Ving Rhames

SUN SCORE ***1/2 Undisputed is the best action film of the summer. Even though it has relatively few big action scenes and almost no special effects, it plays like one uninterrupted streak of action, because violence menaces the characters like a storm cloud when it isn't slicing through their milieu like lightning. The tale is simple: A heavyweight boxing champ named Iceman (Ving Rhames) lands in the slammer and discovers that the quickest way out is to fight the prison program's boxing champ, Monroe (Wesley Snipes)

Growing up in Annapolis, Tim and Trevor White were hardly inseparable. Each brother had his own set of friends and pursued his own interests: Trevor discovered a passion for film early on, while Tim seemed more adrift. But recently, a shared commitment to cinema has brought the pair closer than ever, as they work toward the release of their first full-length movie. "Jamesy Boy," shot in and around Baltimore over a five-week period that ended this month, stars Mary-Louise Parker, Ving Rhames and James Woods.

A disabled ex-cop (Ving Rhames, above) learns his missing sister is being made to pay for things he's done in Sin (7:30 p.m.-10 p.m., BET).

"Jamesy Boy," an independent film directed and co-written by Maryland native Trevor White and starring Mary-Louise Parker, Ving Rhames and James Woods, will begin filming in Baltimore March 5, the Maryland Film Office announced today. The film, which will be shot over five weeks, tells the story of James (newcomer Spencer Lofranco), a street-tough gang member who ends up in a maximum security prison. There, he befriends a convicted murderer who becomes his mentor and helps turn his life around.

In between its gut-crunching set pieces, Mission: Impossible III offers a terrible argument for staying in shape. Just by bringing a weary weightiness to the screen, Ving Rhames as the most uncomplicated good guy, Philip Seymour Hoffman as the most uncomplicated bad guy, and Laurence Fishburne as the most unlikable authority figure in the Impossible Mission Force steal scenes from their athletic star. They don't look as if they could eat Tom Cruise for lunch. They look as if they already have.

THE LONG Walk Home'' dramatizes an early chapter in the civil rights war, and, despite the familiarity of the material, it engages the audience. This may be history we know, but it has all been done with great dignity.The cast has much to do with this. Sissy Spacek and Whoopi Goldberg star. Spacek is a Montgomery, Ala., matron, and Goldberg is the woman who serves as her maid. It is 1955, and Rosa Parks has already sparked the rebellion by refusing to sit in the back of the bus. The Montgomery blacks, resentful of having to enter the front of the bus, drop coins, then get off and enter the rear door, stage a boycott of the bus lines.

Growing up in Annapolis, Tim and Trevor White were hardly inseparable. Each brother had his own set of friends and pursued his own interests: Trevor discovered a passion for film early on, while Tim seemed more adrift. But recently, a shared commitment to cinema has brought the pair closer than ever, as they work toward the release of their first full-length movie. "Jamesy Boy," shot in and around Baltimore over a five-week period that ended this month, stars Mary-Louise Parker, Ving Rhames and James Woods.

The naked ladies are the least interesting part of "Striptease," based on the Carl Hiaasen novel. Although the movie is a bit too long, oddball humor and a likable cast keep it entertaining.Demi Moore stars as Erin Grant, who takes a job stripping at the Eager Beaver in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., so she can earn enough money to win a child custody case against her loser ex-husband, Darrell (Robert Patrick, probably best known as the mighty morphin' Terminator in "Terminator 2"). His criminal record got her fired from her job as a secretary with the FBI, and now he's using their daughter (Rumer Willis, Moore's real daughter)

Last year's 28 Days Later turned a corner for zombie films, one the new remake of George Romero's Dawn of the Dead exploits to great advantage. No longer do the walking dread lurch around like cars forever stuck in first gear. No more does the camera linger on the decaying corpses, watching in lurid fascination as body parts fall to the ground. With luck, never again will the grotesqueries of a zombie movie be the only thing audiences remember. Nope, the zombies of the new millennium can move.

Tennessee Williams once said of the audience and a play, "If they laugh, it's a comedy." Perhaps it's also true that "If they yell `kill 'em,' it's a gladiator show." The audience I saw it with had both those responses at John Singleton's new movie, "Baby Boy," the tale of a 20-year-old slacker in L.A.'s South Central who fathers two children with different women without growing up himself. And I'm not sure the responses I heard always came where Singleton wanted them. Singleton's writing and directing strategy here is to gear the most in-your-face domestic squabbles for laughs of recognition, then push them toward violence.

THE HAMPTONS in July and August! So much happens there during the summer months, but the coming series of live concerts on the grounds of the Ross School in East Hampton will probably rate at the top in terms of interest and attendance. The setting is intimate and exquisite; the performing stars will be Prince, Billy Joel, James Taylor, Dave Matthews and Tim Reynolds, and Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. At each event guests will enjoy living legends in concert, fine food, drink, art exhibits and luxurious lounges.

In between its gut-crunching set pieces, Mission: Impossible III offers a terrible argument for staying in shape. Just by bringing a weary weightiness to the screen, Ving Rhames as the most uncomplicated good guy, Philip Seymour Hoffman as the most uncomplicated bad guy, and Laurence Fishburne as the most unlikable authority figure in the Impossible Mission Force steal scenes from their athletic star. They don't look as if they could eat Tom Cruise for lunch. They look as if they already have.

A disabled ex-cop (Ving Rhames, above) learns his missing sister is being made to pay for things he's done in Sin (7:30 p.m.-10 p.m., BET).

Last year's 28 Days Later turned a corner for zombie films, one the new remake of George Romero's Dawn of the Dead exploits to great advantage. No longer do the walking dread lurch around like cars forever stuck in first gear. No more does the camera linger on the decaying corpses, watching in lurid fascination as body parts fall to the ground. With luck, never again will the grotesqueries of a zombie movie be the only thing audiences remember. Nope, the zombies of the new millennium can move.

SUN SCORE ***1/2 Undisputed is the best action film of the summer. Even though it has relatively few big action scenes and almost no special effects, it plays like one uninterrupted streak of action, because violence menaces the characters like a storm cloud when it isn't slicing through their milieu like lightning. The tale is simple: A heavyweight boxing champ named Iceman (Ving Rhames) lands in the slammer and discovers that the quickest way out is to fight the prison program's boxing champ, Monroe (Wesley Snipes)

Tennessee Williams once said of the audience and a play, "If they laugh, it's a comedy." Perhaps it's also true that "If they yell `kill 'em,' it's a gladiator show." The audience I saw it with had both those responses at John Singleton's new movie, "Baby Boy," the tale of a 20-year-old slacker in L.A.'s South Central who fathers two children with different women without growing up himself. And I'm not sure the responses I heard always came where Singleton wanted them. Singleton's writing and directing strategy here is to gear the most in-your-face domestic squabbles for laughs of recognition, then push them toward violence.

Quentin Tarantino's "Pulp Fiction" is a Saturday Night Fever dream: a hot, dense, wicked disco of tough-guy posturings, vivid dips of violence and literally unbelievable plot moves.Set on a single deconstructed weekend in a hyperbolically exaggerated Los Angeles criminal netherworld, it blithely slides through three main, marginally interconnected narratives, throwing away dazzling chunks of screwball dialogue, doing effortless deadpan comic riffs with the ease of a con man, while re-arranging time sequences for better thump.

THE HAMPTONS in July and August! So much happens there during the summer months, but the coming series of live concerts on the grounds of the Ross School in East Hampton will probably rate at the top in terms of interest and attendance. The setting is intimate and exquisite; the performing stars will be Prince, Billy Joel, James Taylor, Dave Matthews and Tim Reynolds, and Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. At each event guests will enjoy living legends in concert, fine food, drink, art exhibits and luxurious lounges.

I'M READING THE reviews to "Striptease," and there's a common theme which can be summed up thusly: Demi Moore ruins the movie by insisting on being naked all the time.Excuse me?Demi Moore is too naked?Is this possible?You know the old line about how you can't be too rich or too thin. Well, I'm thinking we're in the same territory here, only more so.I asked around the office of my male friends, and it was unanimous. None of us had ever walked out of a movie theater, muttering to ourselves, "Jeez, Louise, too many beautiful naked women for me in that movie.

The naked ladies are the least interesting part of "Striptease," based on the Carl Hiaasen novel. Although the movie is a bit too long, oddball humor and a likable cast keep it entertaining.Demi Moore stars as Erin Grant, who takes a job stripping at the Eager Beaver in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., so she can earn enough money to win a child custody case against her loser ex-husband, Darrell (Robert Patrick, probably best known as the mighty morphin' Terminator in "Terminator 2"). His criminal record got her fired from her job as a secretary with the FBI, and now he's using their daughter (Rumer Willis, Moore's real daughter)