of his hair all awry. If you haven't seen Benigni's Life Is Beautiful (La Vita e Bella), you'll be wondering: "What's he on?" and "What's all the fuss about?"

The fuss is about a brave, glorious, captivating movie that You Must See. You may have qualms about the concept because at first glance it could be a comedy about the Holocaust, set in a concentration camp. Put those to one side. This is not Schindler's List starring Charlie Chaplin; this is a remarkable fable about the triumph of the human spirit and about love.

Only the marvellous Benigni could have made this film. He wrote, directs and stars in a tale which begins in 30s Tuscany with a Chaplinesque Jew, Guido (Ben-igni), wooing schoolteacher Dora (his wife, Nicoletta Braschi). Gradually, the movie darkens as fascism gains ground, engulfing the couple and their son, Joshua (Giorgio Cantarini).

When Guido and Joshua are shipped to a concentration camp Dora decides to follow out of love and loyalty. Guido shields Joshua from the Nazi atrocities by pretending they are part of a fabulous game in which points are won for behaviour that keeps the boy safe from the German officers - including an unforgettable scene in which Guido, pretending to understand German, mimes the officer's camp rules to the inmates. The story turns to tragedy when Guido gains access to the camp tannoy and announces his love for Dora.

* Just as James Bond, draped with a nuclear physicist in hot-pants and an enemy agent in ballgown, saunters into the cinemas for the 19th time, his 90s doppelganger arrives in the video stores. Nice parallel, really: Mike Myers' Austin Powers is a smaller time, lower rent and less artful operation, though his backers are apparently determined that the franchise will last just as long as 007's.

There are things to admire about Myers. It can't have been easy trying to be a comedian in Canada with an obsession for England in the 60s, for Carnaby St and the Kinks (some people, less charitable than me, would have ended that sentence right after Canada). Like Steve Martin, Myers hasn't made a wonderful movie but has made some great film clips.

In Austin Powers 2, Dr Evil (Myers' second role) goes back in time to 1969 to steal Powers' mojo (sex drive) and the snaggle-toothed swinger fights to retrieve his potency. From there it's a re-run of the same crude and obvious gags as Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery with more money and greater confidence.

Evil threatens to destroy the world with his giant moon-based "laser" known as the Alan Parsons Project. Powers drapes himself over the less-than-funny Heather Graham (as Felicity Shagwell). Elizabeth Hurley, Robert Wagner, Rob Lowe and Tim Robbins drop in for cameos. And Myers takes on a third (and unnecessary) role as the Fat Bastard, a kind of Scottish pub sumo-simulator.

Part of you will wonder why the heck you're laughing at this childish nonsense, part of you will be lost in Myers' capacity to win you over. Just like Bond, really.

* Now here's another franchise from the 60s: a floppy-haired, foppish labrador dog of an Englishman, constantly getting into difficulties with beautiful women because he's so gauche ... oh, you mean Hugh Grant is a real person, living in the 90s and not the grandson of Bertie Wooster?

Notting Hill is, its makers would have you believe, not an invitation to a fifth wedding and a funeral. It's just pure coincidence that it features Grant in another romantic comedy set among an eclectic group of friends in a London suburb (curiously divested of the former immigrant families that make the real Notting Hill such a vibrant place).

Grant plays William, a bumbling travel bookshop owner who is lovestruck when megastar Anna Scott (Julia Roberts) swans into his shop and after an argument with an orange juice, ends up in his flat refusing cups of tea. This kickstarts a relationship that has to jump through the hoops of William's family, friends and revolting flatmate, Anna's publicist and the paparazzi.

Of course the critics didn't like it but it did well in Kiwi cinemas and Notting Hill is Britain's most successful box-office movie ever. So if you liked Four Weddings ... (still watch it every time it comes around on TV) you should be ringing the video store about now to book it.

* There has to be something special about a movie that runs for eight months at one Auckland cinema. Waking Ned Devine, now on wider release after that marathon run at the Academy, is set in the enchanting Irish village of Tullymore, population 52 and shrinking (if you're wonderin' where that is, they filmed this in the Isle of Man).

As I was sayin', Jackie O'Shea and Michael O'Sullivan are villagers, believers in luck and dreams, obsessed over the national lottery, who read that someone in town has the winning ticket. They find the lucky man, Ned Devine. Not so lucky: he's come over dead with the shock of it. All Jackie has to do to collect the millions is convince the lottery men and the village that he's Ned ...

They're saying that Austin Powers 2 is the funniest thing you'll see this summer; sorry, for my money, this is the superdraw.

* Kate Winslet has a habit of making movies that live up to their titles. Titanic was, of course, just that. Hideous Kinky is just that, too. "Driven by a spirit of adventure and the desire for fun and happiness, Julia (Winslet) escapes London with her two daughters and embarks upon an adventure of a lifetime to the exotic destination of Marrakech" in 1972.

Yep, think hippies, think kaftans, think flings with dangerous foreign men. Think: AbFab actually sent this movie up 10 years before it was made. Wow, there's a concept, man.