"2046" (Rated R for sexual material, 2004, 125 minutes, Sony Pictures): Chinese director Wong Kar-Wai revisits the characters from his famous "In the Mood for Love." Writer Chow Mo Wan (Tony Leung

"2046" (Rated R for sexual material, 2004, 125 minutes, Sony Pictures): Chinese director Wong Kar-Wai revisits the characters from his famous "In the Mood for Love." Writer Chow Mo Wan (Tony Leung Chiu Wai) eats, drinks and makes merry in the Hong Kong of the '60s. He is having a fling with a beautiful woman, but he also has time for the prostitute next door in Room 2046, Bai Ling, played by the wondrous Ziyi Zhang. She's pretty much the whole movie -- funny, spunky, fiery, erotic -- and it's hard to sympathize with Chow, who values her less than the audience. Kar-Wai is more interested in intense emotional states than in precise narrative, and you keep wanting the film to add up to more.
"Dark Water" (Rated PG-13 for obscenity and disturbing images, 2005, 102 minutes, Touchstone/Disney): Director Walter Salles ("The Motorcycle Diaries") brings almost-unheard-of class and style to this pretty creepy (but also pretty silly) remake of a Japanese thriller about a woman (Jennifer Connelly) and her young daughter (Ariel Gade) who have moved into an apartment plagued by plumbing problems. This movie plays like a rather prosaic how-to (or rather how-not-to) film on dealing with incompetent maintenance men, shifty building supers and two-faced rental agents. Now that's scary.
"Into the Blue" (Rated PG-13 for intense violence, drug material, sexual content and profanity, 110 minutes, Sony Pictures): Never get between a shark and his coke stash. That's the lesson from the climactic scene of this waterlogged thriller, whose chief purpose otherwise seems to be allowing viewers to ogle some of Hollywood's tannest, buffest young things undulating sexily through the water. Paul Walker and Jessica Alba play two earnest, honest and hot treasure hunters in the Bahamas; Scott Caan and Ashley Scott play two sleazy, avaricious and hot friends who set a risky scheme in motion. It's a cross between a bad episode of "Miami Vice" and "Pirates of the Caribbean" -- the creaky Disneyland ride, not the cool Johnny Depp movie.
--The Washington Post