Richard Armstrong of the University of Houston offered the conventional reading: "The father had failed to provide his son with a heroic narrator vis a vis gentiles... His own appropriation of Hannibal was as a killer semite..."

Not so, said Sander L. Gillman of Emory University. Freud's father had absorbed the lesson of the Hep-Hep Riots, pogroms aimed at Jews; the "ritual" when a Jew met a non-Jew, Gilman said, was that the Jew was to step off the wooden boardwalk "into the street," which was filled with the leavings of horses. "The Jew stands in the shit while the non-Jew goes by," Gilman thundered in fresh outrage. It was plain from the story that Jacob Freud had lost his hat because he had refused to get out of the way; and offered the story to his son as a "real act of resistance."

Gilman did not win adherents. In the Q-and-A that ensued, a woman in the second row who didn't ask questions but gave mini-lectures (and good ones at that) pointed out that the Hep Hep riots took place in 1819 and Freud's father was born in 1815 so it was a stretch to say he had absorbed its lessons. Then an older lady said in a somewhat quavery voice that she was disturbed by the image of the wimpy Jewish male that the Yivo Institute was allowing to go out to the world. Did the panelists not feel responsibility for this false image? Shouldn't they rectify it? Could everyone please respond to this point?

The author Fredric Morton, doing his part to rectify the image in a snappy brown leather jacket, was the moderator. He said the questioner was surely right, but the issue she had raised was big enough for a panel of its own, in the meantime everyone should ponder the matter. And with that he ended the discussion.

But in Red Dragon , Hannibal the Cannibal is just one of two memorable psychos to avoid on a dark street. In what you might call the prologue to a prologue, Lecter comes dangerously close to fatally wounding Will Graham (Edward Norton), the brilliant F.B.I. profiler and forensics expert who caught him and ended his reign of terror. Will is so shaken by this traumatic close shave with death that he leaves law enforcement and retires to Florida with his wife (Mary-Louise Parker) and son. Suddenly a new maniac is on the loose, slaughtering whole families on nights with a full moon, labeled the "Tooth Fairy" because of the jagged teeth prints he leaves in their flesh. Reluctantly, Will is lured back to work and forced to turn to his worst enemy for advice on how to solve the case. The rest of the movie is not for people with high blood pressure or prone to fainting spells.

It's no wonder the Tooth Fairy, a.k.a. the "Red Dragon" because of a mysterious Chinese symbol left behind at every murder scene, writes mash notes to Dr. Lecter's maximum-security cell in the asylum. He is Francis Dolarhyde, a shy, mild-mannered employee of a photo-developing plant who has a harelip and a massive inferiority complex. Secretly, however, he's a bodybuilder with a sexual-identity problem and a pyromaniac with a fondness for ancient tortures, whose toned torso is covered with the tattoo of a dragon from a 200-year-old drawing housed in the Brooklyn Museum. Ralph Fiennes, in one of his most lurid characterizations, is every bit as diabolical as the celebrated cannibal he hero-worships. When so many sick sisters put their damaged brains together, the horrors escalate, and director Brett Ratner literally piles on the Grand Guignol.

The excellent script by Ted Talley balances sharp, intelligent dialogue with vivid and intriguing characters, and the first-rate cast serves the material with real passion instead of souped-up histrionics. Emily Watson is marvelous as the lonely blind girl who almost turns Dolarhyde human before she lands in a terrifying situation beyond her comprehension. Harvey Keitel is a doggedly determined F.B.I. boss, and Philip Seymour Hoffman gives another indelible performance as the unscrupulous reporter for a sleazy tabloid who pays dearly for his scoop, glued to a flaming wheelchair minus his tongue.

Edward Norton makes a riveting centerpiece-tough and brilliant, heroic but not afraid to hide the fact that he knows the meaning of fear. This chameleon is having a banner season. In the triumphant New York stage revival of Lanford Wilson's Burn This , he's oily, arrogant and on the verge of violence with a black mustache and a slick doo-wop pompadour. In Red Dragon , he's a clean-cut preppie with a healthy tan and streaked blond hair who looks like he plunges into harm's way with ferocity to solve cases only when he's not busy modeling for Ralph Lauren's Polo collection. Ralph Fiennes is another hypnotic doppelgänger , psychologically twisted from childhood by a cruel, sexually abusive mother (the voice of Ellen Burstyn) and trembling with the need for someone to love, then shrieking naked through the darkness of a deserted nursing home to plan an apocalypse of carnage. It's a fearless performance that is scary and appealing at the same time.

That leaves Anthony Hopkins in an odd position. He's the one we return to see, time after time, yet this film is just a prelude to the slaughter that Lecter will perpetrate later. Most of the time, he's confined in chains to the subterranean caverns of the asylum where Clarice Starling will later tread. This leaves him fairly toothless, so to speak, and forces Mr. Hopkins to achieve a full characterization with narrowed lizard eyes and facial tics. But even with restraints, he commands attention. He's a monster resistant to every method in criminology, but you've got to admit he's an amusing monster. Give him sodium pentathol and he'll give you a recipe for clam dip.

Red Dragon remains my favorite of the three Thomas Harris books. It was filmed once before, in 1986, as Manhunter , a dull, second-rate, routine cops-and-killers programmer with the shocks and decadence missing. Mr. Harris once told me that he was so devastated by the dismal way his material was ruined that he vowed never to sell the rights to any of his future novels to Hollywood again. Luckily, Jonathan Demme came up with the right approach to The Silence of the Lambs and the author wisely changed his mind. Red Dragon is on the same level of achievement-beautifully acted, superbly written, imaginatively directed and photographed, and nail-gnawingly suspenseful. It didn't work in 1986, but this time they got it right. Red Dragon is so good that it might be the final word on Hannibal Lecter. If so, he can now rest in peace-but as a resident of the same building where Boris Karloff lived and died, I don't believe it. To quote my doorman, "He'll be back."

Delectable Witherspoon

Sweet Home Alabama is second-rate fluff with a first-rate star. Delectable Reese Witherspoon is New York's newest sensation, a trendy fashion designer and media darling who graces all those glossy, irrelevant publications that make methadone clinics look like moonglow. Engaged to the rich, handsome, politically ambitious son (Patrick Dempsey) of the gorgeous Mayor of the city (Candice Bergen), she's got a great career, a marriage proposal that came in the middle of Tiffany's, and a wedding at the Plaza in the works. What nobody knows is that the debutante from a white-columned Southern plantation who is taking the Apple by storm is really trailer trash from Pigeon Creek, Ala., with a redneck husband she married in high school and hasn't seen in seven years. Once she's back in the land of coon dogs, chicken-fried steak and lightning bugs-and don't forget the catfish festival-things just kind of get down in her gizzard, you know what I mean? Her folks, Earl and Pearl, have hearts of melted lard, her husband looks like a young Paul Newman, and everyone takes time for a good homily or two ("You can't ride two horses with one ass," says Earl) before the happy fade. By the time all of New York high society descends on Dogpatch, she's found out what a selfish, stuck-up "psycho Daisy Mae" she's become, and … well, you get the picture. It's as preposterous and phony as a Confederate C-note, but Reese Witherspoon has so much natural beauty, talent and charm she guarantees more fun than the day the hogs ate Willie.

Mourning In America

Moonlight Mile , a meandering soap opera written and directed by Brad Silberling, is not exactly a fiasco, but it is a disappointment, with A-list actors from whom I expected a great deal more. When his fiancée is murdered in a freak shooting in a coffee shop on the eve of their marriage, a young man named Joe Nast (Jake Gyllenhaal) stays on in the home of the girl's parents, Ben and Jojo Floss (Dustin Hoffman and Susan Sarandon), to administer damage control. While the local D.A. (Holly Hunter) tries to prosecute the killer, the parents turn their would-be son-in-law into their surrogate child. Ben makes him a new partner in his office, selling commercial real estate. Jojo elects him as her confidante, a repository for her rage and cynicism. It's up to Joe to discover that he's the crutch they both lean on, the wedge that prevents them from connecting with each other in the intimacy they dread.

Joe is the blank page everyone wants to write on. What they don't know is that the engagement was broken off three days before their daughter's death. As their mourning intensifies, Joe tries to be what everyone else wants him to be, losing himself along the way. When he falls in love with another girl, he must find a way to break away and save himself from a bogus future without breaking the hearts of the people he cares about.

When each of the parents finally cracks, it gives two fine actors a chance to show what they've got, but the rest of the movie just limps around them. In a contrived courtroom dénouement, Joe gives the town a "truth enema" at the trial, providing a resolution for everyone that is not entirely convincing. Ben changes his mind about carving up the town and redeveloping the popular hangout where his daughter died, Jojo unclogs her writer's block and miraculously hits the typewriter, and Joe hits the road.

Because Moonlight Mile deals with family, small-town paradoxes and the various ways people deal with grief in the face of unexpected tragedy, comparisons with In the Bedroom are unavoidable. But Moonlight Mile never comes close to the subtle, wrenching honesty and fresh observance of minute detail that made In the Bedroom such a shocking and exemplary American masterpiece. It means to be slow and considered, but it's never remotely as original or as emotionally involving. The title doesn't even make sense. Moonlight Mile is manipulative and brush-stroked with so much Disney gloss it looks polyurethaned. The actors work hard, to little avail. Mr. Hoffman is a coiled cylinder of tension, and Ms. Sarandon (giving the best and most original performance in the film) is a statue of resignation and pragmatism. The biggest problem is the character of Joe, who is so passive and inarticulate you just want to punch him, and Mr. Gyllenhaal plays the role the same blank-faced way he played the teenage misfits in Donnie Darko and The Good Girl , with a trademark awkwardness that is getting to be a drag. That big, droopy, wet-eyed, "Who stole my cereal bowl?" school of acting is O.K. for cocker spaniels, but somebody should tell him this performance has already been given by Tobey Maguire.

Mr. Skarsgård seems at first to be way over the top in his portrayal, with the borrowed boisterousness of his Americanoid manner and the incredible presumption he gives off while guiltlessly humiliating Ms. Rampling's character as well as his mistress, whom he marries and then leaves. The second wife jilted by Mr. Skarsgård's trader in broken hearts is played by the usually feisty and self-possessed Deborah Kara Unger, but here she is reduced to a pathetic supplicant as the action switches back and forth between Athens and New York and Mr. Skarsgård's character returns to foreign soil to try to reclaim his family.

Mr. Nossiter and Mr. Lasdun have endowed Athens, particularly, with sinister angles and textures as they provide an anti-American political subtext in the matter of U.S. support for the colonels and their junta dictatorship in Greece so long as the country remained aligned with the anti-Soviet bloc. Unfortunately, it is a stretch to link American foreign policy with one deranged individual.

Yet Signs and Wonders does work after a fashion as an eerie evocation of horror through technological deception. Mr. Nossiter's Athens is not the Athens of tourists, but rather a steamy labyrinth of treacheries ancient and modern, through which evil can flourish in an atmosphere of chaos.

Back for Another Bite

Ridley Scott's Hannibal, from a screenplay by David Mamet and Stephen Zaillian, based on the novel by Thomas Harris, takes the creepy character of Hannibal Lecter about as far as it can go with his increasingly campy cannibalism, without turning him into a serial monster on the order of the 30's Frankenstein-Dracula sequels. Hannibal the Cannibal's evolution on the screen–from a small role in Michael Mann's Manhunter in 1986, to Jonathan Demme's Oscar-winning The Silence of the Lambs in 1991, to Mr. Scott's new entry–has magnified Hannibal finally to the point of vanishing returns. Lecter has even sunk to the level of making Bela Lugosi-like jokes on the order of "I don't drink [pause] wine." In this vein, Lecter evokes giggles every time he makes a reference to his "dining."

I haven't read Mr. Harris' latest manifestation of Lecter, though I did somewhat admire Silence of the Lambs as a good read, in the same way I enjoyed Mr. Demme's movie version. Since I don't know how faithful Mr. Mamet and Mr. Zaillian have been to the novel, I have no way of evaluating the publicized defections of Jodie Foster and Mr. Demme from the project on the grounds of deficiencies and excesses in the book. Still, I didn't find the movie as unspeakable as all that–even though there are undeniably too many gaping holes and glaring improbabilities in the narrative, possibly to supplant the curse of sequelitis with the curse of pretentiousness.

Julianne Moore is not inferior to Ms. Foster as F.B.I. Agent Clarice Starling, she is just distractingly different, and she has much less to do in the way of missions that make sense. Hence, she ends up saving Lecter from an even more malignant villain, after which she tries vainly to capture him for the greater glory of the F.B.I., which has done nothing but treat her shabbily.

The big plot difference between Hannibal and Lambs involves the corruption of the F.B.I. and other law-enforcement authorities here and abroad by the new villain, Mason Verger (played by an unrecognizable Gary Oldman). Verger seeks revenge against Lecter for horribly disfiguring him in what started out as a homosexual tryst. Verger has conveniently inherited a huge fortune from his family, and this gives him the capacity to cavort like a megalomaniac in the manner of the global madmen of the James Bond series. For the gruesome process of the revenge, Verger has assembled a herd of man-eating hogs to prepare Lecter himself for his last meal with Verger. Imitation, I suppose, is the sincerest form of flattery. Since I have been warned by the producers not to give away the last 10 minutes of the film, I presume that I am not free to tell you whether Hannibal–or Agent Starling, for that matter–survives for the purpose of still another sequel.

In the decade since Lambs , the F.B.I., Lecter and just about everyone else in the film have become more wired. Agent Starling, particularly, spends more time at her computer and cell phone than she does in the field, which ranges in Hannibal from Florence and Sardinia in Italy to Richmond, Va. Ray Liotta's Agent Paul Krendler torments Agent Starling until he is subjected to a climactic punishment that made even the kids in the audience gasp. Fear not: All the bad guys get theirs, and Lecter himself serves as a tour guide through Florence and the Italian Renaissance.

The Consequences of Cliques

Agnès Jaoui's The Taste of Others ( Le Goût des Autres ), from a screenplay by Ms. Jaoui and Jean-Pierre Bacri, is this year's French entry for the Best Foreign Language Film Academy Award. As such, it partakes of many of the virtues to which we have become accustomed in the French cinema. It is civilized, polite, gentle, occasionally bitter and sardonic, more often wise and perceptive–and, from the point of view of an American art-house audience, understandable and universal, in that it is all about cliques and the often heartbreaking but futile attempts to break into them. The Taste of Others thereby goes beyond satire into Chekhovian irony as it traces a variety of socially awkward moments without condescension or exaggeration.

Castella (Jean-Pierre Bacri) is a financially successful suburban businessman who feels insecure around the better-educated colleagues with whom he comes into contact. He is particularly vexed by Weber (Xavier De Guillebon), a subordinate he has hired to facilitate a foreign deal. Weber, the product of exclusive schools in Paris, tends to intimidate Castella with his smooth bureaucratese in conducting negotiations. Castella is also henpecked by a foolishly snobbish wife who lacks the good taste to support her domineering manner.

One night, when the wife, Angélique (Christiane Millet), drags him to a local performance of Racine's Bérénice , Castella is unexpectedly moved by the performance and comeliness of the lead actress, Clara (Anne Alvaro), who plays the Queen. Castella fails to recognize her as the woman–hired by his subordinate, Weber–who is teaching him English, and whom he dismissed curtly at their first meeting. Castella has the same problem pronouncing the English "th" as Emil Jannings' German students had, with sibilantly comic effect, in Josef von Sternberg's The Blue Angel (1930). But Clara's English is not all that confident either, and the interaction between student and teacher is more comic than Pygmalion -like. Still, Castella learns enough English to express his romantic feelings for Clara; and though he is rebuffed, he has already moved into her circle of aesthetes, where he is treated with a smirking amusement that Clara detects and Castella does not.

Intoxicated by this new world of artistic activity, Castella buys a painting from a member of the clique and commissions a costly mural for his factory as well. When his wife removes his painting from the living-room wall, he revolts at long last over her bad taste and leaves her. For her part, Clara has second thoughts about Castella. There are two subplots involving Castella's bodyguard Moreno (Gérard Lanvin), the woman bartender Manie (Agnès Jaoui) with whom he has an affair, and Deschamps (Alain Chabat), the lovelorn chauffeur of the Castellas, who finds some solace in the flute.

The main emphasis, however, is not on who winds up with whom and why, but on the manner in which various circles intersect while jealously guarding their exclusivity. One of the most moving encounters occurs when Weber tenders his resignation, and Castella–realizing for the first time how inconsiderate he has been of Weber's feelings out of his own insecurity–apologizes and humbly asks him to reconsider.

The Taste of Others is at its best when it exposes the cruelty of exclusion by one self-styled band of elitists or another. It applies to us all, in one way or another–whether we happen to be on the outside looking in, or on the inside looking out.

Rohmer, Highly Recommended

Eric Rohmer, at 80, is probably the world's greatest living (and active) movie director, and certainly the most consistently effective and expressive one. I say "probably" because I have no idea how many European and Asian directors have had most, if not all, of their careers pass unnoticed in America. I say "active" because Billy Wilder, at 94, could make a strong claim to global greatness. In any event, Mr. Rohmer is being honored with a 22-film retrospective at Film Forum (209 West Houston Street, 727-8110) of his work over 40 years. The series begins Feb. 9 and extends through March 15. I recommend the whole program, but if one has to make choices, these would be my 10 recommendations:

1. My Night at Maud's (1969).

2. A Tale of Springtime (1990).

3. Boyfriends and Girlfriends (1987).

4. Claire's Knee (1970).

5. Pauline at the Beach (1983).

6. The Marquise of O (1976).

7. The Aviator's Wife (1980).

8. A Tale of Winter (1992).

9. Autumn Tale (1998).

10. A Summer's Tale (1996).

My list is Machiavellian only to this extent: My Night at Maud's is the first film in the series and Mr. Rohmer's breakout film as well. If you catch this work on Friday, Saturday or Sunday, Feb. 9, 10 or 11, you can get the program for the rest of the retrospective, and particularly for my favorites. The only film on the list I have not seen before is A Summer's Tale , which I shall take this opportunity to catch, and I hope you will, too. I have never known Mr. Rohmer to let me down completely.

He-e-e-e-e's back!

Dr. Hannibal Lecter, everybody's favorite cannibal, comes out of retirement in Hannibal , a sequel to The Silence of the Lambs so gory and

gruesome it makes the original seem like a preschooler's bedtime story. His

fondness for human livers garnished with fava beans has been replaced by a

passion for brains freshly removed from the cranium and lightly sautéed.

Anthony Hopkins, who won an Oscar for licking his lips at

the sight of a blood clot, is once again the fiendish chef, his own tongue

planted firmly in cheek as he jokingly promises "the next course is to die

for." Jodie Foster, who also won an Oscar, does not return as fearless rookie

F.B.I. agent Clarice Starling. She turned down the sequel after reading the

script, declaring it too disgusting, and was replaced by Julianne Moore. Ms.

Foster is not called the smartest actress in Hollywood for nothing. When you're

right, you're right- Hannibal is

pretty sick stuff. It is also pointless, more contrived and less original than The Silence of the Lambs . (So was the

book by Thomas Harris.) Having said all of that, I must admit I still found it

obscenely riveting, like watching a suicide in slow motion.

It's been 10 years since Hannibal the Cannibal escaped from

that maximum-security asylum for the criminally insane, and 10 years since he

made Agent Starling a media star. In the interim, she's gone down in the Guinness Book of World Records as the

F.B.I. agent who has shot and killed more criminals than anyone else-a label

that has landed her in a lot of hot water with her superiors in the F.B.I. and

the Justice Department. But in the decade since her special relationship with

the world's most lethal monster led to the capture of serial killer and master

wacko Jame Gumb, she has never forgotten Hannibal. He, in turn, has never

stopped obsessing about her. As the program notes to Hannibal teasingly suggest, "He is still her most terrifying

nightmare. She is still his fondest fantasy." Ah, love. Boris Karloff and Elsa

Lanchester couldn't explain it in The

Bride of Frankenstein , so how can I?

Hannibal is about

the effects of that special, twisted interaction. When this film opens,

Starling is under fire for aggressive use of force in crime busts after gunning

down a lady drug czar holding a baby in her arms. Fired and disgraced, her

career in ruins, Starling focuses her energy on tracking down Hannibal. She has

to stand in line. Another archfiend wants

to reach the insane Hannibal first. He is the sixth and only surviving victim

of the cannibal's carnage, a disfigured billionaire named Mason Verger, whose

face was eaten away by Hannibal and who has devoted his life to seeking revenge.

(Gary Oldman adds another memorable portrait to his gallery of weirdos, this

time mutilated and defaced beyond recognition, like a cross between John Hurt's

Elephant Man and Jim Carrey's Grinch.) "He's always with me," he mutters,

gumming his words through a rubber hole in his scarred face where a mouth

should be, "like a bad habit."

The object of all this affection, meanwhile, is discovered

in the plush, unguarded gilt of Florence, where he works as a museum curator

among the Tuscan frescoes and delivers brilliant lectures about Italian

history, with gleeful emphasis on disembowelments and hangings. But you can't

keep a good villain honest and stress-free long. Skulking through the shadows

of Florence after dark in a long black overcoat like Jack the Ripper, Hannibal

soon longs for the good old days and once again wants to "taste the enemy." The

enemies on his trail include an ambitious

Italian detective (Giancarlo Giannini), who seeks the $3 million reward

for his capture; a gaggle of Sardinian gangsters employed by Verger; a corrupt

Justice Department honcho (Ray Liotta) looking for his own 10 minutes of

tabloid fame; and Clarice herself. The rest of the movie catalogs the

diabolical ways Dr. Lecter disposes of them, one by one, in savage, bloodcurdling

tortures. I wouldn't call Hannibal

the perfect date movie.

While Anthony Hopkins fails to find anything fresh in Lecter

beyond clicking his teeth and staring into his victims' eyes with soothing

words, like a dentist before he reaches for the drill, Julianne Moore makes

Clarice an entirely new creation. The similarities between her and Jodie Foster

are closer than you might think. They're the same kind of dedicated

risk-takers-accomplished, cool, sharply focused, attractive and vulnerable, but

with a hard edge that warns "Don't mess with me." Ms. Moore says she accepted

the challenge despite Ms. Foster's association with the role because she wanted

to work with Mr. Hopkins. Unfortunately, they appear in separate sections of

the film and don't meet face to face until the final scenes. Without the

introspective direction of Jonathan Demme, they're pretty much on their own.

Mr. Demme, who won historic acclaim for The Silence of the Lambs , has been replaced by Ridley Scott, who is

more interested in blood and horror than character and plot. He doesn't seem

comfortable with people talking and analyzing, and the scenes in the forensics

lab that were so important in the first film now feel like the director's

passing time nervously to fill in gaps. He's really in his element when people

are being thrown to a horde of flesh-eating wild boars, with close-ups of heads

chewed and arms ripped out of their sockets.

David Mamet and Steven

Zaillian ( Schindler's List ) are the

two scriptwriters. They're not amateurs, but somewhere along the way the

decision was made to throw the movie to sensationalism and the hell with logic.

(We don't believe for a minute that even a crack agent like Clarice would

handcuff herself to a human demon with a talent for ripping off a woman's face

with his bare fangs.) The plot is forced, and the finale is so unsatisfactory

it almost seems played for laughs. The last 10 minutes, which critics are

begged not to reveal, are so nauseating and over the top they defy description

anyway. Giggling nervously in moments of suspense comes naturally to audiences

who don't know whether to laugh or scream, but this time the slaughterhouse

brutality is so depraved it's preposterous.

On the plus side, there

is Ms. Moore's unruffled calm, the beautiful cinematography (Italy has never

looked more alluring) and an interesting comment on how America turns serial

killers into celebrities (Lecter's copy of The

Joy of Cooking sells for $16,000 at auction). Dark and unsavory stuff, even

for cannibals, Hannibal may not repeat

the overwhelming success of its 1991 predecessor, but it won't go unnoticed,

either. Bring smelling salts.

Are You Stalking Me?

Panic , a plodding

independent film that has been making the rounds of the festival circuit, is

worth seeing simply for William H. Macy's portrayal of an unobtrusive,

nondescript, perfectly ordinary man who seems normal and dull in every way

except his work. He gets paid to kill people. Married, and the father of a

6-year-old son, he was taught to be a gun for hire at an early age by his

tyrannical father (Donald Sutherland), but now he's in a rut. He wants to

retire and leave the family business. A passive hit man who has never stopped

to question how passionless and routine his life is, he's desperate to escape

his father's evil control, but doesn't know how. So he turns to an analyst

(John Ritter) for help, only to discover that his next victim is the shrink

himself. Panic sets in, for

understandable reasons.

Like most debut films made by writer-directors weaned on

television, Panic has no sense of

timing or pace, and the dialogue provided by Henry Bromell ( Chicago Hope ) is so banal I feel

compelled to share an example with you:

"Are you stalking me?"

"No, why would I be stalking you?"

"Because you're screwy."

"You have nice feet."

"Wanna come in?"

The interesting thing is the way it shows the business of

murder as a job as boring as accounting. Professional gun merchants sell

weapons from their car trunks while they discuss their H.M.O.'s, and

"contracts" are as casual a lunch topic as the merits of the Lexus versus the

BMW. The excellent cast includes Tracey Ullman, Barbara Bain and Neve Campbell,

and it's a pleasure to watch Mr. Macy work out the nuances in such an agonized

role, but after Analyze This , Grosse Pointe Blank and The Sopranos , the idea of killers in

therapy has grown stale. This one isn't played for laughs, but should have

been.

Two Words: Dianne

Reeves

One question I am always

asked: Who is the next Billie, Sarah, Ella, Carmen or Lena? I can now answer in

two words: Dianne Reeves. She sings and swings like all of them put together.

Sultry, savvy, unique, adventurous, with a range that flies off the Richter,

she's the hottest thing in jazz. On Valentine's Day, she'll prove it once again

with a one-of-a-kind concert at Lincoln Center's Avery Fisher Hall at 8 p.m. to

celebrate the release of her spectacular new Blue Note CD, The Calling-Celebrating Sarah Vaughan .

The CD is quite the most volcanic eruption of music I have

heard in a very long time, a compilation of songs recorded in the past by

"Sassy" herself, in which Ms. Reeves puts her own spin on lush ballads like "If

You Could See Me Now," "Key Largo" and "Speak Low," as well as blazing big-band

blowouts like "Lullaby of Birdland" and "I Hadn't Anyone Till You" (on which

she is joined in a swinging vocal duet by jazz trumpeter Clark Terry). She's

accompanied by a 42-piece orchestra that shifts effortlessly from throbbing

strings to a Count Basie blast, and the arrangements are out of this world.

The three-octave range

Ms. Reeves displays on the salsa-tinged Brazilian classic "Obsession" is like

nothing you've ever heard before, and she miraculously makes the tiresome "Send

in the Clowns" sound like a fresh discovery, underscoring the familiar melody

with pastel echoes that embrace the joy of jazz. Using pauses and spaces the

way Bill Evans traded eights on the keyboard, she can sing out the words on "I

Remember Sarah" in saxophone-like torrents, or lag behind the beat in order to

stretch key words or syllables into emphatic notes with Sisyphus-like defiance,

reshaping the melody while holding and bending notes long beyond the bar in her

richest contralto tones.

Elegant, supple, graceful, sensually ripe and phrasing with

ecstasy, she gives me what Ethel Waters used to call "the mean shivers." Her

power to meld the sheer, happening rapture of jazz and the romantic sweep of

popular singing literally erupts on every miraculous cut on this new CD. All of

this, and more, makes for the perfect valentine on Feb. 14, and who needs

another box of Godiva anyway?