Evening Standard from London, Greater London, England • Page A24

Films 24 Thursday, 25 August 2005 Evening Standard esreview ALSO SHOWING Suburban jean therapy THE SISTERHOOD OF THE TRAVELING PANTS Cert PG, 119 mins FOUR 16-year-old friends from somewhere in suburbia buy a pair of magic jeans that fits all of them, despite the obvious differences in their sizes. They then go off separately for summer vacation, and things begin to happen. Not all of them are nice things, but the jeans, passed by post from one to the other, seem to help out. An adaptation of Ann best- selling novel, it unfolds through the stories of the fresh and confidently played four leads. The best involves the talented Amber rebellious Tibby, who stays at home during the holiday, does shifts at the local supermarket and tries to make a documentary film about ordinary people but ends up learning more about life than she bargained for.

America Ferrera is also excellent as Carmen, who goes to stay with her father as he prepares to get remarried to a kindly but awful Doing their best with less convincing material are Alexis Bledel, as the girl who goes to Greece and finds a handsome fisherman, and Blake Lively, as a football star who seduces her coach on a Mexican trip. But for these four young performers who, particularly when acting together, seem a thoroughly credible posse of adolescents, The Sisterhood would fall lat: director Ken Kwapis glosses up the stories unnecessarily and the final reel is feelgood all the way. All credit to the girls. THE CAVE Cert 12A, 97 mins DURING the Ice Age, almost 50 species went underground in Movila Caves, using the thermal water to survive. This horror thriller characterises them as man-eaters whose bite turns humans into monsters.

Bruce film, which has a posse of caving scientists going down and down, and then being attacked when they find a way out, is professionally made but lacklustre. NO REST FOR THE BRAVE Cert 12A, 107 mins THIS strange French film, halfway between reality and surrealism, is set in the countryside, where a group of youths hang out, some bored, some hostile, most confused. Directed by Alain Guiraudie, it is almost a European version of David Lynch, but lacks his certainty of expression. WEST SIDE STORY Cert PG, 151 mins THE great Broadway musical became less than a great film once Robert Wise took over the direction from Jerome Robbins, who created the stage production. Four of his sequences remain, and are the best things in the film.

This new digital print looks splendid, however, and you deny the music and lyrics from Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim, nor the best efforts of a cast which included a dubbed Natalie Wood and Rita Moreno. THE ADVENTURES OF SHARKBOY AND LAVAGIRL IN 3D Cert 93 mins ROBERT Rodriguez is credited with directing, producing, writing, editing and helping with the music for this 3D film. He was apparently inspired by his seven-year-old son. Bad idea. This fantasy about dreams and reality will seem pretty incomprehensible to children of that age, and decidedly wet for older kids.

THE INTRUDER Cert 15, 126 mins RE-EDITED since its debut at last Venice Festival, Claire The Intruder still remains a beautiful puzzle of a film. An elderly man (Michel Subor) travels from snowy Jura on the Franco-Swiss border to Geneva for heart surgery, then Pusan in South Korea, and finally to Tahiti, where he meets his estranged son. His odyssey seems self-absorbed and introspective: we are never really sure what drives him. Totally different from previous work, it refuses to explain anything, relying instead on atmosphere and excellent cinematography from Godard. PATHER PANCHALI Cert 115 mins SATYAJIT first film, made in 1955 as the opening of his great Apu trilogy, is a superb lesson in how to tell a simple story so that it will always be remembered.

Apu is the son of a Bengali villager whose father leaves home for Calcutta, hopefully to become a writer. The family is desperately poor and the boy dreams of a better life beyond the village. Beautiful, poetic and utterly truthful, this film woke up the West to Indian cinema. DM SUMMER STORM Cert 15, 98 mins THE tensions in a Bavarian rowing team provide this coming-out drama with a number of sweetly squirmy moments. But when you compare these horny, sun-moistened teens with the ones in, say, tu you realise missing.

For all the rumbling thunder, no electricity in the air. Charlotte Credible posse: Alexis Bledel, America Ferrera, Amber Tamlyn and Blake Lively stop the film from falling flat Beautiful puzzle: Lolita Chammah as the wild one in Claire The Intruder.