What also happens is that people win and lose lots of money in the casinos. 21, rated M, is one of those films which we are told is based on real events. But is it?

What 21 is based on, is an American best seller, Bringing Down the House, by Ben Mezrich, which is claimed to be the inside story on how six Boston university students won millions of dollars in Las Vegas casinos by memorising the cards they were dealt while playing 21, better known in Australia as blackjack or pontoon.

But only in March and April this year, the "non-fiction'' book was exposed for exaggerations and major events that never happened.

True or not, 21 is an entertaining movie in which, yes, a group of students, under the tutelage of their professor, played by Kevin Spacey, indeed win millions until the casino security guards start taking violent action against them.

Then She Found Me, M, marks Helen Hunt's directorial debut in a film in which she not only stars, but also co-wrote and co-produced.

Hunt plays a schoolteacher in facing a midlife crisis. Her newish husband (Matthew Broderick) walks out in tears (his, not hers), her adoptive mother dies and her birth mother (Bette Midler) walks in.

Colin Firth plays the divorced father of one of her students who becomes the new man in her life.

One of the new releases this week sees the good guys being rammed by pirates and chased by gunboats. The film also features espionage, corruption and charges of attempted murder.

Fiction? No, faction! It's a documentary called Sharkwater, rated PG. Canadian filmmaker Rob Stewart and environmentalist Paul Watson try to stop shark poaching in areas where sharks are becoming endangered species. The film highlights how 100 million sharks a year are killed for Chinese shark fin soup.

Expect to shudder when/if you see Shutter (MA), a remake of a 2004 Thai film, of the same name.

The "shutter'' of the title refers to the camera belonging to professional photographer, Ben, played by Joshua Jackson, (who played Pacey Witter in 124 episodes of Dawson's Creek).

Newly-married to Jane, played by Australian Rachael Taylor (who can also be seen in Hugh Jackman's Deception), the young couple are living and working in Japan, where first, a road accident victim disappears, and soon after ghostly shapes begin appearing in Ben's photographs

An offbeat Australian comedy, Rats and Cats, M, arrives virtually unheralded in a limited release this week. You won't find it in all the big multiplexes which is a pity because Rats and Cats has plenty of home-grown laughs in a satire on celebrity worship.

The film stars Jason Gann and Adam Zwar who also co-wrote the script. Both also starred in and co-wrote the Channel 10 comedy series, The Wedge, and the SBS comedy series, Wilfred.

In Rats and Cats, Gann plays a retired soap opera star, Darren McWarren, who managed to self-destruct his career.

TRAILERS

21: www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZRzZX2aN3I0

Then She Found Me: www.orpheum.com.au/then_movie.htm

Sharkwater: www.sharkwater.com/

Shutter: www.youtube.com/watch?v=VryEHnctPm8

Rats and Cats: vids.my

space.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&VideoID=33750822

OR (Quick Time): www.ratsandcatsmovie.com/#

NEXT WEEK

Who is Professor Henry Walton Jones, Jr? He's a character much better known as Indiana Jones who is making a return to the big screen 19 years after his "Last Crusade.''

Next week on this site don't miss Kevin Sadlier's summing up of one of the biggest movies of 2008: Indiana Jones 4: The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.