Armed only with his mysterious mental connection to the feral minds of studio executives, the Movie Guru reveals just how good or bad this week's new releases will be:

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (PG-13)
Sean Connery stars as Allan Quartermain, the leader of a group of such diverse characters as Captain Nemo, Dorian Gray, Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde, and Tom Sawyer. An alternative Victorian Age world is the setting for this team's secret mission to thwart evil.
Prediction: Wasn't Allan Quartermain the lead character in a lame movie from that other alternative world, the '80s? Still, it's hard to go wrong with Sean Connery.

Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (PG-13)
The swashbuckling Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp) must stop a ship of ghost pirates before they can break a curse with the blood of Elizabeth Swann, Sparrow's girl.
Prediction: Disney special effects bring the pirates to life and Geoffrey Rush (Captain Barbossa) always delivers as the bad guy.

Spellbound (G)
You've seen them on ESPN. Fresh faces young smarties who can spell mind-bogglingly complex words. This engaging documentary introduces you to eight of them. You'll bite your fingers to the first knuckle from the suspense. No, really.
Prediction: Who needs a prediction? We've got the goods.

Re-Vamp

As Anne Rice re-visioned vampires into sexy, anguished brooders, so has writer and director Joe Ahearne, who has given them a 21st-century makeover in the 1998 British miniseries, Ultraviolets (NR).

In the first episode, on the eve of his marriage, police detective Jack Beresford disappears. His best friend and partner, Michael Colefield (Jack Davenport), dismisses the allegations from Complaints Investigation Bureau special agents Vaughan Rice (Idris Elba) and Dr. Angela March (Susannah Harker) that Jack was on the take. When Jack appears the next evening, he tells Michael the CIB agents intend to kill him, and pleads for help, Michael decides to find out what the CIB really is. As he investigates, Michael stumbles into strange and alarming events and begins to realize that his partner may have more to hide than payoffs. After the head of the CIB, former priest Pearse Harman (Philip Quast), explains the CIB's covert mission, to combat the spread of "Code Vs" (the term "vampire" is never actually used in the series) with sophisticated weapons, such as graphite bullets and ultraviolet light (crosses and other religious paraphernalia only work if the vampire they are used on believes in them), Michael sets out for a final confrontation with Jack, then joins the CIB.

After all that set-up, the remaining five episodes in the miniseries settle down, each one to deal with a topical issue—familial loyalty, sexual abuse of children, abortion, incurable diseases, and nuclear winter—through the prism of vampirism. In each, Michael is at odds with his new partners. He is the viewers' everyman, not driven like his teammates, still trying to hold together pieces of his old life, and skeptical of their insistence that Code Vs are simply evil, especially since those they encounter protest otherwise. Michael is tempted to believe the vampires' claims that they seek a cure for blood-borne diseases. Could they be trying to save humanity from itself?

The series has a mature take on these complex issues, offering no easy answers, but engaging viewers with style and chills. Add subplots involving an investigative reporter, Jack's jilted fiancé, and loyalty within the CIB itself, and Ultraviolet offers a meaty six-course video feast.

—Scott McNutt

July 10, 2003 * Vol. 13, No. 28
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