GRECOFILM

When it comes to neuroses, Roy makes Woody Allen look like the Dalai Lama.

He's the obsessive-compulsive conman played by Nicolas Cage, in Ridley Scott's enticing but defective dramedy Matchstick Men.

When he's working a scam, it's not the cops Roy gets antsy about, but the microbes floating around in the air. Everywhere. Right now. Out to get you.

His partner-in-crime and brash protégé Frank (Sam Rockwell) worries that Roy's multitudinous tics and phobias are eventually going to land them in hot water. To compound the problem, Roy's shrink (Bruce Altman) reunites him with his 14-year-old daughter Angela (Alison Lohman), and it's not long before she's kipping on the couch.

She upsets Roy's carefully balanced pattern of existence with her clutter and bad table manners, and threatens to blow the biggest swindle of his and Frank's joint career.

The premise is beguiling: Cage tortured with twitches, having to balance parental responsibilities with his commitment to ripping off hardworking Joes. It's fun for a while, but something's got to give.

Disappointingly the same goes for the plot. It engages you with the deepening bond between father and daughter, but then late in the game, Scott takes his eye off the ball and leaves their relationship up in the air.

Russell Crowe wages war on water in this rousing, old-fashioned adventure, which stays afloat despite being almost as long and self-important as its title.

April, 1805. Pint-sized French fascist Napoleon is "master of Europe", but Britain is still scrapping on the high seas. The ship HMS Surprise is defending the Empire on "the far side of the world", chasing a French frigate along the coast of Brazil.

"CROWE DELIVERS ANOTHER FINE PERFORMANCE"

But then, the tables are turned. Outmanoeuvred and outgunned, Captain Jack Aubrey (Crowe) is up against it. While his best friend, surgeon Stephen Maturin (Paul Bettany), wants to scarper, 'Lucky' Jack is determined to fight on - and damn the consequences.

Crowe delivers another fine performance here, mastering an English accent (and the violin) as a gruff action-man with pretensions. The movie matches his character, as it's not quite happy to be a brain-in-the-bin swashbuckler. Oh no: Master And Commander craves importance.

"LESS GLADIATOR, MORE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC"

So, instead of zipping through the slight story (chase ship: capture it), director/co-writer Peter Weir (The Truman Show) is bogged down by a 'character-building' stopover in the Galapagos Islands. It's less Gladiator, more National Geographic, as Maturin mooches around oohing over nature like a good-looking Charles Darwin.

Sandwiching this snooze, though, is some great aquatic action. Filmed in the same giant tank as Titanic, the sea-set sequences are utterly convincing; both exciting and spectacular.

With her auspicious debut "Ratcatcher", Lynne Ramsay demonstrated that she thrived on atmosphere, favouring a hauntingly sensual visual style over dialogue and an over-explained plot.

Now with her second film, Ramsay is back on equally uncluttered and mesmerising turf.

Capturing the mood and visuals of Alan Warner's eponymous novel, she's faithful rather than slavish to its spirit - no mean feat for this cult and allegedly unfilmable book - and the results are dazzling.

The film opens with Morvern (Morton), bathed in the intermittent glow of her Christmas tree lights, sensually caressing the body of her boyfriend, who has committed suicide on the kitchen floor.

Numbed by his death, she pretends that he's left town. Then, after discovering his unpublished novel, she decides to pass it off as her own.

Not so much a discredit to her boyfriend but her ticket to a new life, Morvern uses the money from her beau's bank account to take herself, and her best friend Lanna (McDermott), to Spain.

But while Lanna opts for partying, Morvern retreats from the tourist areas and negotiates a book deal that enables her to escape her former life.