On Demand picks

By Wesley Morris, Globe Staff  |  November 20, 2008

MAD MONEY

(Starz on Comcast) The feistiest Hollywood movie about American women and their menial jobs since "9 to 5." Over three years, Katie Holmes, Queen Latifah, and Diane Keaton (above, from left) rob the Kansas City Federal Reserve Bank of its unwanted bills. It's unclear where the justice in the crime is, but the movie generates enough suspense with the caper and enough compassion for the bandits that we submit to the outlandishness. And yet the women's lust for money, Keaton's especially, is pornographic. (PG-13; runs through Nov. 20) WESLEY MORRIS

THE ABYSS

(Encore on Comcast) OK undersea sci-fi, but director James Cameron can't quite bring off these Close Encounters of the Wet Kind as civilian divers rescuing a trapped nuclear sub meet glowing pink aliens. (PG-13; runs through Nov. 20)

THE DIVING BELL AND THE BUTTERFLY

(Starz on Comcast) A movie whose visual beauty transcends its sentimental trappings. The French magazine editor Jean-Dominique Bauby (Mathieu Amalric) suffered a stroke that left him cognitively vital but paralyzed except for his left eye, which he used to communicate. In many ways, this is a prison movie about transcending confinement. If a story about the human spirit doesn't do it for you, the film, with its relentlessly inspired cinematography by Janusz Kaminski, doubles as a movie about the cinematic spirit. In French, with subtitles. (PG-13; runs through Nov. 20) W.M.