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A man discovers honoring one of his father's last wishes isn't as easy as he hoped in this broad comedy. Middle-aged Bernardo Puccini (Ezio Greggio) helps to care for his elderly father in Milan. One day, Bernardo's dad, who is in poor health, makes a request - before he dies, he'd like to spend some time with his American friend Jake Gordon, whom he met during the war. Bernardo dutifully flies to the United States to track Jake down and bring him to Italy for a reunion. Bernardo manages to find Jake (Mel Brooks), but discovers he's currently a patient in a mental institution and not very stable. Not wanting to disappoint his father, Bernardo smuggles Jake out of the hospital to bring him back to Italy, but Barbara (Julie Condra), Jake's doctor, gets wind of his scheme and follows them to Milan to bring Jake back home. Screw Loose (aka Svitati) marked something of a reunion for star Mel Brooks, co-star and director Ezio Greggio, and screenwriter Rudy De Luca; Greggio made his American acting debut in Brooks' Dracula: Dead And Loving It, while De Luca wrote several films for Brooks, including High Anxiety and Life Stinks, and acted in Greggio's directorial debut, Il Silenzio dei Prosciutti. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

Three stalwarts of straight-to-cable productions -- Tia Carrere, C. Thomas Howell, and Adam Baldwin -- team up for this erotic thriller set in an appropriately exotic Mexican resort. ~ Michael Hastings, Rovi

The Two Jakes is the much-delayed and rather convoluted sequel to the 1975 classic Chinatown. Released in 1990 after an abortive stab at shooting that began in the mid-'80s, the film was the subject of a creative feud between its principals, star Jack Nicholson, producer Robert Evans, and screenwriter Robert Towne. Private eye Jake Gittes (Jack Nicholson) is a middle-aged war hero, paunchy, snobbish about his golf game, and about to marry a lovely and much younger woman. Then a fleeting reference to a woman he once loved that he heard on a wire recording plunges him into a past he has tried to escape. It comes while he was spying on a philandering wife (Meg Tilly) and her paramour in her motel room for her husband, Jake Berman (Harvey Keitel). Then Berman shocks Gittes when he shoots his wife's lover. Gittes is doubly stunned when he learns that Berman was partners with the dead man in a subdivision that may contain huge oil deposits. So now Gittes wonders, was it justifiable homicide or murder? The answer lies in the wife (Madeleine Stowe) of the dead man, her shady oil baron friend (Richard Farnsworth), and in the past he has tried to avoid. ~ Nick Sambides, Jr., Rovi