Ray Lawrence (Australia)
Lantana is a psychological thriller where the psychology is only intermittently credible and the thrills pretty much go missing in action. Great cast, though. Borrowing a frame from Blue Velvet, director Ray Lawrence opens with an eerie tracking shot that burrows beneath the spiky grass of an Australian suburb - our cue that we're about to enter the dark heart of the middle-class. A few acts of adultery, several troubled marriages, some contrived coincidence, an apparent murder and two long hours later, the film stumbles toward an unconvincing climax. On the way, however, the likes of Barbara Hershey, Anthony LaPaglia and Geoffrey Rush fare better than the script, adding grace notes (both comic and dramatic) that keep us at least partly engaged, hoping for an aesthetic payoff that never comes. - R.G.

(Sat. Sept. 15, 8 p.m., RTH; Sat. Sept. 15, 8:30 p.m., Uptown 1)