Reviewed in brief: "The Other Man," "Somers Town," "Paris" and Evangelion:1.0"

THE OTHER MAN

★ 1/2 out of four stars

Rating: R for sexual situations, strong language.

There is an all-too-brief moment when this muddled little dud of a melodrama emits a dangerous charge. It arrives when Peter (Liam Neeson), a software designer, discovers e-mail and pictures that reveal his wife's affair with another man. Peter, who has fancied himself happily married for 25 years, is seized with sexual jealousy that transforms him into an anguished, wild-eyed monster; you can see his blood boiling.

Lisa (Laura Linney), a high-end shoe designer, has mysteriously disappeared. Suspecting she has gone to meet her lover, Ralph (Antonio Banderas), Peter flies to Italy, bent on murdering his rival. No sooner does he spot his prey than the movie fizzles like a lighted firecracker dunked in ice water. Peter trails Ralph into a chess bar, where they strike up a conversation and play an exceedingly dull game of chess.

With its triple-barreled cast and a reputable director, Richard Eyre -- whose last film, "Notes on a Scandal," established him as a fearless observer of nastiness and kink -- it was reasonable to expect that "The Other Man" would sniff around the fouler recesses of the characters' psyches. Instead it holds its nose. The scorching erotic fever found in a movie such as "Unfaithful," which "The Other Man" fitfully tries to emulate, is entirely missing. Ultimately, the film bets all its dramatic chips on a whopping plot gimmick that will leave you scratching your head.

STEPHEN HOLDEN, NEW YORK TIMES

SOMERS TOWN

★★ out of four stars

Rating: Unrated but has PG-13-level language, mild violence, sexual talk, teen drinking. In English, Polish and French, subtitled.

Where: Lagoon.

In his previous movie, the terrific "This Is England," director Shane Meadows captured beautifully the sometimes absurd and indefatigably complex intricacies of young male psyches. "Somers Town" aims -- albeit less ambitiously -- for the same resonance, featuring the same lead (Thomas Turgoose, who's full of potential) and more acoustic ballads from British folkie Gavin Clark. But maudlin overtones sink the film. If the obnoxious final sequence -- featuring the two leads and the barista they love, skipping through the streets of Paris -- feels like a commercial, well, the piece was conceived by a marketing company that was looking to do a promotional piece for Eurostar. To that end, perhaps, the film succeeds.

EMILY CONDON

paris ★★★ out of four stars

Rating: R for language and some sexual references. In subtitled French.

Where: Uptown.

The everyday lives of a number of Parisians are the subject of this loose-knit collection of short stories. Unforced romanticism and colorful, digressive, often painfully funny character-driven vignettes take the place of rigid structural cohesion. Director Cedric Klapisch draws from Robert Altman's overlapping narratives and the achingly lonely paintings of Edward Hopper to tell the stories of a lonely professor, a dying dancer, a bakery countergirl, a withdrawn divorcée and more whose paths cross over the course of a few weeks. The characters are united by more than geography, although they would have to watch the film to realize it. Ailing Pierre (Romain Duris) observes passersby from his balcony, making them "heroes of my little stories." They're all looking for love -- this is Paris, not Cleveland -- and they meet the wrong person as often as not. Middle-aged historian Roland (Fabrice Luchini) is pestering a gorgeous student with anonymous text messages; chic divorcée Elise (Juliette Binoche) is preparing to settle for a solitary life; a married architect is haunted by the sense he's led too cautious a life. A dozen characters carom off each other, billiards-fashion, and Klapisch watches like a connoisseur of street theater. Settling into the cafe table next to him is a lovely way to while away a couple of hours.

COLIN COVERT

EVANGELION:1.0

★★ out of four stars

Rating: PG-13 for action violence and some nudity.

Where: Mall of America, Lake 5.

"Transformers," pshaw. America's a latecomer to the giant robot genre; Japan has been pounding out manga and anime about big iron guys fighting the monster of the week for half a century. The new animated entry "Evangelion:1.0" is a prototypical battle-bot story. Fourteen-year-old Shinji is recruited by his uncaring scientist father to pilot a humanoid combat robot from the cockpit. His mission: Destroy an unstoppable alien entity set on flattening New Tokyo. There's a lot of breathless techno-talk and a heaping helping of soap opera histrionics, but the real draw is large-scale property destruction. And it is breathtaking. Hyperbolic explosions, crumbling skyscrapers, mountain-shattering plasma cannons; the film is a visually beautiful panorama of apocalyptic end times. The alien invader, a restless, shape-shifting crystal, is a superb image of an unknowable extraterrestrial life form. Incoherence is a small price to pay for such guilty delights.

COLIN COVERT