Latest video: The affair of the wooden couple Wooden lovers

By Ewan McDonald

Ooh look, there's Faye Dunaway. Wasn't she in that movie ...what was it ... about 30 years ago, with Steve McQueen as a rich guy who stole art for kicks, and she had to track him down but they ended up getting together instead?

Well, yes, Dunaway was in the original version of The Thomas Crown Affair in 1968, and yes, she is painted into a cameo in the new version, as Crown's psychiatrist.

That's just about where the resemblance between the original and the remake ends, apart from the inclusion of Noel Harrison's Windmills of Your Mind, possibly the most naff song ever to win an Oscar (but hey, there are quite a few entries in that envelope).

The story is essentially the same; thankfully this millennium's audience won't have to put up with the pretentious split-screen treatment that overtook the original; unfortunately the earlier audience got the far better stars (Dunaway and the late McQueen) and infinitely more chemistry.

This time Pierce Brosnan stars as Crown, the man who has everything money can buy and has moved on to what money can't buy - a $US100 million Monet that he steals in broad daylight from New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art. Then he becomes interested in something money might be able to buy: the insurance investigator, Catherine Banning (Rene Russo).

She knows - well, he all but tells her - that he took the painting, aware that without the Monet she doesn't have a case. However, she's not a cop, she's not really interested in a conviction, rather in saving her company from having to write a cheque.

He flies her off to his villa in the Caribbean, takes her on a glider flight, buys her dinners and gives her presents, including a painting. She plays along ... and playing along is what watching The Thomas Crown Affair is all about. Enjoy the scenery, enjoy the clothes, but don't expect to be enthralled or even engaged with this pair of rather wooden stars.

* You can't always get what you want, as Mick Jagger and Keith Richards pointed out, but if you try real hard you just might get what you need. In the summer of 1977, with New York gripped by the serial killer known as the Son of Sam, the residents of an Italian-American neighbourhood can't get what they want - the killer - but they can get what they need - a scapegoat.

Spike Lee's Summer of Sam, his first movie with no major black characters, is not about the killer, but about the city and those who suspect their neighbour might be the murderer simply because he/she is different.

Vinny (John Leguizamo) is a hairdresser married to Dionna (Mira Sorvino), a waitress in her father's restaurant. Ritchie (Adrien Brody), a typical Bronx kid, has adopted a punk haircut and Pommy accent. He has a girlfriend, Ruby (Jennifer Esposito), but he also has a secret life as a dancer in a gay club.

As summer sweats, the baseball season unfolds, the disco hits frazzle, the suburb huddles and gossips. Even the priest becomes a suspect. Finally the neighbourhood decides it knows who Sam is, even if the police don't (they've asked the local Mafia head to help find him, because of his power in the community).

Exciting, threatening, energetic, languid, violent. Worth the investment of well over two hours to see a master film-maker at work, an exceptional cast, and a story that at times is just too close to home.

* Plunkett and Macleane, set in 18th-century London, tells of a gentleman named Macleane (Jonny Lee Miller) and a rogue named Plunkett (Robert Carlyle). Well, Macleane is not entirely a gentleman, but he has the right accent. Plunkett has better manners and charm. When they meet after a jailbreak, Plunkett suggests they pool their talents to steal from the rich.

The two lurk in the woods, hold up passing carriages and relieve the rich of their wealth. Trouble looms when Macleane is smitten by the beautiful Lady Rebecca Gibson (Liv Tyler), who just happens to be the niece of the Lord Chief Justice (Michael Gambon). The pair become known as the Gentlemen Highwaymen, the chief justice is enraged that they have not been captured, and the oily Chance (Ken Stott) is in charge of the chase. He catches one, but the other hatches a plan to set his mate free. Sort of.

A weak movie where plot and characters are secondary, or even tertiary, to effect and some really bad MTV video tricks, Plunkett and Macleane was directed by Jake Scott, son of Ridley (Alien, Blade Runner, Thelma & Louise). Daddy shouldn't have given his little boy one of his old cameras to play with.

* P.T. Barnum said, "No one ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public," and his spiritual grandson, Adam Sandler, has made a lot of money for himself and his studio with dumb, gross, puerile movies.

Lots of people like them. I'm happy for them. If you're not aware of what is involved, here is a rundown of the most recent, Big Daddy.

Sandler appears as Sonny Koufax, a layabout who wins $200,000 in a lawsuit after a taxi runs over his foot, and hangs around the Manhattan loft that he shares with his lawyer friend (Jon Stewart). Sonny's girlfriend, Vanessa (Kristy Swanson), wants him to get a real job.

One day his pal leaves town and 5-year-old Julian (twins Cole and Dylan Sprouse), apparently the lawyer's child, arrives on the doorstep. Sonny tries to take the kid to social workers but it's a holiday, so he takes Julian to Central Park for his favourite pastime, throwing branches in front of skaters. And hey, they bond. This is pretty easy because in an Adam Sandler movie, the star usually acts like a 5-year-old. Examples: when McDonald's won't serve them breakfast, he throws another customer's fries on the floor; when a restaurant won't let the lad use the toilet, they utilise the restaurant's door.

There has to be a crisis, and it builds when a social worker turns up to take the lad away. Sonny pretends to be his dad so they won't be parted. Everyone heads to the courtroom for tears before bedtime.

* Also out this week: Baseketball, yet more dumbed-down idiocy with South Park's Trey Parker and Matt Stone, plus a cast of names and pro sportsmen, playing a couple of guys who invent one of America's national obsessions... Thursday, an "erotic thriller" that has Mickey Rourke, Paulina Porizkova (I don't have to act, I'm a supermodel) and Thomas Jane as a former crook whose past catches up with him ... Safe Men, another sports-linked comedy with two inept lounge singers who turn burglar and accidentally steal ice-hockey's icon, the Stanley Cup ... Patricia Arquette and Don Johnson in Goodbye Lover, more sex, crime and oh yeah, thrills ...Owd Bob, one that you can take home to the family, a heart-warmer set on the Isle of Man... Money Kings, Anarchy TV, Stormtroopers, Street Corner Justice), all of which are what they sound like, and for the art-house viewers, Spanish maestro Pedro Almodovar's black comedy Dark Habits.