SEPTEMBER GAIETY AT THE MOVIES

• Woman on Top Moving on from playing the do-gooder nun with a soft spot for crossdressers in Pedro Almodovar's All About My Mother, the gorgeous and endearing Penelope Cruz is now playing Isabella, a culinary "enchantress" who leaves Brazil for San Francisco and discovers her passion, along with the help of her cross-dressing best friend Monica (Harold Perrineau Jr., who played the wheelchair-bound narrator of the HBO series Oz). "The relationship between these two friends is so beautiful because it's full of truth," says Cruz. "It's like the relationship I have with my best friend: We kiss, we sleep together, we are in the bath together. All those things are so natural between women friends. Men don't understand this. So Monica is a woman. In her heart, she is all woman. The movie is very brave in the way it deals with many things like this, I think." ï Says Perrineau of Monica: "I'd been playing some characters who were full of humanity but in a very different, much more serious way. Monica is so light and fun. Her life is just so full of fun and creativity, who wouldn't want to come to work every morning and be that person? So, I'm in a dress, so what? My dad will get over it. He'll love me for it later. Dad, we'll talk, OK?" ï Woman on Top is scheduled to open Sept. 22 throughout Houston.

• Psycho Beach Party Charles Busch, the cult multiple personality of campy theater, brings his anti-classic Psycho Beach Party to the screen. This raunchy low-tech spoof combines '50s psychological thriller, '60s beach movie, and '70s slasher film into a ribald meatgrinder of a comedy. Although Busch originally played the teenage star, Chicklet, for the film, he portrays the coolly calculating Captain Monica Stark, who has been called in to solve the mystery of a throat slashing at the local drive-in. Also stars Thomas Gibson, Matt Keeslar, and Lauren Ambrose. Scheduled to open Sept. 1 at Landmark's Greenway Theatre.

The following films will play at Rice Media Center on the Rice University campus, University Blvd. @ Stockton, entrance #8. Film information line is 713/348-4853; the website is www.ruf.rice.edu/~cinema.

• Beau Travail (Good Work), directed by Claire Denis. Shot in the east Africa enclave of Djibouti, this 1999 film features Denis Lavant as Galoup, a sergeant with the French Foreign Legion. With a brooding exterior and a dangerously introspective manner, he leads his troupe with the precision and repetitiveness of a well-oiled machine. However, the fragile control he exudes over his men becomes threatened by the arrival of Gilles Sentain (Grégoire Colin), a new recruit that everyone, including Galoup's commanding officer, admires. A spark of jealousy ignites in Galoup, provoking him into a course of action from which there is no return. Inspired by Herman Melville's renowned novel Billy Budd. French with English subtitles. 7:30 & 9:30 p.m., Saturday, Sept. 30; and 7 & 9 p.m., Sunday, Oct. 1.

• Barbarella, directed by Roger Vadim. Before she was Hanoi Jane, she was Barbarella, Queen of the Galaxy in this 1968 film! In the distant future, our heroine is tasked with finding and stopping the evil Duran Duran from destroying the universe. In her quest for super-hero status, she rarely finds herself in a situation where she doesn't lose at least some article of her already miniscule wardrobe. Watch for an uncredited cameo by Antonio Sabato (father of Jr.) as Jean-Paul. Also starring John Phillip Law, Anita Pallenberg, Milo O'Shea, Marcel Marceau, David Hemmings, and Ugo Tognazzi. 11:30 p.m., Saturday, Sept. 30.

• FYI: Basic Instinct will play Saturday, Sept. 9, 11:30 p.m., and The Cook the Thief His Wife & Her Lover will play at 9:30 p.m. on Saturday, Sept. 16.