VIDEOS

Scream (18). As colossal post-modern jokes go, this is a rather brilliant one. You know you've stumbled on something several cuts above the usual teen-terror crud when Drew Barrymore is disembowelled in the first 10 minutes. And for the rest of the film, director Wes Craven and writer Kevin Williamson continue to uproot genre cliches. The suburban setting is familiar from Eighties slashers, as is the mystery killer/multiple suspects scenario, but the potential victims are a bunch of knowing, pop- culture-savvy teens worthy of Clueless. Though self-reflexive and, indeed, self-mocking, Scream is not simply a glib exercise in deconstruction: it's an extremely effective horror movie in its own right, with skilfully sustained suspense, and shock tactics to spare (both hackneyed and inspired). Given the sexist norm of the genre, it's encouraging that the female characters (played by Neve Campbell, Rose McGowan and Courteney Cox) are by no means pushovers. Two sequels are in the works, and you can expect diminishing returns to set in, but for what it's worth, Scream offers more than you'd ever thought possible from a slasher movie.

Everyone Says I Love You (12). Woody Allen's 26th feature and first musical isn't quite the embarrassment it could have been, but it's also never more than mildly amusing. Set in Allen's usual affluent, uptown- Manhattan milieu (and an even more entrenched version than usual), the film makes scenic detours to Paris and Venice, further flaunting its exclusivity. Allen plays a writer, Goldie Hawn his do-gooding ex- wife, and Julia Roberts the young lover who can't keep up.

More and more, Allen's films tend to be better when he's not in them (eg, Bullets Over Broadway). The ones in which he stars as various barely disguised versions of himself (this one, Mighty Aphrodite, and his new one, the disastrous Deconstructing Harry) give off increasingly unpleasant whiffs of wish-fulfilment and self-congratulation.