The Straight Story (General) Screen at D'Olier Street, Virgin, Dublin

In a beautifully judged return to the tender humanism of The Elephant Man, the unpredictable David Lynch delivers his richest, most satisfying film since his violent masterpiece, Blue Velvet, in his gentle and wholly engaging new movie, The Straight Story. Lynch has never been in more mellow mood as a film-maker, and the film seems to be a declaration of faith in human nature after all his disturbing excursions into the dark side of the psyche.

Relating a story that could hardly have been invented were it not based on fact, The Straight Story features Richard Farnsworth - who worked as a stuntman in movies for over 30 years before getting his first speaking part - in a warm and dignified portrayal of Alvin Straight, an ailing 73-year-old widower from a small town in Iowa.

Learning that his older brother (Harry Dean Stanton) has had a stroke at his Wisconsin home, he vows to swallow his pride and patch up the feud which has kept them apart for 10 years. Too weak-sighted to hold a driving licence any more and too proud to accept a lift, the obstinately independent Alvin decides to travel aboard a 1966 John Deere lawnmower, hauling along a makeshift trailer containing his supplies for the 300-mile trip.

The journey, which takes six weeks, involves encounters with quirky but good-natured characters along the way, as Alvin travels through a changing landscape that's handsomely photographed by Freddie Francis in this affectionate, philosophical and cherishable film. In sharp contrast to much of Lynch's earlier work, there is only one shot fired in the entire film - and the victim is a lawnmower which infuriates Alvin when it breaks down.

Shamefully ignored by the jury at Cannes this year, The Straight Story ought to receive its due recognition from the Oscars electorate in the spring, not least for Farnsworth's entirely endearing performance and that of Sissy Spacek as his patient, melancholy daughter who, like her father, has struggled bravely to cope with the disappointments of life.

Alice et Martin (members and guests only) IFC, Dublin

The accomplished French filmmaker Andre Techine, who hit the peak of his form with his two most recent films, Les Roseaux Sauvages and Les Voleurs, has produced another thoroughly intriguing drama in Alice et Martin. A prologue introduces the pivotal character, Martin, as a 10-year-old boy who moves from the home of his single mother (Carmen Maura) to live with the family of the cold, reserved businessman (Pierre Lacroix) who fathered him in an adulterous affair.

Then the movie cuts to the present and the immediate aftermath of the father's death when Martin, now 20 and played by Alexis Loret, is behaving erratically. He goes to Paris to see his gay half-brother, Benjamin (Mathieu Almaric), an aspiring actor, and becomes besotted by Benjamin's flatmate and confidante, Alice, an insecure violinist played by Juliette Binoche.

The compelling nature of their developing love story is abruptly shattered by a single revelation which triggers off an initially puzzling but ultimately explanatory extended flashback sequence. The narrative is suffused with the themes of guilt, fears and anxiety which have been among the primary preoccupations of Techine's work and are treated here with characteristic insight and thoughtfulness.

Again the director elicits intense, credible performances from his impeccably chosen cast, and in particular the wonderfully expressive Juliette Binoche, the always interesting Mathieu Almaric (most recently seen here in Late August, Early September) and the highly promising newcomer, Alexis Loret, in a striking film debut.

Anywhere But Here (15) General release

What is it about winning an Oscar that overtakes actors' judgment and prompts them to go on to work in movies unworthy of their talent? One of the least likely victims of this syndrome is Susan Sarandon, whose choices since winning an Oscar for Dead Man Walking have included such lamentable movies as Illuminata, Cradle Will Rock and the execrable Stepmom.

Sarandon's mostly unremarkable new movie Anywhere But Here, directed by Wayne Wang, is a conventional comedy-drama of family conflict in which she plays an impulsive, self-deluding teacher who, stifled by smalltown life in Wisconsin, heads west for a new life in Beverly Hills. Natalie Portman co-stars as her altogether more rational and realistic 14-year-old daughter, who is furious at having to leave the life she loves.

Saddled with some twee dialogue and improbable contrivances, the two actresses work earnestly within the limitations of their roles, and the movie is almost saved by the appealing, unaffected performance of the radiant young Portman. A much more acute and telling picture of a fraught mother-daughter relationship is at the core of Carl Franklin's One True Thing, starring Meryl Streep and Renee Zellweger, which was turned down for cinema distribution here and is reviewed in the video column of this newspaper tomorrow.

Happy, Texas (15) Selected cinemas

Every year American distributors and critics appear to approach the Sundance Film Festival with such a feverish urge to make discoveries that the quality of the movies which float to the top in terms of audience popularity is regularly blown out of proportion. When those movies eventually go on release around the world - and many of the Sundance prize-winners have never secured international distribution - they are often greeted with a response of "So what?".

Raising audience expectations has been the undoing of many a modest achievement, and Happy, Texas, which had been acclaimed as the comedy discovery of Sundance this year, certainly fails to warrant any significant anticipation. It is a reasonably amiable romp which chronicles the comic consequences when two escaped convicts (Jeremy Northam and Steve Zahn) steal a camper van and are forced to assume the identities of its owners, two gay men who are staging a pre-teen beauty pageant in a tiny Texas town named Happy.

In an only intermittently amusing spin on the infinitely superior Some Like It Hot, the heterosexual impostors fall for local women but must conceal their lust to sustain their gay masquerade, and there are further complications when the town sheriff - the excellent William H. Macy, in the Joe E. Brown role - comes out of the closet and comes on to Northam. It helps that the actors are better than their material in the slackly directed Happy, Texas.

Guest House Paradiso (15) General release

UPI, the company formerly known as PolyGram Filmed Entertainment, was the most boldly adventurous production and distribution outlet in Europe before it was swallowed up by Universal Pictures as part of the deal whereby Seagrams bought the PolyGram music division. Sadly, the company's final release, Guest House Paradiso, today closes the UPI shutters on a truly ignominious note. In a spin-off from their TV series Bottom, Rik Mayall and Adrian Edmondson are reunited for this puerile would-be comedy in which they play the boorish cretins responsible for the worst, most ineptly run hotel in the world. For reasons best known to himself, that fine, edgy French actor, Vincent Cassell (from La Haine and Elizabeth) features briefly as the hilariously named Gino Bolognese, a thug in pursuit of his actress fiancee who's even more uproariously named Gina Carbonara.

Anyone hoping for a comedy with the wit and elegance of Fawlty Towers should steer well clear of this shrill, grotesque effort which is replete with scenes of sadistic male genital torture and pathetic puns on women's sexuality. It is so crude, grating and, finally, revolting that it must be the runaway choice for the worst movie of 1999 - and so irredeemably awful that it ranks among the very worst films in the history of cinema.