McCORMICK'S QUICK TAKES.

Insomnia (First Run, 1998) The ironic problem for police investigator Jonas Engstrom (Stellan Skarsgard) is that he's stuck in an edgy film noir in which there is no dark place to hide--or sleep.

Engstrom makes a deadly mistake early in Erik Skjoldbjaerg's taut Norwegian thriller, and soon there are spreading fissures beneath the surface of his icy demeanor and stalled murder inquiry. Haunted by an unsteady conscience and an unblinking midnight sun, the increasingly paranoid and insomniac police officer finds himself outflanked and desperate in a nerve-racking game of cat and mouse with a killer who knows his secret and a colleague who smells some herring.

Unlike other thrillers, this is a film you'll be happy to watch in the dark. ***

The Winslow Boy (Sony Pictures Classics, 1999) Nothing is ever as it seems in a Mamet film, and so when the writer/director who has given us intrigues like The Spanish Prisoner and House of Games turns his attention to a tale of guilt and innocence, we can only be certain that the characters will be richly drawn and the outcome unexpected.

In this ornate morality play about a Victorian family's war of attrition on behalf of a boy accused of theft, lines of innocence and guilt are subtly drawn, and we soon find ourselves in an engrossing, high-stakes chess match of accusations and denials that will haunt and delight long after the credits roll by. ***

The Straight Story (Disney, 1999) Imagine your grandfather in a film called Easy Rider on a Lawnmower. And then imagine that it really works.

A few years ago an elderly man in Laurens, Iowa decided to deal with some bad medical news by setting out on a quest. And because Alvin Straight (played here with understated grace by Richard Farnsworth) didn't have a driver's licence and wasn't in much of a hurry he mounted his riding mower and headed out for Mount Zion, Wisconsin, where he might or might not have had an estranged brother.

That anyone could make a powerfully moving film about this tale is a testimony to the worth of an ordinary (though distinctly un-average) life. That David Lynch, director of Blue Velvet, could enthrall us with an unflinchingly naturalistic and sweetly underpaced parable about a man on a journey may be a miracle. Run out and catch this torch of a story before it passes you by. *** 1/2

Boys Don't Cry (Fox Searchlight 1999) But you will. Based on the true story of a girl named Teena Brandon who wanted to become a boy named Brandon Teena, this is a tale about the need we have to go after our dreams--and about the tragic costs some folks end up paying for their trip over the rainbow. In Kimberly Peirce's achingly poignant film Teena/Brandon (Hilary Swank) explores the foreign, perhaps forbidden world of adolescent males and encounters others there whose identity and grip on reality is too terribly threatened by her incursion. In an age when gay men are being beaten to death, Boys Don't Cry is a prayer that we could give them a place to do just that. ***