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Monday, September 06, 1999 12:31:37 PM EST

By Reviewer Paul Tatara

(CNN) -- It's slowing down at the movies again, thank goodness. The studios, of course, save all their big (i.e. loud) films for the summer months, and the torrent of releases turns into a mere trickle as the weather cools down.

The only encouraging thing about this year's slate of hullabaloo is that a somber, relatively thought-provoking experience like "The Sixth Sense" has somehow managed to thumb its creepy little nose at all the over-produced explosions.

But don't get too excited -- right now computer wizards out in Los Angeles are desperately trying to concoct an effect that's "better" than the 500-foot-tall, steel-girded tarantula from "Wild Wild West."

Remember when computer wizards wanted to work for NASA?

Anyway, now is as good a time as any to rent a video. Here's a handful of new releases, and try not to pick one that you just saw at the theater three months ago. That's like going to a restaurant to order leftovers.

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Theatrical preview for "Analyze This"
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Read Tatara's full review for "Analyze This"

"Analyze This"
Warner Bros., 1999. Rated R. 103 minutes.

Billy Crystal teams up with Robert De Niro in this Harold Ramis comedy about a psychiatrist whose mobster patient entangles him in a web of often-hilarious Scorsese-isms. To a large degree, Crystal plays the straight man to De Niro's buffoon, but he generates some huge laughs simply by reacting sensibly to unexpected gunfire.

Although the entire film comprises maybe three jokes repeated like a Sicilian mantra, De Niro manages to keep much of it afloat with a near-brilliant performance. He's a riot because he plays it absolutely straight.

Outside of bawling like a baby over the pressures of life in the mob, there's not a single thing he does here that he didn't do in "GoodFellas." He simply wills his jabbering speech patterns and flared gangster nostrils to be funny this time around. Not a bad rental, but be warned: The humor falls flatter than Nebraska near the end. Lisa Kudrow is also on hand. You know, doing a Phoebe.

Read Tatara's full review for "The Celebration"

"The Celebration"
October Films, 1998. Rated R. 104 minutes.

Danish director Thomas Vinterberg's portrayal of an extended family's emotional disintegration is pretty disturbing stuff. The multiple-character story line plays like an even more misanthropic variation on Robert Altman's darkly amusing people-hatred.

A quiet young man (Ulrich Thomsen) reveals in an after-dinner speech to his family that his beloved father molested him and his sister when they were growing up. This news, as you might imagine, is met with varying degrees of revulsion by the many relatives, and Vinterberg peels away the rancid layers of the brood's existence during an ensuing country hideaway weekend. Not an ounce of healing takes place, in case you're wondering.

This is a shocking, angry, demented film, and it somehow works like a charm. The biggest drawback, aside from its periodic vileness, is that Vinterberg's shaky camera work is sometimes as nauseating as the father's sexual appetite. It looks like "The Blair Witch Project" made by someone who actually bothered to piece together proper scenes.

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Theatrical preview for "EDtv"
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"EDtv"
Universal Pictures, 1999. Rated PG-13. 122 minutes.

I saw this for the first time very recently, and I have to say that its failure at the box office is no reflection on its quality. Matthew McConaughey stars as Ed, a San Francisco video store clerk who's selected by a cable TV network to become a live, 24-hour-a-day documentary subject. Suddenly, Ed's previously humdrum life becomes must-see TV ... and, no, this is not like 1998's "The Truman Show."

"The Truman Show" (over-praised load of pretend content that it is) is about a guy who finds out people have been secretly filming him his whole life. And then he tries to get away from them. End of story. There's no subtext whatever because Truman has no real life to begin with, and you don't know a damned thing about the cold-blooded audience that gathers around the tube to watch him every night. They were the ones who put him there, you know.

"EDtv," on the other hand, follows an actual citizen whose life is thrown into disarray by the prying eye of a TV camera. It's about the damage caused by people who cling to this kind of junk as a replacement for real-life emotional involvement. In other words, it means something, rather than being an expensive episode of "The Twilight Zone" that makes its audience feel sensitive for sitting on the couch all day.

The cast is great, with McConaughey, Jenna Elfman, Woody Harrelson and Sally Kirkland, all doing the best, least-affected work of their careers. Elfman's sweet fragility is downright touching, and Harrelson has never been funnier (or played a bigger jerk). Director Ron Howard was right to be publicly annoyed that nobody went to see this. Consider giving it a shot; it's the kind of working-class valentine that Jonathan Demme used to make in the mid-1970s.

Read Tatara's full review for "Playing by Heart"

"Playing by Heart"
Miramax Films, 1998. Rated R. 121 minutes.

This one also owes a lot to Altman, but only because it swirls together an intricate network of characters into one thematic story line. Director Willard Carroll has concocted a standard-issue romantic comedy about sexual foibles, mores and dysfunctions.

Many of the plot threads are unbelievable -- or just plain mundane -- but the huge cast is pretty talented, and a couple of the actors do exemplary work with relatively weak material.

Everybody you can name is in it: Sean Connery, Gena Rowlands, Angelina Jolie, Jon Stewart, Gillian Anderson, Dennis Quaid, Madeleine Stowe, Anthony Edwards, Ellen Burstyn and the Royal Lipizzaner Stallions. OK, I made up the stallions, but there are certainly enough folks around to keep you interested when you get bored with individual stories or characters.

Stewart is appealingly relaxed for a relative newcomer, and Jolie turns on the wattage to almost absurd degrees whenever she's on camera. She's got star power to spare but she sometimes seems like she's doing an advertisement for her own charisma instead of playing a character. It looks good on a resume, though.

"Analyze This" is a production of CNN Interactive sister company Warner Bros., a Time Warner property.