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Face/Off (15). By far the best of last year's summer blockbusters, John Woo's jubilantly psychotic action thriller takes suspension of disbelief to a giddy, somehow gratifying extreme. John Travolta and Nicolas Cage play, respectively, a bitter FBI agent and a maniacal terrorist - or at least, they do for the first quarter of the film. Thanks to a grisly surgical procedure borrowed from Georges Franju's horror masterpiece, Eyes Without a Face, these sworn adversaries exchange faces and identities, complicating their enmity considerably. Subtext-filled and character-driven (even if all the characters are trapped in single dimensions), this is one of the strangest action movies ever made. Both leads are excellent - Cage is especially irresistible - and there's solid support from Alessandro Nivola as Cage's marginally less insane brother and Joan Allen as Travolta's long- suffering wife. Woo directs the many bravura setpieces as stylishly as ever, but more importantly, he treats the film's idiotic premise with something approaching absolute conviction - the effect is at once laughable and exhilarating.

Wilde (15). Averting the self-importance of being Oscar, Stephen Fry's thoughtful, understated performance deserved a better showcase than Brian Gilbert's film, a rushed, episodic biopic with little more than a checklist of turning points to dramatise and famous epigrams to squeeze in. Julian Mitchell's script, which borrows character traits, dialogue, and only the occasional insight from Richard Ellmann's celebrated biography, seems less interested in Wilde's continuing legacy than in a cut-and-dried condemnation of Victorian cant. The film's biggest problem is a fundamental one - its studious respectability would surely have horrified its subject.

Nil By Mouth (18). Gary Oldman's directorial debut is a harrowing, heartfelt portrait of a Deptford family - abusive, hard-drinking thug Ray (Ray Winstone), his pregnant wife Val (Kathy Burke), her junkie brother Billy (Charlie Creed-Miles). Oldman shoots in a tight, fluid, expressive style and, not surprisingly, he allows each of his actors as much emotional space as they need. Burke is agonisingly believable and Winstone's performance is truly a terrifying tour de force. Naturalistic British dramas are invariably compared to Ken Loach or Mike Leigh, but the closest reference point in this case may be John Cassavettes.

GI Jane (18). Ridley Scott's story of the first female GI shrewdly turns Demi Moore's woodenness into a virtue. As a doggedly ambitious naval officer, Moore gives the same performance that she's been giving for most of her career, but this time, the context makes sense. Also, the movie looks terrific and, until the misjudged final act (which, for some reason, takes place in Libya), GI Jane is passably tense.