Daily News from New York, New York • 855

flow movies t1! PA1 1 THREE FOR THE ROAD: Drew Barrymore Sylvester Stallone, Melanie Griffith should join Toronto contingent. TORONTO FILM FESTIVAL Mil 'Amfe i Deck for By DAVE KEHR 1 News Movie Critic NEW MOVIE DIGEST Capsule reviews of current releases CUBE Sort of a "Six Characters in Search of an Exit," debuting Canadian director Vincenzo Natali's exercise in Pirandellian gore sci-fi finds a half-dozen disparate (and increasingly desperate) citizens inexplicably stuck inside an elaborately booby-trapped cube. The sealed sextet includes pragmatic but tightly wound cop Quentin (Maurice Dean Wint), recessive teen mathematical genius Leaven (Nicole de Boer) and paranoid New Agey femme physician Holloway (Nicky Gua-dagno). Clearly a metaphor for "the system," Natali's "Cube" ultimately degenerates into standard slasher histrionics. The Phantom At area theaters.

Running time: 89 mins. Rated Strong language and extreme violence. LET'S TALK ABOUT SEX This may come as no surprise, but when it comes to talking about sex, girls can be just as raunchy as guys. In "Let's Talk About Sex," director Troy Beyer proves it by mixing actual interviews with women speaking frankly about their sexual likes and dislikes with a fictional story about three Miami Beach roommates. Each comes off as a stereotype the gorgeous babe who lets men use her, the strong woman afraid of intimacy, and the maternal Jazz (Beyer), who harbors a secret that makes her dump a good man.

Robert Dominguez At area theaters. Running time: 82 mins. Rated Nudity, language. DAVID SEARCHING David Searching is having trouble getting hooked up. The gay would-be documentary maker has no shortage of takers, but he runs like a rabbit whenever one of them makes a pass.

Not so his platonic roommate, Gwen (Camryn Manheim from TV's "The When an ambiguously pansexual loafer (Joseph Fuqua) shows up on the couch in their apartment, the cheerfully ample Gwen has no trouble getting right down to business. Leslie L. Smith's freshman outing as producer, director and writer features a refreshing supporting cast spinning its wheels in a bland coming-of-age story. Jami Bernard At the Quad. Running time: 103 mins.

Unrated: Sex, nudity. DIGGING TO CHINA Cringing and gesticulating, Kevin Bacon plays a mentally impaired man who befriends a lonely little girl. Timothy Hutton's directorial debut is an earnest clinker from the sentimental school of thought that holds that the handicapped person is the most astute in the room. A few alarming coughs peg Cathy Moriarty as a mother not long for this world. She leaves behind trampy Mary Stuart Masterson and Evan Rachel Wood as the girt who'd rather dig her way to China than continue to live in the family-run motel in rural Pennsylvania.

Bacon's nervous tics and limbs akimbo provide most of the action in this embarrassingly obvious drama. J.B. At the Angelika. Running time: 98 mins. Rated PG: Death of a parent.

ORONTO THE MARATHON BEGAN last night, with the first of'311 films to be shown in this year's Toronto International Film Fes ketplace for movies. Sales agents, representing independent and foreign film makers, huddle in corners with acquisitions executives, representing distributors like Sony Classics, October, Fine Line and Miramax, hashing out deals. Last year's big winner was Robert Duvall's "The Apostle," which sold for a reported S7 million to $10 million and went on to gros $21 million in the U.S. These may look like small numbers for Hollywood, where grosses don't make an impression until they cross the $100 million mark. But as a return on investment Apostle" cost a minuscule $5 million to make), they can double or triple the Hollywood standard.

Competition is fierce for the few unattached, commercially viable indies, including Sebastian Gutierrez' thriller "The Judas Kiss," with Emma Thompson, and Anand Tucker's "Hilary and Jackie," starring Emily Watson as famed cellist Jacqueline du Pre. Not all of the offerings are of the highbrow sort. Also in the festival is "I Woke Up Early the Day I Died," directed by Arlis Iliopulos from an unpro-duced script by the apparently indomitable Ed Wood the transvestite film maker of "Glen or Glenda?" fame. Co-producer Billy Zane stars as evil Buster Keatoncaveman homunculus on a homicidal quest for misplaced robbery money. And, yes, he likes to dress in women's clothes.

Get those checkbooks ready. tival. It was a Canadian production, of course "The Red Violin," a multi-part film centered on the passage of the title instrument through the centuries, directed by Francois Girard of "Thirty-two Short Films About Glenn Gould." And it will end on Saturday, Sept. 19, with the world premiere of "Antz," a computer-animated film from producer Steven Spielberg. Woody Allen lends his voice to the lead character, an ego-i i paired worker ant with a crush on his colony's unattainable princess, voiced by Sharon Stone.

Stone and her fellow "Antz" interpreters Sylvester Stallone. Jennifer Lopez and Christopher Walken are expected among the flotilla of stars sui ling in for this year's event. I rew Barrymore, Melanie Griffith, Queen Latitat. Holly Hunter. Isabelle Huppert, Billy Bob Thornton, Ben Stiller.

Neve Campbell and Meryl Streep are expected in coming days; Tom Cruise may or may not appear at the festival tomorrow, in his capacity as producer of "Without Limits." Though the festival is very much a public event it manages to largely sell out nearly every show at each of its 13 theaters, which run from 9 a.m. until long after midnight it also functions as a mar IV30NDO IDEO By THE PHANTOM OF THE MOVIES edition later this month (Warner, LOONIC TUNES: The video archivists at San Francisco's Loonic Video (510-526-5681) offer a fresh cache of cas sette oldies and obscurities: the early '60s bloodsucker CIA CREEPFESTS: THIS WEEK, COLUMBIA TRI-Star becomes the latest major home video label to reprice a batch of Halloween-targeted titles, leading with the fun South America-set snake-monster romp Anaconda," starring a fetching Jennifer Lopez and an over-the-top Jon Voight. Rounding out the package are Francis Ford Coppola's lavish vampire epic, "Bram Stoker's Dracula," with Gary Oldman, Anthony Hopkins and Winona Ryder, the teen-witch chiller "The Craft," with Neve Campbell, Fairuza Balk and Robin Tunney, the less-inspired Kevin Williamson-scripted slasher entry "I Know What You Did Last Summer," and Matthew McConaughey and Renee Zellweger in the hit-and-miss chainsaw sequel "Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation." The vids are tagged at $14.98 (regular format) and $19.98 each (widescreen). CLASSICS ON CASSETTE: Special-edition mania proceeds apace on the VHS scene. Next week, Universal presents "American Graffiti: 25th Anniversary Edition" which includes a 10-minute "making-of fea-turette devoted to George Lucas' star-making 1973 So-Cal youth ode, toplining Richard Dreyfuss and future director Ron Howard.

"The Searchers," starring John Wayne and Natalie Wood, likewise arrives in a special romp "Uncle Was a Vampire," starring Christopher Lee, the 1963 Czech doomsday sci-fi satire "No Survivors, Please" ($12.95 each), and the truly disturbing 1960s indie short "Silent Snow, Secret Snow" PHAN MAIL: Whatever happened to the movie "Moulin To our knowledge it's never been shown on TV not even AMC or TMC nor is it listed in our video store's files. Siegbert Loeb, Brooklyn John Huston's opulent 1952 Toulouse-Lautrec bio, with Jose Ferrer and Zsa Zsa Gabor, is available (MGMUA, $19.95) from Critic's Choice Video (1-800-367-7765), if you don't see it locally. WISH I'D SAID THAT: The abovementioned John Wayne in 1960's "The Alamo" "It's a shame kids have to grow up into people." Phyllis Gatto, of South Farmingdale, L.I., can grow into an Official Phantom T-shirt for sending that sentiment our way. Send your quotes and queries to Mondo Video, PhanMedia, P.O. Box 216, Ocean Grove, NJ 07756.

'SEX' ON THE BEACH: "Talk's" Miami roomies.