Hamlet finds in Hawke's greatish performance a Great Dane for this, or any other, modern moment.

Ultimately, The Doom Generation succeeds on its old-fashioned virtues - cinematography, acting, script, storytelling, individual vision. Plenty of films have dealt with teen isolation and many more will pile on the shocks, but few have a script this hilarious or a visual sensibility this developed.

An impressively competent "how will male teen star get with female teen star at high school dance?" romance.

The disappointing ending aside, there is much to enjoy in The Game, a creation with a sheen so highly burnished that sometimes you feel you must look away.

It's funnier, and bitchier, than Clare Boothe Luce's "The Women," and, best of all, it showcases three wonderful actresses who have rarely been better.

By its hilarious, grotesquely over-the-top climax, Holy Smoke is ideologically, metaphorically out of control, as if it has risen from the '70s ashes.

Marshall has an astounding instinct for popular entertainment. He's done it again with The Other Sister.

In 80 minutes, the film accumulates a staggering gravity.

Parents should note the PG rating. There's little bloodshed, but several fight scenes, lots of loud roaring and some overwhelming special effects sequences could vex younger viewers.

McTiernan's film mines what substance it has from its two stars, but is admittedly about keeping up its own appearances.

Copycat is as steady and reliable as a pulse and as exhilarating as a surge of adrenalin.

The weird thing about the films David Mamet has directed is that they have about as much emotion as a cyborg in a science fiction movie, yet by the end of the picture it isn't necessary; by then the audience has supplied their own.

Softley and Amini say they consciously viewed Kate as a film noir kind of heroine, a beauty leading a good man astray. And that, added to the setting of the second half of the movie in canal-riven Venice, gives the story the kind of moral haziness that verges on Thomas Mann territory.

This is not a movie for the squeamish, by any means. But for those who like their thrillers dark and their heroes a bit more complicated and flawed than the average shoot-without-a-blink type so prevalent in today's movies, 8MM fills the bill.

There's a sense of genuineness throughout Girlfight.

Groovy.

Get On the Bus might just be Spike Lee's best work yet.

It's a half-life better than Martin Lawrence treading similar, simpler water in "Big Momma's House."

Sad but still bouncy.

There is a point of view here, a rather strong one. It may sound like slight praise, but Love Jones is a movie that is exactly what it wants to be, and that's an achievement in a homogenized, test-marketed vanilla-movie landscape.

Priceless.

Beautiful. Simply, beautiful.

This is a giddy parody of gang pictures, West Side Story without the music and set in the Bronx of the '60s. The music is solid early '60s rock 'n' roll ( My Boyfriend's Back, The Wanderer ) and the acting is broad and often silly.

A collection of arbitrary sketches, bits and improvs jammed into a locker room-style variety show masquerading as some semblance of a narrative.

A grim, well-realized film from New Zealand. It is an impressive first feature for its director, Lee Tamahori, and a splendid dramatic vehicle for its stars, especially Rena Owen, who gives a gritty portrayal of a Maori woman fighting to stand her ground in a violent ghetto household.

The emphasis is on comedic interaction, not plot - too bad, "48 HRS" had both - but the pair adds spice to the predictable opposites-detract gags.

William H. Macy is fine as the detective Arbogast, wearing a hat he could have borrowed from Martin Balsam in the original role.

It is familiarly old-fashioned, complete with montages of newspaper clippings fluttering past and calendar days slipping by. The sets, costumes, old cars and general atmosphere all beautifully recall moviemaking of a bygone era. And for that, hats off to Duke.