Niagara Niagara

(1998, Artisan, R, $82.99) Road movies about lovers on the run could fill their own video aisle, but this one from director Bob Gosse brings something new to the genre--its unlikely lovers. Tunney (The Craft) is a teen outcast with Tourette syndrome; Thomas is the parentally battered sad sack she bumps into while shoplifting. Escaping their miserable lives, they set out on a highway odyssey that starts going wrong when her medication runs out. A predictable fate awaits these accidental outlaws, but the off-road detours keep the film fascinating. So does Tunney's performance. Though her Tourette attacks are scarily convincing, it's the emotionally needy moments between those violent outbursts that make her tragic antiheroine compelling.

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