Mona Lisa Smile (12)...

Rating: 3/5 It would be all too easy to dismiss this period drama as a female version of the Robin Williams film Dead Poet's Society, but that would be unfair.

Yes, there are obvious comparisons. A free-thinking teacher arrives at an exclusive school and uses unorthodox methods to challenge her students to raise their expectations.

The stuffy academic backdrop and the friction that develops between the tutor and the school establishment should also ring a few bells.

As does the mixed reaction of the students to their new teacher, who dares to suggest there should be more to a woman's life than being a mother and housewife.

Julia Roberts heads the cast of this absorbing drama, playing Katherine Watson who arrives to teach art history at the prestigious all-female Wellesley College, in 1953.

After an initially frosty reception, she succeeds in inspiring her students (right), including Betty (Kirsten Dunst) and Joan (Julia Stiles), while ruffling more than a few feathers along the way.

Roberts plays it fairly straight as the mysterious newcomer who, it transpires, is on a mission for very personal reasons.

While Roberts takes top billing for obvious reasons, it's the younger members of the cast who really get the chance to shine. Styles, Dunst and Maggie Gyllenhaal in particular bring the film to life with their student cat fights, while Marcia Gay Harden is equally good as a TV-addicted fellow teacher.

Out to rent or buy on video and DVD.

Columbia/Tristar Home Entertainment.

Cold Creek Manor (15)...

Rating: 2/5 A family of city slickers quit the rat race to seek some peace and quiet in the countryside, but get much more than they bargained for.

Sharon Stone and Dennis Quaid play a husband and wife who fall for a dilapidated old mansion still stuffed with the belongings of their predecessors.

But their efforts to turn it into their dream home rapidly turn into a nightmare when the previous owner, played by Stephen Dorff, shows up.

Unexpectedly friendly at first, he soon starts to show his true colours as a loud-mouthed bully with psychopathic tendencies. Questioning his motives, the couple start to dig into the past and make some shocking discoveries.

This family-in-peril suspense tale, directed by Mike Figgis, could have been a real spine-tingler, but sadly it fails to fulfil its potential.

The film mostly plods rather than rattles along, and when the pace does finally pick up, the shocks and surprises are telegraphed to the viewer by an over-bearing soundtrack.

There's little chemistry between Quaid and Stone, despite early hints that their marriage is under strain, and the plot's twists and turns become increasingly implausible.

On the plus side, Dorff has some fun with his menacing former owner who sets about terrorising the newcomers, and the rambling old mansion is undoubtedly the film's best piece of casting.

Cold Creek Manor is filmmaking-by-numbers that's mildly entertaining when it should have been a real edge-of-seat thriller.

Out to rent or buy on video and DVD.

Buena Vista Home Entertainment.