None

Pierce Brosnan gives one of his finest performances in The Matador, a low-key buddy comedy with an agreeably sinister twist. Light-years from his former James Bond image, Brosnan is unshaven, unnerved and unpredictable as freelance assassin Julian Noble, who encounters desperate businessman Danny Wright (Greg Kinnear) in the bar of a modern Mexico City hotel. Danny is intrigued when Julian reveals that he's a "facilitator of fatalities," and his wife "Bean" (Hope Davis) is equally fascinated when Julian shows up unexpectedly, six months later, at Danny's home in Denver.

In olden days, as Cole Porter famously observed, a mere glimpse of stocking was looked on as something shocking. So it's heartening to report that this 1965 black comedy still delivers on its billing as "the motion picture with something to offend everyone." Tony Richardson, fresh off the liberating Tom Jones, brings Evelyn Waugh's self-described "little nightmare" to the screen with all its sacrilegious shocks (and then some!) intact, courtesy of screenwriters Terry Southern (Dr. Strangelove) and Christopher Isherwood.

If you prefer your cataclysms free of terrorist overtones and your superheroes unburdened by Freudian subtext-sometimes a comic book is just a comic book, after all-you could do worse than this flick. Four scientists and their corporate sponsor (guess who's the bad guy) are conducting experiments on a space station when they're hit by an unexpectedly powerful blast of solar radiation, altering their DNA and giving them freakish powers that cleverly reflect their personalities.

A light farce dressed up as a lush 18th century costume drama, Casanova gives a fictional spin to the exploits of history's most rakish seducer of women. As played by Heath Ledger, this Casanova bears no resemblance to Donald Sutherland's unrepentant portrayal in Fellini's Casanova, filmed 30 years earlier. Instead, the great ladies' man of Venice is just biding time by bedding women, waiting for true love (and the return his long-absent mother) to settle down into blissful monogamy.

Like the animated series itís based on, Aeon Flux is the kind of sci-fi thatís best appreciated by the MTV generation. Itís a serious attempt at stylized, futuristic action/adventure (the title character, played by Charlize Theron, is essentially a female James Bond for the cyberpunk era) and taken for what it is, itís not all that bad. The action takes place in the year 2415, four centuries after a virus nearly decimated the human race, leaving only five million survivors in a utopian city called Bregna.

Basic Instinct 2 sure has a funny way of holding your attention. It's not just Sharon Stone's trash-talk and occasional nudity that keeps you watching, but also the way she gamely earns every cent of her $14 million paycheck, vamping like a real pro in her second outing as mystery novelist and alleged serial killer Catherine Tramell. Now living in London, Catherine sets her lethal sights on Michael Glass (David Morrissey), the control-freak psychiatrist assigned to evaluate her as a risk-addicted suspect in the "accidental" killing of a star soccer player.

Bolero, directed by Bo Derek's husband John, comes billed as "a masterpiece of erotic adventure". Upon graduating from school in Britain, the wealthy Ayre "Mac" McGillvary (Bo Derek) hungers for more education in the art of love! Journeying to Morocco, she meets a handsome sheik, but alas, he falls asleep while seducing her. A hot-blooded matador in Spain does not disappoint, however. Unlocking her deepest desires, her world-class lover gives her a lesson in ecstasy she'll never forget.

Millions wears its heart on its sleeve, and it wears it well. Two boys, still grieving the death of their mother, find themselves the unwitting benefactors of a bag of bank robbery loot in the week before the United Kingdom switches its official currency to the Euro. What's a kid to do? Director Danny Boyle takes a simple premise and, with the help of Frank Cottrell Boyce's sweet, smart script, finds something special to say about the hopes everyone has for the future of a changing world.

It's hard to believe Ridley Scott's handsome epic won't become the cinematic touchstone of the Crusades for years to come. Kingdom of Heaven is greater than the sum of its parts, delivering a vital, mostly engrossing tale following Balian (Orlando Bloom), a lonely French blacksmith who discovers he's a noble heir and takes his father's (Liam Neeson) place in the center of the universe circa 1184: Jerusalem. Here, grand battles and backdoor politics are key as Scott and first-time screenwriter William Monahan fashion an excellent storyline to tackle the centuries-long conflict.

In The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, director Wes Anderson takes his familiar stable of actors on a field trip to a fantasy aquarium, complete with stop-motion, candy-striped crabs and rainbow seahorses. And though Anderson does expand his horizons in terms of retro-special effects and a whimsical use of color, fans will otherwise find themselves in well-charted waters.