MAD LOVE. Two Seattle teens, played by Chris O'Donnell (ever the perfect boyfriend) and Drew Barrymore (ever the flirty thrill-seeker), decide to run away and live a wild life on the road. But after a series of booming alternative music-filled travel montages, the love story becomes pointlessly morose.

THE MADNESS OF KING GEORGE. Nigel Hawthorne has received great praise for his performance as King George III, who was believed insane when a nervous-system disorder briefly wreaked havoc on his temper. Hawthorne deserves the accolades: he travels from regal to rabid and back with believability as well as comic flair. But the movie itself is far from a fascinating piece of drama, and holds little interest unless you're British or find yourself enraptured by historical trivia about British royalty.

Mary Reilly. The tale of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde told from the point of view of Jekyll's house maid, Mary Reilly (played by Julia Roberts). The film is essentially a character study of Reilly, and the question is Why? Robert Louis Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is a strange, intelligent story that has a point. The story of Mary Reilly (based on the novel by Valerie Martin) is slow, predictable and empty. Half of the movie is taken up by shots of Julia Roberts walking around in the fog, or wandering around the stunning sets by Academy Award-winning production designer Stuart Craig. The sets are pretty, Roberts plays the pretty victim to perfection, and even John Malkovich is kind of good-looking, but the question remains--what's the point?

THE MASK. In this childish special effects movie, the comedic contortions of Jim Carrey and photorealistic animation of Industrial Light & Magic blend as seamlessly as the crotch in a pair of bike shorts. The story, about a meek bank clerk who gets to live out his fantasies when he discovers a magical mask, is nothing eye-popping; predictably, Carrey seeks out revenge, wealth and sexual omnipotence, and the film scuttles us through the usual complications involving police and mobsters. But who cares about story when Carrey's green, grinning mug is filling the screen? The Mask has just enough cartoonish goings-on to make up for its normal-movie drawbacks. Taken at face value--and there's a lot of face value--it's great fun.

A Midwinter's Tale. The latest dose of Shakespeare from writer/director Kenneth Branagh, who doesn't actually appear in the film. This black and white, low-budget offering chronicles the rehearsal and performance of Hamlet by a band of idealistic, misfit actors. The players are all quite self-consciously kooky and they all have personal "issues" that are miraculously dissolved on opening night. The catalogue of things that go wrong in the course of the production is exhaustive, and sometimes watching these things go wrong can be kind of funny. The claim made on the poster, that this is "Spinal Tap for the Shakespearean set" is probably overly optimistic, but at times this film does manage to succeed in pulling off a little highbrow humor. Unfortunately, recurring waves of sentimentality and a few annoying performances rob this film of its clout.

Mighty Aphrodite. Woody Allen continues the dramatization of his mid-life crisis in his latest film; and this time around, it works. Mira Sorvino is the hooker with a heart of gold who drags Woody out of his bourgeois complacency as he drags her, kicking and screaming, into a respectable life. A Greek chorus lurks around the edges of the action, dispensing wry commentary and unwanted advice like the quintessential Jewish mother. All the standard Woody Allen gags, with their comforting familiarity, return with delightful freshness in this sweetly comic movie.

MILK MONEY. The title, a double entendre, refers to the scenario at the beginning of the film, when three pre-pubescent suburban boys save up their Milk Money in order to pay a prostitute to expose her breasts. The inanity continues when one of the boys decides the prostitute would make a good wife for his widowed father, and begins scheming to set them up. Director Richard Benjamin, Ed Harris (as the dad) and Melanie Griffith (as the ho) work hard to cover up the bad taste of the story with a quality production, but that only makes the movie doubly absurd, like a cheap whore in an extravagantly expensive dress.

MIRACLE ON 34TH STREET. John Hughes, who wrote and produced this remake of the well-known Christmas movie, puts all the elements neatly in place--the twinkly eyed Santa, the excruciatingly cute child, the grumpy adults who need to be converted--and sends them laboriously through the motions. There's no originality or subversiveness here, and Les Mayfield's stiff, plodding direction doesn't help either. Although Richard Attenborough makes a believable Saint Nick, the ridiculous courtroom-drama climax turns him into a walking "symbol of faith," which drains all the joy out of the concept of Santa. Attenborough never gets to say "ho ho ho," and neither will you.

Mission: Impossible. Rather than having a plot, this movie features an accretion of random events arranged next to each other on film. If you're confused during this movie, join the rapidly expanding club. On the other hand, Brian DePalma is a genius at directing action scenes, and you will almost certainly gasp involuntarily when Tom Cruise hangs above that white supercomputer by a thread. Those who consider Cruise to be a babe will certainly find him in top form here. But if you were a fan of the Mission: Impossible TV series, or if you expect your movies to have coherent plots, you will be disappointed.

Moll Flanders. This marathon of a period movie, based loosely on the novel by Daniel Defoe, is plagued by a corny script and is just annoying in general. Moll Flanders (Robyn Wright) is an 18th-century independent spirit, poor and alone, trying to make her way in the cold, hard world. It seems the only two choices she has are the convent and the whorehouse, and she tries them both without much success. The dialogue in this movie is atrocious, as is the gut-wrenchingly dramatic plot. A special throne of badness is reserved here for the extremely annoying, other-worldly music that tortures the viewer subliminally for the first half of the movie. A few fine actors, including Stockard Channing, do their best to enliven this film, to no avail.

Money Train. They're buddies! They're cops! Woody Harrelson and Wesley Snipes star in this by-the-numbers action movie about transit cops patrolling the subways. The two play foster brothers with an unhealthy dependency on each other: they work together, they live next door to each other, they go for the same type of girl. Smell a conflict? Their everyday routine of playing drunk to entice thieves is a lot more fresh and entertaining than the inevitable fighting/stealing/chasing sequences. If you do live for action, be warned that most of the moves in this movie are haphazard and come late in the game.

A Month By The Lake. Beautiful locations and charming acting can't quite make up for the deep-down boring soul of this movie, a tension-less love story between upper class Britons on vacation in Italy. Vanessa Redgrave plays the lively Miss Bentley, and it's difficult to understand what, exactly, she sees in the crusty old Major (Edward Fox)--especially considering she's being courted by a fine young Italian with a motorcycle. The Major, in turn, is smitten with the young American governess (Uma Thurman), an irresponsible flirt who clearly detests him. The few mix-ups and cross-generational crushes all sort themselves out neatly in time for a sun-dappled ending, just like you knew they would.

Mortal Kombat. There's nothing like 90 minutes of karate matches and techno music to make you feel stupid. This expensive and admittedly well-made advertisement for the Mortal Kombat video game doesn't have enough thrills to keep the simplistic comic-book story interesting, and you're left wondering why so many video games center around competitive brutality in the first place. The film is actually rather harmless, though, and good for a laugh or two, so if you're into fight choreography it might be worth a look. Just be warned: No one who sits through the film will be able to get the cheesy title song out of his head for at least a week.

Mr. Wrong. Ellen DeGeneres plays the straight man (so to speak) in this horrific romantic comedy about a 30-something career gal fending off attacks on her status as single older sibling. Bill Pullman plays the boyfriend turned stalker with such convincing psychosis it's hard to decide where the humor ends and the horror begins. Far from a simple romantic comedy about exploded expectations, this twisted tale exploits every fear you've ever had about intimacy. And if you never had any, it'll give you a few to consider before ever again saying, "I just want you to be yourself." An hilarious black comedy that starts on the set of a San Diego morning show and ends in a Tijuana jail.

MRS. PARKER AND THE VICIOUS CIRCLE. Jennifer Jason Leigh gives yet another remarkable but downer performance as writer Dorothy Parker, a reliable fixture at the Algonquin Round Table, where New York's greatest literary minds of the '20s regularly met to exchange banter and amuse themselves. Director and co-screenwriter Alan Rudolph has a wonderful sense of time and place and attitude, but he slacks on story structure, and it becomes obvious that he is vastly more interested in the ways Mrs. Parker's "vicious circle" affected her comically cynical personality than in addressing the emotional forces that led to them in the first place. It's a colorful, quote-peppered and inevitably shallow celebration of a famous person's depression.

Mulholland Falls. The trailer for this one looks pretty good, but the movie is another story. For some unknown reason, an all-star cast including Nick Nolte, Melanie Griffith and Chazz Palminteri has been matched up with an insufferable and completely banal script. Nolte plays a cop hunting L.A. bad guys in this China Town-style story; he and all the other characters repeat themselves constantly, so don't worry about the plot getting too intricate. As if the predictable plot weren't enough, the character development in this movie barely dips above comic book level. Stay home and eat a chocolate bunny.

MURDER IN THE FIRST. Kevin Bacon plays a small-time criminal who was cruelly sentenced to three years of solitary confinement in Alcatraz, and Christian Slater plays the idealistic young attorney who fights on the prisoner's behalf after he is charged with killing a fellow inmate. In this showy attempt at courtroom drama, everything comes down to a question of whether it's wrong to torture people and throw them in dark little rooms. Bacon's performance as a man permanently stunted by his victimization is amazing, but Slater doesn't make a very convincing idealist (despite the fact that he appears to be wearing Kevin Costner's clothes), and the focus on the two men's friendship almost seems imposed on the material to make up for the movie's lack of a strong villain.

MURIEL'S WEDDING. This Australian comedy, like Strictly Ballroom and The Adventures of Priscilla Queen of the Desert before it, seems like its fashions came from another planet. The story of Muriel--an overweight ugly duckling who must overcome bitchy friends, a pompous father and her own misguided dreams of marriage in order to become a swan--would be perfunctory if it weren't for the style it was told in. How can you resist a film dominated by gaudy colors, ABBA songs, and an unnatural emphasis on Muriel's facial contortions while frowning and smiling.

MY FAMILY. This epic-length tale of a Los Angeles Mexican family is divided into a triptych centering on three men: the '20s father whose endurance allowed the family to take roots in this new land; the '50s son whose rejection of his father's values leads to tragedy; and the other, younger son who in the '80s must reconcile his identification with both men. Jimmy Smits gives a strong performance in the latter role, and the film's storybook quality has appeal. But too many corny, watered-down or otherwise ill-conceived scenes rob the picture of any real impact outside of being a fond family memoir.