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>> An overview of this week's opening movies

by MATTHEW HAYS, JOANNE LATIMER and SIOBHÀN O'CONNOR

Due to the opening of the new AMC Forum film complex, the Mirror film section finds itself mired in a week of an unusually high number of releases. In our infinite wisdom, we've opted to review all those new releases in a series of briefs, as follows. All of the films here, with the exception of Le Roi danse, open at the Forum this Friday.

The Center of the World A proto-tragic storyline involves a young man (Peter Sarsgaard), wealthy and hooked on Internet porn, who meets up with a hot young guitarist and part-time stripper (Molly Parker) and decides to hire her for a fling in Vegas. Nay, she says, she doesn't hook, but rather just peels. But Sarsgaard dangles enough money in front of her that she succumbs to the lure of cold hard cash. Soon, the two learn that their businesswoman/client relationship becomes very complicated after emotions get thrown into the mix.

Wayne Wang's latest can only be described as a serious disappointment, a lackluster film so rife with clichés it's sort of a minor miracle they all fit in one feature. Do we really need another film about how porn dehumanizes and alienates us to the point where true intimacy can't be attained? What about the one about the john falling for his whore? And then the scene where she explains to the smitten john that it can't work and what was he expecting etc...

Yep, it's all here, shot on digital video just to remind us of how grainy and impersonal things have become (because of all that porn, technology and money for sex, remember). Sure, there are some raunchy scenes of the two stars fucking and even some lesbian overtones, but so what? Skip this wank-off of a movie that's parading as high art and head to those saloon doors of shame at the back of your non-Blockbuster video rental outlet instead. At least Buttmasters 8 is honest about what it is and spares you the dreadful, infantile preaching about the state of contemporary relationships. (MH)

Le Roi danse A captivating costume drama, this film is playful enough to win over even the most hardened, historical-drama-hating filmgoer. Director Gérard Corbiau has made some smart decisions here, never bogging down the potentially complicated setting of 17th-century France with historical detail. Instead, he keeps the focus on the intimate relationships between Louis XIV (Benoît Magimel) and his court artists Lully (Boris Terral) and Molière (Tcheky Karyo). The film follows the king's life from age 14, when he's a great ballerina but merely a symbolic ruler, to his early 20s and beyond, when the power-shy boy becomes something of a tyrant. An interesting meditation on the king's use of art for power, we watch as Louis XIV uses his artists to carve out a god-like image of himself. Lully, however, is falling passionately (and pathologically) in love with the king, something that leads to his eventual demise. Gender-bending orgiastic romps ensue, as do lurid plays and crazy ballets, but nothing is more striking than watching Magimel's nuanced and affecting portrayal of the famed king of France. Oozing with charm and lavish costumes, Gérard Corbiau (who is best known for his acclaimed Farinelli) has woven an intricate web of historical fact, sexual tension and an unabashed passion for the arts. An Oscar nominee in this year's Best Foreign Language Film category. (SO)

Series 7: The Contenders Director/writer Daniel Minahan now swears he came up with this idea long before Survivor fever (and the ensuing reality-TV epidemic) hit our pop culture. The parody is pretty astute, nonetheless: In true Survivor-Mole-Weakest Link style, participants must try to knock others out of the game so they can be the last one standing, effectively winning the booty. The catch is that contestants here, apparently not satisfied with simply voting someone off the island, actually try to kill one another. It's a funny little conceit, but for the most part, Series 7: The Contenders doesn't live up to the hype leading us to believe it's a freakily prescient indie. Yes, there are funny moments--some hick parents rooting on their daughter in the game are particularly hilarious--but for the most part this one barely offers up as much fun as, say, an average Survivor cliffhanger.

An added note: it doesn't really help that half the fun of watching something like Survivor or Temptation Island is the illusion--however phony it is--that we're watching "the real thing." No such luck here--we're aware it's actors from the get-go. (MH)

The Claim It's The Mayor of Casterbridge meets Gunsmoke. This epic Gold Rush fable has it all: saloon girls, bricks of gold, betrayal, the American Dream and a vengeful whore. It also has Sarah Polley as a young girl whose birthright is in question. Is the local gold baron (Peter Mullan) her dad? Will Nastassja Kinski, her mother, confess this truth before dying? Will the dashing railway surveyor win Polley's heart or kill her father? All these questions of plot pale against the awesome cinematography and set design behind a reconstructed Gold Rush outpost. The Canadian location was a spectacular stand-in for Sierra Nevada in the 1850s. It's cold, it's barren and everyone has bad teeth.

Director Michael Winterbottom (Welcome to Sarajevo, Wonderland) makes up for the movie's dire setting by filming most of it in the local brothel. Women and life are cheap in The Claim, but Winterbottom does his best to alleviate the despair. The Saloon Madam (Milla Jovovich) sings and the whores seem to really love their johns. While the townspeople wait to learn if the railroad will come through their area, we watch Polley's father (Mullan) falter under the agony of self-recrimination. Mullan, that talented Scottish actor from My Name is Joe and Trainspotting, is Winterbottom's ace up his sleeve. All the performances orbit around Mullan's, who comes off like authentic Gold Rush material. (JL)

The Invisible Circus Jordana Brewster plays a young woman devastated and obsessed by the death of her sister (Cameron Diaz), who passed away mysteriously some six years earlier in Europe. Brewster follows in sis's footsteps to try to figure out exactly what went wrong. She goes to Paris, drops some acid (which in turn leads to a bad trip during which she meets Diaz's ghost) and shags her sister's ex. (I guess she wants to be in exactly the same position sis was.)

As it turns out, there was more to Diaz's death than her family knew. We learn in flashback that she became infatuated with the radical left, joining in various anti-Vietnam protests and even some terrorist activity. Ultimately, this rad behaviour turns The Invisible Circus into more of a detective's quest: What did happen to Diaz and why?

The answer is a wee bit too predictable and, unfortunately, Diaz's screen-time is limited, which means sympathy around her character's plight is less than it should be. There's a depth that's desperately needed with a film like this, and though you can feel the filmmaker's best intentions, it's not quite here for the audience to pick up on.

If the film does operate well on any level, it's as travelogue, with locations like San Francisco, Amsterdam, Paris, Berlin and Portugal stunningly captured. (MH)

Love, Honour & Obey Note to the director: Karaoke isn't intrinsically funny and should be used sparingly. Love, Honour & Obey is an abysmal, karaoke-ridden addition to the current wave of British crime comedies. It elevates Snatch to high art and does very little for the career of Jude Law. The crime caper is told to us in flashback by a clown (Jonny Lee Miller from Trainspotting). He abandons his dead-end job as a courier to become a gangster for a notorious hardass. He gets into the crime family via his childhood buddy (Law), but our clown soon becomes bored and conspires to start a gang war. Guns appear, people get shot. According to the press kit, directors Dominic Anciano and Ray Burdis made it big in Britain by doing an improv-style detective show for the telly. The improv doesn't work in this film, however, and the hand-held camera doesn't jive with the melodramatic editing. The kitchen sink realism is almost as forced as the karaoke. (JL)

The Law of Enclosures After his critically acclaimed Lilies (which won a Genie for best picture) and experimental/documentary Uncut, Toronto director John Greyson has again turned to a secondary source for the inspiration to a feature. Dale Peck's novel is certainly dense, following the sad story of a young couple (played by Sarah Polley and Brendan Fletcher) and, in a parallel storyline, the same couple some 40 years later (Sean McCann and Oscar-nominee Diane Ladd).

This is a precarious film, on the one hand a typically experimental feature from Greyson, on the other a slowly paced film which will undoubtedly leave many in the audience cold. Greyson has culled intricate and intelligent performances from his four leads, in particular Ladd who is fantastic in anything in which she appears. This is undoubtedly a film primarily for hardcore Greyson followers; like the director's previous work, it has divided critics and audiences alike, inspiring as much heated debate as anything else. (MH)

The Center of the World, Le Roi Danse, Series 7: The Contenders, The Claim, The Invisible Circus, Love, Honour and Obey and The Law of Enclosures open Friday, May 4