And then comes the disappointment: Three movies I could have missed

Truth be told, I knew one of these was an outright dog going in, and I had a pretty good idea that another wasn't much better. Damn you, HBO, for offering them up anyway.

The movie that made me think 'Elektra' wasn't so bad: "The Avengers"

Read the above line again. Yeah, this movie sucked that hard.

No way I would have otherwise paid money to see Uma Thurman and Ralph Fiennes do the veddy British spy thing. But I had to know if it was awful as everyone said it was. (And by everyone, I mean the critics who were paid to see this crap, since nobody else apparently did.) Guess what? It was.

Fiennes is John Steed, Thurman is Emma Peel and Sean Connery is mailing it in as a truly silly villain who can control the weather. Sadly, the talented Jim Broadbent is dragged into this mess as well. So is PatrickMacnee, the original Steed. Ironically, though, he plays an invisible man. Yeah, I wouldn't want to be seen in this mess, either.

Mercifully, the movie is but an eyeblink, edited from a longer version that tested horribly to a mere 87 minutes. That's still 85 minutes too long, of course. Yes, I admit that I don't mind looking at Uma in skintight clothes for a full two minutes. Sue me.

Again, a movie from Spain and not one mention of Spanish Fly: "Volver"

Seriously, you should ask for that in Barcelona. They laugh and laugh and laugh.

The title translates to "come back," which is appropriate since this movie is about a couple of sisters whose mom returns as a ghost a few years after her death. This comes to light when (a)mom's sister dies, and (b) one daughter's husband gets killed following a creepy intrafamily episode that we all see coming from a mile away. (Wait, this is a foreign film. From a kilometer away.)

The proceedings are guided by the esteemed Pedro Almodovar, whom the world loves but I think is, eh, OK. I'll confess to digging "Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!" (That bathtub scene ... woof.) "Talk to Her" was all right, too, I guess. But nothing he's done has made me waited with bated breath for his next movie, which I why I skipped this in the theater.

On the plus side, Penelope Cruz is tasty and voluptuous and not nearly as annoying as usual. Why, I think there was some bonafide acting here! Don't tell anyone from "Vanilla Sky."

Lower IQ: "Higher Learning"

I remember my pal Louie coming back from seeing this while we were in college and being visibly upset, and not in a "Do the Right Thing" kind of way. No, Louie -- quite correctly, as it turned out -- called out John Simpleton ... er, Singleton ... on this BS screed about racial politics on college campuses. It's so deep, man, only not.

(Sidebar: Some of this movie is spot-on, I admit. When I was in college, people tended to hang with those of their own color. Yeah, I had black friends, Indian friends, Muslim friends, Hispanic friends, etc. etc. But push comes to shove, I could count them on one hand, while the whiteys around me could fill a football stadium. So I won't argue the voluntary segregation theme. Just the part where your color means you're a Black Panther or a skinhead.)

The story, as it were, is about kids of different colors and sexes on campus, and how boys and girls and blacks and whites ... they just can't get along, yo. And this despite us all being Americans, y'all. In case you miss that, the movie opens and closes with shots of an American flag. Subtle.

The cast includes some talent that is misused, sometimes hilariously so. Check out Larry -- I mean, Laurence -- Fishburne as the professor with the (I guess) Jamaican accent. Ice Cube is the militant black guy, Jennifer Connelly is the lesbian, Michael Rapaport is the aimless whie guy who eventually thinks Hitler had some neat ideas.

In fact, the scene with Connelly and Kristy Swanson kissing almost made me include something here along the lines of "I can't totally reject a movie that shows Jennifer Connelly and Kristy Swanson making out." But they didn't mack for that long, and when I learned that extended scenes of them getting busy ended up on the cutting room floor, well, that did it. Dude, do not tease a brother like that.