Fly's striking, often suspenseful drama has all the elements of a Shakespearean tragedy: an insecure young prince who must prove his mettle and loses his soul; a cruel, manipulative queen who cares only for power; a close adviser whose motives aren't always clear.

Needless to say, anyone who's not entirely down with the beastly noise of the Beastie Boys will hate every second of it. This one's strictly for -- and, for the most part, by -- the fans.

While it doesn't miss a cliche, it also invests every one with vigorous conviction.

Wu is able to demonstrate both the timelessness and the universality of stories which, on the surface, sound extreme and unique.

Connery delivers his usual charming performance, and Brandauer (MEPHISTO, OUT OF AFRICA) makes a great Bond villain. Gone is the excessive gadgetry that mars Bond films, and, as a result, the characters are more prominent and colorful.

An exhilarating, sometimes terrifying monster of a movie that, once it gets you in its clutches, won't put you down again until the closing credits start to roll.

Documentary filmmakers Sean Fine and Andrea Nix Fine found an ingenious way to tell their story in a film that is as unflinching as it is uplifting.

[Jude] is bristling, muscular Victorian noir. Of the scant handful of previous Hardy adaptations, none can match its intensity.

Doesn't always work, nor does it measure up to their hilarious AIRPLANE!. It is, nevertheless, very funny as it lampoons two genres: the spy movie and the teenage musical.

Surprisingly sweet and good-natured, Dick Tracy is a highly stylized piece of fluff that's easier to digest than the ponderous pretensions of the equally over-hyped Batman.

This energetic hip-hop musical barely supplements the large-scale musical numbers with its cliched plot, but it does capture a sense of the break-dancing craze and is more entertaining than most of the films made to cash in on that trend.

Thoroughly heartfelt. But though Trachtman alludes to the impact that Lior's special needs and local fame has had on his family, she seems uninterested in exploring the larger history of beliefs and traditions concerning mentally challenged people and their closeness to God.

The giant computerized dragon alone is worth viewing. But Dragonslayer profits from spirited direction and camera work plus the expert Richardson at its nucleus.

A fascinatingly obtuse puzzle box that manages to be gripping even after it stops making sense.

Both a spy drama and an intriguing character study. Penn invests his Snowman with fascinating eccentricity and is the more interesting of the pair, though Hutton delivers an estimable performance as the sullen young falconer.

Propelled by a soundtrack as diverse as its international gallery of thieves, Jordan's cheerfully scruffy neo-noir caprice even lays on the religious imagery with a palette knife and sweetens Melville's ending without seeming terminally sappy.

Brawny, he-man spectacle combined with a surprisingly solid story and buttressed by excellent performances.

Moon is a small-scale film, but, thanks in no small part to Rockwell, its mix of thematic grandeur and human drama makes it a worthy successor to those 1970s science fiction films that inspired it.

This creepy and cryptic early film from director Arnaud Desplechin isn't as assured as his MY SEX LIFE... (OR HOW I GOT INTO AN ARGUMENT), but it has its own intriguing charms.

This thin premise is better suited to a half-hour sitcom than a feature film (in fact, there's an episode of Frasier with a very similar setup).

This lightweight road picture about a group of inept thieves has an uneven beginning but ends up charming and satisfying.

This fun film is filled with loads of laughs, atmosphere, and nostalgia.

The first and best biker movie.

A tabloid slice of tabloid life, ragged, vivid, awkward and punchy all at once.

Green and his regular cinematographer Tim Orr have a feel for the sad, generic landscape of small-town America, but rather than adding to an overarching melancholy it only reinforces an already drab, at times bizarrely comic tone.

The movie was a misfire despite the presence of many of filmdom's best talents. Diamond's adaptation fails to provide any new wrinkles to the tired plot and Gene Saks's direction is only as good as the material he's been given.

There are some vicious highlights, but the acting is wildly variable, and the film manages to be both overwrought and dull.

A treat for Cronenberg fans, though this could hardly be called a gripping, or emotionally involving, story; you're more likely to need a can of bug spray than a hanky.

This interesting feature is one of the few Hollywood films that takes an honest look at the lives of African-Americans in the ghetto.

There's not a single bad performance here, and director Marshall wisely builds his film on small moments, realized with sympathy and intelligence.

Thoroughly gripping.

The comedy is fairly light and the romance decidedly offbeat.

For all the technical wizardry that went into making the film, Paxton's reflections on the human tragedies of the Titanic and the terrorist attack of Sept. 11th, 2001, which took place while the crew was out at sea, provide one of the film's most haunting moments.

Deville gently reveals that they're all simultaneously hauntingly fragile and amazingly resilient, their smiles as piercing as any resigned gaze.

If your idea of fun involves zombies, monstrous physical transformations and alien slugs bent on world domination, look no further than James Gunn's gleeful homage to all things gross and horrible actually makes good on the "horror comedy" label by being both flat-out creepy and darkly funny.

Relentlessly grim, At Close Range offers a frightening glimpse at the dark side of American life and poses disturbing questions about family ties. Unfortunately, although director James Foley handles the performances with skill, he also indulges in too many flashy directorial pyrotechnics, muting the emotional impact.

Little more than a shaggy-dog tale about two hit men killing time in the picturesque, medieval Belgian city of the title, goosed with crackling dialogue and generous dollops of gore.

Basically, the feeling one gets is that there was so much musical material left from THAT'S ENTERTAINMENT! that they just threw the rest into PART II, and then decided to expand on it with comedy and drama in order to be able to show The Marx Brothers, Greta Garbo, and others.

Lumet develops his story at a leisurely but effective pace, allowing the dynamics of a family in transition--not the sudden appearance of the FBI or an action-paced chase--to give the film its tension. Phoenix delivers a convincing, serious performance, and the rest of the cast, save for the miscast Hirsch, is also strong.

A better rock'n'roll parody than The Rocky Horror Picture Show, and one of director Brian De Palma's more original efforts, Phantom of the Paradise combines elements of The Phantom of the Opera and the Faust legend into a fairly entertaining, but only sporadically successful, horror-musical comedy.

Perceptive, kinetic and entirely believable.

They're frank, funny, resilient and altogether captivating.

Klapisch's use of split screens, fragmented images and nouvelle vague-ish editing would be annoying if it weren't so in keeping with the youthful exuberance his characters haven't quite lost.

This winning mix of exciting action, heart-tugging sentiment, and gentle character comedy makes Bolt yet another solid addition to Disney's history of family-friendly fare.

Grabsky's meticulous and frequently monotonous documentary about the life and music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart comes to vivid life whenever one of the many world-class musicians who sat for interviews simultaneously describes and demonstrates exactly what's so special about particular compositions.

Although some of the humor falls flat in this Allen comedy, his satire of revolutions and revolutionaries is perpetually topical.

Getting Irving's characteristic blend of quirky comedy and sorrow just right on screen has always been tricky, and writer-director Tod Williams' best efforts aren't enough to make the mix gel.

What is so remarkable about THE BLOOD OF THE POET is that Cocteau has created a lasting piece of art, a haunting poem, as exciting today as it was in 1930.

This story of an extramarital fling that turns into a nightmare begins as a well-crafted psychological thriller but degenerates into a misogynistic thrill-fest in its closing moments.

The voices of the architects, developers, public officials and contractors here discussing the specifics of particular sites, we're hearing the voices of a conflicted nation as it considers how to handle its tumultuous past while defining itself for future generations.

The script never resolves the different levels on which it tries to operate, and also throws in too many loose ends which never get cleared up.

A fantastic symphony of decay (Decay + Fantasia = Decasia), simultaneously heartbreakingly beautiful and exquisitely sad, pieced together from snippets of old films on the verge of oblivion.

General audiences will regret the absence of titles identifying various clips and interviewees, but Fellini fans will want to eat the whole thing up with a spoon.

A scary, intelligent thriller that remains haunting long after it's over...features what has to be one of the creepiest first half-hours in recent film history.

Moore's desperate need for attention is irritating, but it's also his strength as a gadfly; it drives him to needle sacred cows and received wisdom that would otherwise go unchallenged.

It's lavish, clever entertainment, a welcome opportunity to laugh without shame.

Hugely entertaining, globe-trotting documentary.

Blaze may be the least sleazy movie about whoring since The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas. Paul Newman stars as Louisiana governor Earl K. Long in this sanitized romance adapted by director Ron Shelton from the autobiography of Blaze Starr, the Bourbon Street stripper who supposedly stole Long's heart.

Yes, it's another gay coming-of-age while coming-out drama, but rarely has the subject been so truthfully addressed.

With 20/20 9/11 hindsight, it's clear that covertly arming the Mujahedeen wasn’t such a good idea after all, but neither Nichols nor Sorkin wants to spoil the fun.

Often rings painfully true, but would have benefited from judicious editing.

A consistently hilarious parody of the noir and detective genres, expertly blending classic archival footage with the action.

Matters become increasingly contrived as the film collapses in exhaustion from thematic overload. Still it's a fairly impressive achievement as a whole.

An excellent low-budget horror film from director Sole, whose impressive grasp of filmmaking technique and eye for the grotesque keeps the viewer on edge throughout the movie.

This is a heartwarming film, superbly directed by ex-actor Tony Bill. Makepeace is excellent as the slight protagonist, and Baldwin is perfect as the brooding, misunderstood mammoth. Dave Grusin's score adds immeasurably to the tone.

Adapted (with some changes) by Roald Dahl from his famous children's book, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Willy Wonka creates a marvelous world as close to heaven as any kid can imagine and never talks down to its young audience. The film is sometimes dark in its tone but by the end (when Wonka's motives and true nature are revealed) it is fabulously uplifting.

A weird picture based on a slim novel by Carson McCullers, this movie fails to engender any sympathy or interest due to several miscalculations.

Weighty and downbeat though that sounds, Delpy's film is delightfully light, especially when it's parsing the infinite variety of horrible French cabbies.

In addition to its views on the glamorization of serial murder, MAN BITES DOG offers a wicked send up of notoriously talky French filmmaking--the most unbelievable thing about the movie's narrative conceit isn't that the crew is calmly shooting a vicious serial murderer as he goes about his business, but that they've chosen to follow the unbearable Ben. His loathsome, self-absorbed monologues are torment worthy of the ninth circle of Hell, but with a cup of black coffee and a supply of smelly cigarettes he could pass at any cafe for a run-of-the-mill French intellectual.

Using long takes, largely improvised dialogue and an increasingly out-of-joint time frame, Van Sant chronicles the final hours of fictional but Cobain-like rock star Blake.

The only criticism that can possibly be leveled at Black's film is its narrow focus, but it's not hard to extrapolate.

Barney has been criticized as willfully esoteric, but if traditional meaning is once again elusive in this film, it remains an enthralling aesthetic experience, one that's steeped in mystery and a ravishing, baroque beauty.

The end result is a series of stylish vignettes, some entertaining and all variations on essentially the same theme.

An excellent introduction to the subject, and a movie buff's delight.

MacGregor demonstrates just how far he's come as an actor. Swinton, meanwhile, adds another notch to a resume already crowded with good performances.

The film rests on Depp's evocation of Barrie's gentle, playfulness and deeply buried sorrows; it's difficult to imagine another actor so gracefully evoking Barrie's childlike qualities without seeming creepy or emotionally malformed, and only the hard of heart will come away dry-eyed.

One is left with an unsettling ambivalence about the night's awful events -- there are no absolute villains here, just as there are no total victims -- and much of the credit is due to the performances.

What might have been a trite soap opera is elevated to the status of superior emotional drama by a wise script, sensitive direction, and an Oscar-winning performance by de Havilland.

A nonstop cavalcade of Roth-style animation starring Rat Fink, vintage footage, artfully animated black-and-white film, and fanciful "interviews" with beautifully preserved cars of the era.

Efron's remarkable performance as a wild child who seems to truly exist somewhere betwixt and between is riveting.

It won't take genre fans long to unravel the mystery, but the pleasures of this film lie elsewhere. Its images of the gleaming, depersonalized Tokyo in which Mima lives out her superficially charmed but lonely life are haunting, and the characterizations are unusually strong. There's plenty for anime newcomers to enjoy, and fans won't want to miss it.

Tony Award-winning stage director Jerry Zaks' debut feature is a gentle, surprisingly funny film about dying that manages to tug a few heartstrings without the usual emotional manhandling.

Silent Running concentrates heavily on special effects, resulting in some stunning imagery. Dern gives an engaging, against-type performance, though the script is stretched out very thin to support a feature-length film.

Not for all tastes, but produces haunting juxtapositions.

Good Morning, Vietnam stumbles whenever Williams isn't behind the mike, placing him in melodramatic, hackneyed situations that become increasingly predictable and preposterous, and director Barry Levinson's seemingly endless reaction shots of listeners grooving to the DJ's antics become irritating. Levinson manages, however, to be one of the few filmmakers to show the Vietnamese as complex, cultured people, rather than as helpless victims or the faceless enemy.

Directed with charming restraint by the acclaimed American producer Dan Ireland, the film is a quiet triumph for Dame Joan.

This short, gentle film is surprisingly involving.

While Costner the actor clearly imagines himself the Gary Cooper of the 21st century, he's got a crude sentimental streak that Costner the director fails to curtail.

No one can quite capture that decay -- the guilty conscience that can freeze the blood of even the most reputable of France's bourgeois families -- better than Chabrol, and this the master at his best.

A grim meditation on faith and betrayal that focuses on a relatively obscure corner of Holocaust history: the fate of the Catholic clergy under the Third Reich.

Isn't exactly a straightforward biography, but rather a snapshot of the iconoclastic American maverick at a particular point in his career.

Vic Morrow is excellent as the leader of a gang of thugs, as is Poitier in a star-making performance, though at age 31 he unfortunately doesn't convince as a high school student.

Bloody well done. Hammer finally gave the Dracula legend the treatment it deserved here, entrusting it to the brilliant director of The Curse of Frankenstein, Terence Fisher, who injected glorious life into the familiar material.

Deftly mixes rueful sentimentality and trenchant observations about the constantly shifting balance of power that drives relationships.

Scenemaker Dito Montiel's rough, grating memoir of growing up in a poor, violent section of Astoria, Queens, in the mid-1980s features a few too many arty flourishes, but also packs a raw power that's hard to shake.

Tony Scott's thriller is flashy, but it's not dead stupid and it's never dull.

Haynes's feature debut, is an exercise in cinema of ideas that, while audacious and occasionally compelling, is ultimately less than the sum of its parts.

Widely noted as a politically correct animated feature, FernGully is entertaining enough to make its occasionally overstated message palatable.