Race The Sun. Wave upon wave of clichés pummel the audience in this movie about Hawaiian high schoolers who go to Australia to race a solar car. Halle Berry plays the perky science teacher. Jim Belushi plays the worn-out shop teacher. Boy, do they ever teach those spunky kids a lot about life and perseverance! For masochists only.

READY TO WEAR. Robert Altman revises the cross-stitched plotting technique he used in Short Cuts for this satire on the international fashion industry. Authentic Parisian settings, interviews with real designers and the commemorative inclusion of Italian actors Marcello Mastroianni, Anouk Aimee and Sophia Loren can't save the movie from its aimless one-joke premise. If ever there was a case of one naked Emperor pointing out the nakedness of another, this is it. Julia Roberts fans will want to note, however, that Altman extracts what is easily Roberts' finest performance in a sub-plot that pits her against Tim Robbins for a spark-filled weekend romance in a hotel room.

RED. Polish filmmaker Krzysztof Kielowski received a Best Director nomination for this crimson-hued meditation about how much our lives are determined by chance encounters and coincidence. It's easy to see what he was nominated for--his imagery, which includes everything from a visual explanation of the routes taken in a long-distance phone connection to a woman's face appearing to melt as a large cloth billboard is dismantled, is sumptuous and inspired. But the story, in which a lonely young woman (Irene Jacob) talks out the film's themes with a jaded ex-judge and full-time cordless-phone voyeur (Jean-Louis Trintgnant), lacks forward momentum. The movie has resonance, but it's the resonance of a first-rate visual experiment, not a full-bodied drama.

Restoration. Men in wigs and ladies in low-cut bodices frolic and fret to no end in this Robert Downey Jr. vehicle. Downey plays a young physician who fortuitously ends up in the service of the King. The fun-loving physician takes to the frivolities of the court like a fish to water, but it all ends when the King decides to marry him off to His Majesty's mistress in order to fool another, jealous mistress. Then the physician does the one thing forbidden by the King and falls in love with his own wife. What a perfect, romance novel of a plot! Yet the romance never really pans out. Instead, the physician leaves the court and goes out into the world to become a man. There's a classic Oedipal drama buried in here, for those of you keeping up on your Freud. (The King is the father figure, his mistress is the forbidden mother, and Robert Downey Jr., with his big, liquid eyes, is the son.) This film is well-made but there's nothing especially enticing here unless you love lavish costumes. I did think Sam Neill gave a good performance as King Charles II, proving there's no accounting for taste, even one's own.

THE RIVER WILD. If Disney re-made Deliverance, this is what they might have come up with: a likable but rarely exciting thriller about a family taken hostage by fugitives during a river-rafting expedition. Meryl Streep makes her action-movie debut playing a tough mama and with the exception of a few embarrassing over-the-top moments, she's a fine choice. So are David Strathairn, as Streep's aloof workaholic husband, and Kevin Bacon, as a gun-weilding bad guy with a shit-eating grin. Too bad such high-grade actors are wasted on a typical fight-the-villains-to-save-the-family-unit story. It's a good-looking River, but rather shallow.

ROB ROY. Pass the Scot tissue--here's yet another highland film bent on glorifying men with heavy accents, long hair and big morals. Liam Neeson plays the honorable title character with his usual hard-to-resist charm; and Tim Roth, as the jaded, fearsome and strangely effeminate villain, is the perfect antithesis to the hero. But the movie lingers over its themes with dull reverence, never mustering up enough cinematic oomph to add meat to its message. Something is amiss when a movie about primal purity adopts the pacing of a tea party.

The Rock. If you're looking for an entertaining action movie to fritter away a summer afternoon, this should be your first stop. Sean Connery and Nicolas Cage star as mismatched partners battling pure evil in the form of a chemical weapon that resembles a giant tube of fluorescent-green bath beads. The weapons are controlled by a whacked-out Vietnam vet (Ed Harris) on The Rock, a.k.a. Alcatraz, and the guys have to break in to the impenetrable fortress in order to save San Francisco, and possibly Oakland. Okay, so the situation is contrived, but the little twists of fate in this movie combined with genuinely funny dialogue make it a stellar piece of vapid entertainment. Extra bonus: Both Cage and Connery look surprisingly hunky in wet clothing.

ROOMMATES. As a grandpa and grandson who spend much of their lives sharing living quarters, Peter Falk and D.W. Sweeney make a fairly sweet pair. Sweeney has always been a likable average guy, and Falk is an entirely effective cranky curmudgeon. But the script doesn't know quite what to do with them; instead of outlining their relationship in brief strokes, it makes the mistake of carrying us through their entire lives, from marriages to births to funerals and on and on. Peter Yates, best known for Breaking Away, directs like a baker who doesn't realize he's left the bread in too long.

Rumble In The Bronx. Hong Kong film fans rejoice! It's a Jackie Chan film shot in New York! And it's in English, sort of! Jackie Chan, the Buster Keaton of Hong Kong, is one of the most engaging action stars of all time. He's credited with inventing the kung fu comedy and is famous for choreographing and performing all his amazing stunts himself. Rumble In The Bronx has the impish underdog protecting his uncle's grocery store in the bad South Bronx from a coed band of marauding motorcycle thugs. Thrill to one breath-taking stunt after another of Roadrunner-and-Coyote-style action come to life! Marvel at the campy coolness of the production values! The English voices of the Cantonese-speaking actors are overdubbed and the whole thing is charmingly out-of-synch. Plus, the plot seems to have been dreamed up by someone whose primary contact with American culture is '70s action movies. What could be more delightful?