Cameron Diaz

Anyone watching Vanilla Sky who has seen the 1997 Spanish thriller Open Your Eyes will experience an effect painters call "pentimento." The surface has been painted over, but the original design still shows through. And for those who weren't fans of the first movie, this one will register as an instant unpleasant memory. With the blessing of the original moviemaker, Alejandro Amenabar (who went on to make The Others), writer-director Cameron Crowe (Jerry Maguire, Almost Famous) has applied his own pop veneer to the tale of a handsome, rich young man's comeuppance.

Sure, "Charlie's Angels" is about butt-kicking, sassy sleuthing and all that girl-power yadda yadda. But let's face it, what makes this new movie work isn't Drew Barrymore's Oscar-unworthy performance or Lucy Liu's "Matrix"-like kick moves. Superficial as it seems, it's the clothes. And for proof, you don't have to look much further than Cameron Diaz's plunging neckline as she wades out of the ocean in a sleeveless black wetsuit unzipped to the navel. The 1970s "Charlie's Angels" television show about the Townsend Detective Agency and its three comely private investigators may have created fashion icons of Farrah, Jaclyn and Kate.

Come see Drew Barrymore lick a steering wheel while flaunting her death-drop cleavage in an unzipped-to-the-waist race-car jumpsuit! Check out Lucy Liu popping out of a leather bustier that apparently is appropriate attire for both baking muffins and kicking butt! Watch Cameron Diaz in a baby-T and Spiderman undies breathlessly bound to the door to sign for a UPS package! Need we say more to tout "Charlie's Angels"? For those of you who don't just require unabashed titillation to enjoy a movie, rest assured, there's more that makes this one worth seeing.

Tickets are still available for this evening's screening of "Things You Can Tell Just by Looking at Her," a romantic comedy directed by Rodrigo Garcia, who received early funding from a Maryland Producers Club Filmmakers Fellowship. The director will be in town fresh from the movie's appearance at the Cannes Film Festival. "Things You Can Tell " stars Calista Flockhart, Glenn Close, Holly Hunter, Cameron Diaz, Kathy Baker and Amy Brenneman in an ensemble comedy about contemporary relationships.

Forget florals. Ditch the dots. Lose the leopard: Python is the pattern of the moment, and for good reason. Python looks feminine and strong. It's fun, flirty and modern, not to mention sexy, exotic and just a little dangerous. "You have to be brave to wear it," says Toni James, who has stocked her cozy, fashion-forward store, Katwalk, on East Read Street with python pants, skirts and jackets in tangerine, teal and fuchsia embossed leather by Oscar Leopold, Anja Flint and other designers.

With bone-crunching, ear-pounding intensity, Oliver Stone brings the world of professional football to the screen in "Any Given Sunday," a kinetically charged gridiron drama that is enormous fun to watch through most of its nearly three-hour running time.Indeed, as long as Stone and his prodigious cast and crew stay on the field, "Any Given Sunday" is as good as movies get for generating you-are-there heat and adrenal energy. If the film's off-field drama flags a bit under windy speeches and some questionable casting, it still offers some of the most exhilarating cinema to be seen on screen in an otherwise turgid season.

SAN FRANCISCO -- Dermatologist Vail Reese has two passions: skin and the movies. The result: A Web site devoted to both.On his 3-year-old Web site, www.skinema.com, Reese analyzes movies and movie stars in terms of skin, hair and nails."I always loved film," says Reese, 35, who studied at American Conservatory Theater's Young Conservatory and considered becoming an actor.But his Web site, he says, is more than entertainment. It serves a medical purpose.He uses the characters in movies as well as actors to illustrate the skin ailments he sees in patients.

"Brave Dames and Wimpettes," by Susan Isaacs. Ballantine Books. 112 pages. $8.95.Women as doctors. Women as lawyers. TV and movies are doing a good job of depicting strong, accomplished women, right?Not really, according to Susan Isaacs. The best-selling author of "Compromising Positions" and "Almost Paradise" has written the very readable "Brave Dames and Wimpettes" for Ballantine's Library of Contemporary Thought. The book examines, as its subtitle states, "What Women Are Really Doing on Page and Screen."

The fine line between black comedy and outright misanthropy gets obliterated in "Very Bad Things," actor Peter ("Chicago Hope") Berg's writing/directing debut about a bachelor party gone horribly wrong.In an effort to be shocking and hip, Berg takes his yarn to outrageous extremes of both violence and just plain unpleasantness.Kyle (Jon Favreau of "Deep Impact") is engaged to Laura (Cameron Diaz), a control freak obsessed with having the perfect wedding. His friends, including seedy real estate agent Boyd (Christian Slater)

What's wrong with me? Here it is, mid-July, and I'm walking with a spring in my step, humming a happy tune. Sure, there's been a "Godzilla" here and an "Armageddon" there, but even the grumpiest critic has to admit they've been anomalies in what has been a shockingly good summer for good movies.Of course, consider the context: Last year at this time I was ready to slit my wrists.I had slogged through "The Lost World." I had seethed through "Con Air." I had snoozed through "Speed 2." I had grumbled through "Batman & Robin."