Janet Maslin

A richly detailed tale of passion, perfidy and revenge adapted from a typically tricky Ruth Rendell novel.

With warmth, wit and none of the usual overlay of nostalgia, King of the Hill presents the scary yet liberating precariousness of life on the edge.

Though it dedicates itself to avoiding directorial egotism, in accordance with strict rules of the Danish filmmakers' collective known as Dogma 95, Thomas Vinterberg's Celebration is still a virtuoso feat.

My Brilliant Career doesn't need to trumpet either its or its heroine's originality this loudly. The facts speak for themselves — and so does the radiance with which Miss Armstrong and Miss Davis invest so many memorable moments.

It tells a finely nuanced tale of right, wrong and the gray area in between.

To Live and Die in L.A. is Mr. Friedkin at his glossiest, a great-looking, riveting movie without an iota of warmth or soul. On its own terms, it's a considerable success, though it's a film that sacrifices everything in the interests of style.

The script's bare bones are familiar, yet the film also has fine acting, steady momentum, a sharp eye and a very warm heart.

Mr. Franklin delivers the kind of symmetry, surprise and detail that easily transcend the limits of the genre.

What makes the performance(s) even better is that Mr. Irons invests these bizarre, potentially freakish characters with so much intelligence and so much real feeling.

A revealing film and an invaluable document.

An ingenious, cathartic exercise in illusion and fear.

With a fine vengeance along with flashes of great, unexpected tenderness, Mr. Solondz lethally evokes every petty humiliation that his seventh-grade heroine can't wait to forget.

Starman provides him with a role that, played by anyone else, might seem preposterous. In Mr. Bridges' hands it becomes the occasion for a sweetly affecting characterization - a fine showcase for the actor's blend of grace, precision and seemingly offhanded charm.

There are subtly etched characters, effortlessly fine performances, and a moving story that is not easily forgotten.

It's too smart to be maudlin.

Mr. Russell's wonderfully mad odyssey of a movie, in which a man sets out to find his biological parents and winds up meeting more weirdos than Alice found down the rabbit hole.

The ending of Jacob's Ladder, when it finally arrives, is, like much of the film, both quaint and devastating.

Neil Simon is hardly Norman Rockwell, but his Brighton Beach Memoirs has a warmly nostalgic quality, something that has traveled very nicely to the screen...A film of surprisingly gentle charms. Mr. Simon's humor is much in evidence, but it is not the film's strongest selling point. Even more effective are the sense of a place and a way of life long vanished and the care and affection with which they have been summoned up.

Mr. Ivory and Ismail Merchant have long since learned to breathe life into their material without excessive reverence, in a manner that is as decorous as it is dramatic. As might be expected, the costumes, settings and cinematography are once again ravishing.

The Madness of King George mixes the ebullience of Tom Jones with a pop-theatrical royal back-stabbing that is reminiscent of films like The Lion in Winter. That makes it a deft, mischievous, beautifully acted historical drama with exceptionally broad appeal.

The film's strength is that it sustains an intimate and realistic tone. Mr. Fishburne, who is called upon to deliver several lectures, manages to do so with enormous dignity and grace, and makes Furious a compelling role model, someone on whom the whole film easily pivots.

However endlessly film makers around the world have told that story, Mr. Zhang reimagines it with immense grace and turns it into a deeply felt tragedy.

Beautiful and heartfelt, an oasis of humanity in a season of furious hyperbole.

Broadway Danny Rose proceeds so sweetly and so illogically that it seems to have been spun, not constructed. Mr. Allen works with such speed and confidence these days that a brief, swift film like this one can have all the texture and substance of his more complicated work.

Ingenious fantasy.

It has taken only two films, "Welcome to the Dollhouse" and now Happiness, for Todd Solondz to establish his as one of the most lacerating, funny and distinctive voices in American film.

His Breakdown is a tough, vigorous exercise in pure action, shot with throwback expertise and, most refreshingly, without special effects.

Stunning...a film much tougher and more transfixing than its wan title.