by MATTHEW HAYS & MARK SLUTSKY

Focus/Elevated Though not usually a sports movie buff, I confess to having found these two efforts brought to us by ski enthusiasts Jason Ghikadis and Simon Thomson entirely enjoyable and engaging. Set to snappy pop and hip hop scores, the films are part sports movies, part home movies-and that's part of their charm. Basically, the fellas behind these flicks just have a great time skiing and want to convey their love of the sport and their admiration for their athlete buddies through film. Hell, I hate most snow-related activities, but these profiles were both funny and inspired and had me longing for the ski lift. Geoff Mcdonald's Elevated captures both the elegance, grace and sheer fun of the sport. (Of the interviewees, the character "Rooster" is my favourite.) Focus is a bit slicker in the visual effects dept.; taken together, they reminded me that sports movies can actually have a sense of humour and provide some inspiration. These films will be presented at Le Swimming (3643 St. Laurent) this Wednesday, Oct. 22 at 9 p.m. Tix are a mere $5 and there will be prize giveaways and live performances by ...And Then She Left and Folie Loaded. (MH)

Runaway Jury Yet another star-packed John Grisham adaptation. Directed by Gary Fleder, Runaway Jury counts no less than Dustin Hoffman, Gene Hackman, John Cusack, Rachel Weisz, Dylan McDermott, and about a million character actors in its cast. This doesn't, however, add up to a very good movie, though the presence of so many talents does make the thing easier to watch.

Set against the backdrop of a landmark lawsuit against the gun industry, the flick has Hoffman as the attorney for the widow of a shooting victim, with Gene Hackman working for the bad guys as a jury consultant. Basically, Hackman's job is to ensure the defence has the most potentially sympathetic assortment of people on the jury; this naturally leads to dirty dealing involving blackmail and whatnot. Throwing a spanner into the works is the presence of jurist Cusack, who, along with girlfriend Weisz, is up to some shady business of his own. All this additional plotting drains the movie's momentum, and for a trial movie very little of interest goes on in the courtroom. Hoffman barely gets a chance to strut his stuff in front of the judge, and the one scene he and Hackman have together is sadly lacking. (MS)

The Event Sad to say it, but sometimes there really aren't many pleasant things that can be said about a movie, even those with the best of intentions. Such is the case with the latest from Thom Fitzgerald (The Hanging Garden, Wild Dogs), a feature about a gay man (Don McKellar) who's dying of AIDS. Here, as in Randal Kleiser's underrated It's My Party, McKellar decides to end it all by suiciding at a big party with all of his friends and family present. The film is hurt right away by its central premise. A mere couple of weeks after 9/11, a New York cop (Parker Posey) is desperate to prove that McKellar was helped to take his own life. The Event really does expect the audience to swing one colossal suspension of disbelief: would the police be this fixated with the death of someone who's already in the later stages of AIDS? As well, the film's superb cast list goes awry. Parker Posey is fantastic in quirky, comic roles, but she feels so out of place in a super-serious investigator role (it's almost as bad as Harrison Ford posing as a comic actor in Hollywood Homicide). Olympia Dukakis shows up as mom, doing her best to tug on our heartstrings. To no avail. There's something very odd about the topic of AIDS-so many filmmakers have delved into this territory and stumbled so badly. Don't quite know why that would be, but for whatever reasons, the topic has been dealt with most superbly via documentary, not dramatic filmmaking. (I'll cite Silverlake Life again for the second time in as many weeks.) True, AIDS is an issue that's been largely forgotten, and that's a bad thing. But this movie is not the one that's going to shake our culture out of its slumber. (MH)

Twist Though I'm dubious about Montreal launching yet another film festival, the folks behind the first annual Festival de Films Avec Twist (FFAT) look like they've brought together a broad range of short commercial films, all of which will unspool this weekend (Oct. 17-18) at the NFB downtown. And in a few final words about the New Film Fest, which wraps this weekend, Claude Fortin's eagerly anticipated comedy 100% Bio, screens this weekend, as does Nettie Wild's Fix: The Story of an Addicted City. Info: www.fcmm.com or 847-1242. Next weekend marks the second edition of The Montreal International Adventure Film Festival (Oct. 24-26), an event filled with talks and movie screenings. Presented at UQÀM, guests include Erik Weihenmayer, the famous blind mountaineer, and Sylvain Bédard, the mountaineer who climbed the highest peak in Europe after receiving a heart transplant. Info: 987-3456. (MH)

Runaway Jury and The Event open Friday, Oct. 17

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