BOOKS
The Metaphysical Touch (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) by Sylvia Brownrigg. Two lost souls, alias Hamlet and Sylvia Plath, find one another via that new confessional, the Internet. This sweet, sad, smart, sexy first novel humanizes cyberspace. Jack Kroll (4 stars)
MOVIES
Arlington Road Jeff Bridges and Tim Robbins star in a tricky, paranoid, coincidence-ridden thriller about homegrown terrorism. It starts slow but gets its hooks in you. David Ansen (3 stars)
Wild Wild West Barry Sonnenfeld and Will Smith’s follow-up to “Men in Black” is an overproduced, desperately unfunny dud. Anything goes, and nothing matters. The “Hudson Hawk” of Westerns. David Ansen (1 star)
My Son the Fanatic A Pakistani cabdriver (Om Puri) in England falls for a hooker (Rachel Griffiths) while his son turns to fundamentalism in this smart, bittersweet comedy about cultural confusion. The richly ironic script is by Hanif Kureishi. David Ansen (4 stars)
Run Lola Run The heroine (redhead Franka Potente) has 20 minutes to save her boyfriend in director Tom Tykwer’s revved-up, nonstop German movie about speed, style and twisted fate. All surface, but what surface. David Ansen (3 stars)
MUSIC
Limp Bizkit, ‘Significant Other’ (Interscope) The gourd-rattling chords and raging hip-hop rhymes are no surprise, but the skill is. Not that their fans care a whit: Limp’s noisy creations are sweet music to a white teen America locked in the throes of an identity crisis. Devin Gordon (4 stars)
Luscious Jackson, ‘Electric Honey’ (Grand Royal) The good news: another platter of rock-inflected boogie music from New York’s finest. The bad news: another platter? A mild disappointment, but spinning wheels never sounded so good. Devin Gordon (3 stars)
