Gillian Anderson and David Duchovny are Scully and Muldar in the X Files, the movie version of the popular Sunday night show on Fox. Faithful to the small screen version, the X Files movie is oh-so serious about that which is never fully explained. Cool, collected Scully and impulsive Muldor pick up the threads left dangling from last season's cliff hanger. The film weaves a reasonable tale from the threads, offering enough explanation to hold the movie together, but not enough to negate the huge question mark that typifies the show.

But beyond the enormity of the special effects, which almost seem desperate to make use of all that extra screen, little here breaks away from what we've come to expect from the X Files. Similar predictability can be seen in the new Disney movie "Mulan." Here the spooks are tangible, but equally unbelieveable.

The story concerns a young Chinese girl who dresses as a boy, and goes to war to save her family's honor, her own good name, and the whole country while she's at it. It's all rather wonderful and completely incredible. The blatant feminist message of the movie, for example, is certainly encouraging, but absurdly out of place in medieval China.

The film follows many Disney conventions, for example, featuring a comedic sidekick. In this case, it's a cute if undersized dragon with superb one liners, many of which actually spark belly laughter. It helps, of course, that the voice of the dragon is provided brilliantly by Eddie Murphy.

But although the film is set in China, only the occasonal nod is given to things Oriental. Even the music, a presumably obvious arena for the employment of Eastern motifs, remains stubbornly Occidental. The voice of the male lead, Shang, is provided by B.D.Wong, but the songs are sung by Donnie Osmond! Gilbert and Sullivan did it better in "The Mikado." Indeed, the decision to set the movie in China may possibly be motivated by the great villainry of the Huns. No-one does a villain like Disney.

However, the quibble is merely academic, since "Mulan" is a great film and well worth seeing, no matter what your age. In short, it's a good week for the cinema.