Movie Openings

Kika *

(Aquarius) Body parts, high heels and color-saturated sets star in Pedro Almodovar's lurid attempt to combine comedy with murder, sex and mystery. Spain's bad boy again borrows from his Holy Trinity--Banuel, Hitchcock and Wilder--but this time comes up with a strange cinematic hybrid that doesn't work, doesn't move and doesn't have anything to say. "Kika" is a kinky post-modern pastiche fatally short on substance and energy.

Inspired by the William Kennedy Smith rape trial and his own loss of privacy, Almodovar has fashioned his 10th film around tabloid television and the voyeuristic public that craves it. Kika (Veronica Forque), a kooky makeup artist, is at the center of an intricate story that has her sleeping with both a moody lover (Alex Casanovas) and his American stepfather (Peter Coyote), a writer who may have a passion for murder. In the film's most controversial scene, Kika is raped by a porno star who has escaped from prison; the rape is taped by a peeping Tom, and the footage ends up on "The Worst of the Day," a TV reality-based program hosted by a reporter (Victoria Abril) wearing Gaultier-designed dominatrix attire.

Such is life in post-modern Madrid--violence and betrayal recorded for nightly TV. Almodovar's dark vision is neither funny nor insightful, and he never allows you to care about these characters.

Joe Bob might advise you to check this one out. I'd advise you to check it off your list. In Spanish with subtitles. Released without a rating after the Motion Picture Association of America threatened to slap an NC-17 on it.

Little Buddha **

(Palo Alto Square) To play the part of Buddha, the father of a spiritual and cultural tradition that has sustained millions of people for 2,500 years, Bernardo Bertolucci chose Keanu Reeves.

Reeves, the numskull star of "Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure" and the upcoming "Speed," and rock singer Chris Isaak are two pretty but essentially untalented stars in "Little Buddha," the story of the young Prince Siddhartha (who becomes Buddha after reaching enlightenment) and his possible reincarnation in the present day as a young American boy in Seattle. It's an interesting premise, but one that does not get to fully bloom, in part, because of Bertolucci's preoccupation with image over substance.

"Little Buddha" is ornate, richly photographed, filled with color and spectacle and teeming with thousands of extras. But as an epic, it falls flat. Instead of relying on the historical resonance of the subject matter, Bertolucci ("Last Tango in Paris," "The Last Emperor") gets bogged down in a slow-moving story populated by ineffective, trendy actors and actresses. (Bridget Fonda plays the boy's mother.) Rated PG.

Widows' Peak ***

(Guild) Set on the Emerald Isle in 1926, in a sleepy village (indeed, most of the male population is sleeping the big sleep), this modest diversion sparkles with gorgeous rolling green vistas, wit as canny as an eye-wink and the Irish love of blather for blather's sake. The local and period color are postcard-perfect, Hugh Leonard has his scriptwriting ear in tune ("You ought to go down on your benders and give thanks!") and John Irvin ("Turtle Diary") directs unobtrusively, creating a tone that is both outlandish and warm.

With its widows "as plentiful as freckles on a redhead," the village is overseen by a "committee" of the black-clad bereaved who keep up on the time-honored proprieties of Catholicism, Anglophobia and minding your neighbor's business. Chief among them is Joan Plowright, beady-eyed as a crow. Mysteriously, the committee has taken to its bosom one non-widow (Mia Farrow, who is her usual remote self), and the mystery thickens when a British widow (Natasha Richardson) comes to town to take up residence, part her pouty red lips and sashay around in elegant frocks.

This film is all situation, coaxed along by the kind of minor enigmas that are annoying unless satisfactorily explained. Here, they are satisfactorily explained. Rated PG.