Janet Maslin

A movie that's as sweet as it is clever, and never so clever that it forgets to be entertaining.

The moral ambiguity of James's novel has been skillfully captured in the film, as has its remarkable modernity.

Fresh features delicate and sympathetic work from both Mr. Esposito and Mr. Jackson, whose fine characterizations say a lot about the originality of this film's vision.

Two reasons it's impossible to resist "Independence Day": because of its pitch-perfect cartoonish dialogue ("Now you're never gonna get to fly the space shuttle if you marry a stripper!") and because the Captain, like Indiana Jones, is so unflappably tough.

Even when the action seems wrongheaded—and it frequently does—the movie is richly textured and well played.

Hal Ashby directs Being There at an unruffled, elegant pace, the better to let Mr. Sellers's double-edged mannerisms make their full impression upon the audience.

The Long Good Friday charts a perilous course through a world of powerful people, ghastly acts of vengeance and ominously shifting fortunes.

There's plenty of room for sentimentality here, but the wonder of Salles' film is all in the telling.

As both a skillful director and a lovable oddball, [Moretti] commands interest. It's easy to follow him anywhere.

Das Boot is yet another moving testament to the wastefulness of battle.

Mr. Jarman's visual sense easily eclipses his conceptual talents. And The Garden has a burning, kaleidoscopic energy to compensate for the facile nature of some of its more unavoidable thoughts.

Gary Kemp, as the more commanding and peculiar Ron Kray, makes an especially scary impression, particularly once the Krays' perfect control has begun to unravel. In a series of events set off by Reg's marriage, the Krays are seen on a downhill spiral that Mr. Medak conveys with great and effective understatement.

Big features believable young teen-age mannerisms from the two real boys in its cast, and this only makes Mr. Hanks's funny, flawless impression that much more adorable. This really is the performance to beat.

The sardonic, testosterone-fueled science fiction of Fight Club touches a raw nerve.

The film's flamboyant portrait of Nino may be stereotypical, but Mr. Snipes makes it chilling.

Until its final reel, when it strains badly to accommodate an almost biblical stroke of retribution, The Man in the Moon is a small, fond film that achieves a kind of quiet perfection.

Barry Levinson's richly textured new film also has a rueful nostalgia, a fine-tuned streak of con artistry, and the same hilarious, nit-picking small talk that colored Diner, his first and best film - which is recalled, rivaled and in a few ways even outdone by this one.

Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle has its flaws, but it also has a heartfelt grasp of what set Dorothy Parker apart from her fellow revelers and makes her so emblematic a figure even today.

But Mr. Costa-Gavras, a galvanizing filmmaker working with a splendid cast, is able to tell this story in style.

This film's very lack of surprise and sophistication accounts for a lot of its considerable charm.

There's no need to worry that Mamet is on foreign territory with this action premise. The Edge succeeds ably in blending his famously acerbic dialogue with nerve-racking adventure scenes.

Barry Sonnenfeld...proves that he does not need the Addams family to develop a wry, cartoonish atmosphere filled with funny, well-etched minor characters.

It's hard to imagine what the film might have been with anyone other than Mr. Hackman in this role, for this actor's quintessential decency and ordinariness have never seemed more affecting. It's precisely the lack of bravado in Hambleton that makes him an interesting character, and a poignant anti-Rambo.

A marvelous toy. It's funny, it's full of tricks and it manages to be royally entertaining, which is really all it aims for.

Meticulously detailed and never less than fascinating, The Shining may be the first movie that ever made its audience jump with a title that simply says "Tuesday."

Violent as it is on the surface, Akira is tranquil at its core. The story's sanest characters plead for the wise use of mankind's frightening new powers, lending the whole film the feeling of a cautionary tale.

Enough wild-card energy to keep it bright and surprising.

Young Guns is best watched in the playful, none-too-serious spirit in which it was made. Though the film concentrates reverentially on its young stars, it also includes good performances from a few grown-ups, notably Terry O'Quinn as a lawyer and Jack Palance as the story's wild-eyed villain.