Mission to Mars (PG, 2000)

MISSION TO MARS takes place in 2020. Don Cheadle plays an astronaut who leads a team to Mars to investigate the possibility of colonization. When a huge tunnel-like dust storm kills the rest of the team and communication with the space station is cut off, four of his colleages, played by Tim Robbins, Jerry O'Connell, Gary Sinese, and Connie Nielson, go on a rescue mission.

Director Brian DePalma is known for movies that have two qualities -- striking visual flair and frustrating narrative incoherence. If you are the kind of person who talks about the plot after seeing a movie, this is not your kind of movie. But if you would enjoy seeing an old-time Flash Gordon-style movie with 21st Century special effects and computer graphics, you just might want to see it twice.

The movie makes Close Encounters of the Third Kind seem like rocket science. It even makes The Day the Earth Stood Still look like rocket science. But the pictures are pretty.