Of the Naked Gun films, 33 1/3 is the most successful in capturing the breakneck genre parody that marked the short-lived but critically acclaimed Police Squad TV series (which won Nielsen his only Emmy). Taking broad pot shots at everything from Thelma & Louise to The Crying Game, and culminating with a breathless swipe at the sacred cow of the movie industry, the Academy Awards.

Aside from Bjork's astonishing performance, it's a grim tragedy that's deliberately drab and exceedingly painful to watch.

A throwback to an age when action movies had room between shoot-outs and car chases for dialogue - real dialogue, not rim-shot-ready one-liners - and character development.

Despite outward appearances, Paolo Virzi's utterly charming fable is actually a razor-sharp political satire.

Fascinating, if slightly unfocused, film.

In a film mercifully free of the usual warm and fuzzy movie sentimentality, director Maggie Greenwald and her fine cast shatter most hillbilly stereotypes.

If ever a movie cried out to be French, it's this one, and not just because it's a remake of Claude Chabrol's notoriously icy La Femme Infidele (1968).

While the film captures all the beauty of these extraordinary pieces, the details of Saint Laurent's legendarily turbulent personal life are glossed over with frustrating tact.

The framing story is pointless and almost insulting, even though it's part of former New York Times columnist Anna Quindlen's novel.

Breillat also offers sharp insights into the love-hate relationship between directors and actors.

Potentially the most controversial movie of 1995 and arguably a masterpiece, this edgy, downbeat film falls somewhere between social document and peep-show.

Arguably writer-director Walter Hill's best film to date, Southern Comfort works both as a pure action film and as an extremely effective allegory of America's involvement in Vietnam.

The technology for twinning a single young actress is considerably more seamless than it was in 1961, and Lohan is a perky charmer.

Deliriously expressionistic visually and aurally.

What's Up Tiger Lily? is cleverly devised, hinging on a well-developed sense of the absurd. Allen and his cohorts make good use of the source movie's situations, turning its obvious cliches into some wonderful parodic gems.

This silly and bloody, but at times very effective, horror film takes The Exorcist one step further by concentrating, not on possession by the Devil, but on the Antichrist himself.

Though working on a Jean-Claude Van Damme vehicle can be seen as a comedown for Woo, he rises to the occasion to create an often rousing entertainment that is almost inarguably Van Damme's best film to date.

Although comparisons with Steven Spielberg's Raiders of the Lost Ark are inevitable, it is the interplay between Turner and Douglas that gives the film its real charm. Norman and DeVito score strongly in roles that would have been played by Sydney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre 30 years ago, and the whole film has the feel of an old Warner Bros. thriller with broadly comic overtones.

Taut, cynical thriller.

Breezy and carefree, THEY ALL LAUGHED suffers from a weak, hard-to-grasp structure. As lovable as the characters and their situations are, one is never quite sure where the film is leading.

The acting is similarly accomplished across the board, though it must be noted that Currie nearly walks off with the film: He's the funniest preppie seducer since Tim Matheson in "Animal House" (1978).

Before it takes a sudden turn and devolves into a bizarre sort of romantic comedy, Steven Shainberg's adaptation of Mary Gaitskill's harrowing short story about dominance, submission and the twisted sexual dynamics of the work place is a brilliantly played, deeply unsettling experience.

With his sure handling of this thriller's switchback plot and hairpin turns, Hideo Nakata confirms his mastery of genre material in the wake of his phenomenally successful "Ring."

Who knew marching bands could be so sexy?

The trouble with director and co-writer Laetitia Colombani's debut feature is that the story isn't really interesting enough to be told twice, let alone dragged out another 20 minutes after that.

Fessenden uses an unsettling mix of montage, time-lapse photography and animation to create an atmosphere of great, unknowable menace that closely approximates the haunted spirit of Algeron Blackwood's unforgettable tale "The Wendigo." These hills are indeed alive.

Dave Collard's preposterous script relies heavily on fortuitous coincidence... and thoroughly stupid behavior.

In the end it appears that the problem is less divorce per se than immature and deeply selfish parents who should never have had children in the first place.

Undeniably handsome..., but no cliché is left unturned, right down to the spray of toy soldiers falling from the hand of a dead child. Everything old isn't new again.

Despite some minor flaws, The Fortune Cookie is a very satisfying film.

A thoroughly disappointing and overproduced picture, A Bridge Too Far is nevertheless technically impressive and its sheer scope may interest hardcore warmongers.

When Cox is performing, the movie is firing on all cylinders.

The crews are perfectly cast for maximum drama.

Depp's considerable personal charm is the movie's greatest asset. The story is painfully insubstantial, and Dunaway is sadly wasted in the shallow, predictable role of a woman whose barren life blossoms under her husband's renewed attention.

Not to be confused with the suggestive, subversive melodramas of Sirk and Minnelli, this is the kind of hypertensive trash that gives melodrama a bad name, cynically tempering its naughty bits with smug moralizing.

Far too long for a lighthearted farce, with dull patches that outnumber the high spots, the film is really about Maclaine and Lemmon striving to rise above the fat Diamond-Wilder script and Wilder's lethargic direction.

The very loose plot of WILD STYLE serves mainly as an excuse for rap-and-dance numbers and the sight of prominent East Coast graffiti artists playing themselves, sometimes with magnetism and panache (Brathewaite), sometimes without (everybody else).

Uncomfortable as the film is, it's a beautiful, sensuous experience.

Brilliant and sickening...A must-see that is guaranteed to ruin your day.

Ultimately, despite striving mightily to give everyone a fair shake, the film kindled the ire of conservative Christians and Muslims anyway.

Touched with eerie dream sequences, the film casts a strange spell that's enhanced by the rhythmic, almost sensual depiction of the painstaking art of embroidery.

How can such awful things come out of the mouth of such a pretty girl?

While The Vampire Lovers is an interesting and entertaining effort, containing excellent performances from both Pitt and Cushing, writers Harry Fine and Michael Style and director Roy Ward Baker seem to shy away from actually addressing the questions of sexuality and repression inherent in the material.

What distinguishes Cordero's film is his use of location.

Driven equally by big questions and the abiding desire for small pleasures, like a decent cup of tea, it's an eccentric, mind-bending head trip that greets every catastrophe with an endearingly goofy smile that embodies Hitchhiker's Guide's Zen mantra: Don't Panic!

The first half of Home Alone features the sugar-coated sentimentality that can usually be found in a Hughes film, while the second half is full of unanticipated sadism.

Renner's performance as Dahmer is unimpeachable, fascinating without being charismatic, and Kayaru's Rodney is a marvel of complicated characterization under difficult circumstances.

Longley has constructed a remarkably coherent, horrifically vivid snapshot of those turbulent days.

Masharawi's use of actual footage of clogged roadblocks and scary police actions bring a topical immediacy to his film, but it also asks an important question about the relevance of art during a time of crisis.

It's a complex new approach toward putting memory to tape, and the result can be at times too theoretical, too personal and too opaque, but it's a consistently challenging work that's often sharply poignant.

Ratnam, known for integrating controversial cultural and political themes into popular melodramas, bundles a multitude of coming-of-age traumas into the kind of juicy, overwrought narrative that was once a Hollywood staple.

First-time director Mark Milgard displays enormous promise and a surprisingly sensitive touch with this beautifully rendered tragedy.

Given a better structured screenplay, Mistress might have given The Player a run for its money. Instead, it merely offers glimmers of what might have been, and settles for being a cinematic footnote.

A formula B movie about race car drivers, it's competent, but unmemorable as anything other than a footnote in Cronenberg's development.

It's a cut above the throng of mindless, purported thrillers in which explosions and gun battles replace even rudimentary story telling.

It's so perfectly contrived and mechanical and fresh as a daisy, it's infuriating.

WHERE THE BOYS ARE is plenty moralistic, yet the film is not without a naive sense of charm.

Mortimer is riveting as the sympathetic but flawed Lizzie.

Beautifully played by Valette and Zylberstein, and directed with amazing grace by Albou, this touching film offers a respectful, fascinating look at a community that's ignored as often as it's misunderstood.

Most mystifying, however, is the bizarre hero-worship surrounding the fingure of Kim Jong Il, a nationwide personality cult that makes Joe Stalin and Chairman Mao look like D-list celebrities.

Bearded, burly and even balding, these "bears" are a refreshing change from the depilated, youth-obsessed men of "Queer as Folk."

It is ultimately a simplistic film that will play better to youngsters who wish their grandpas were this cool and to parents who are nostalgic for the kind of exceptional childhood they neither had nor can provide for their own children.

Formulaic but well-acted variation on the theme of pursuing your dreams through dance.

Spader is most effective here, and Lowe has finally found his niche as a junior league Richard Gere. The tension between the two is well handled and yet never quite explained, which adds to the mysterious feel of the movie and gives the characters a sexually ambiguous edge.

The sequel is something of a disappointment, embroiling its refreshingly level-headed heroines in a series of clichéd romantic dilemmas.

Interestingly, the real horror lies in the film's depiction of the era: The sight of guillotined bodies -- naked, headless and dumped under the shady trees of Picpus -- is truly shocking. Rarely has the horror of the Terror been so graphically and effectively evoked.

It's informative as far as it goes, but the film's raison d'etre is the simple sight of large wildlife up close and personal, and it's mesmerizing.

Ultimately, the comedy here is grounded in self-hatred, hostility, and despair. Nearly everyone who wanders through this brash and deliberately tasteless film is stupid, ungainly, or grotesquely tragic. But this only heightens the pleasure during moments of delirious merriment.

Attempts at balance through interviews with unidentified U.S. soldiers is halfhearted at best. In the end, Berends sacrifices coherence for the sake of a story he's determined to tell, rather than focusing on the one that's practically telling itself.

The result is studded with brilliant moments and an eccentric cast.

A love triangle played out on the Isle of Man is the basis for Alfred Hitchcock's last silent film, THE MANXMAN, an uncharacteristic example of Hitchcock with tongue out of cheek.

"Survivor" meets "Cinema Paradiso"in this wonderfully entertaining documentary about a film fanatic's quest to bring Hollywood movies to a remote South Sea island.

The film doesn't dwell on bad feelings, and anyone looking for lurid details won't find them. But fans will love the live footage of this still-powerful band ripping through a virtual greatest-hits set.

Mitchum gives a surprisingly strong performance as a character-type he normally steered away from.

It's both funny and harrowing in the way that only a childhood nightmare come to life can be.

Extremely well-shot espionage thriller that might have worked as an old-fashioned guy's-guy movie if the guys involved had any real, human personality and the espionage were actually thrilling.

Some of the film's more violent scenes may be inappropriate for young and/or sensitive children.

The film is wickedly funny and a first-rate showcase for Ferrell.

By alternating between Jackson's and Kim's point of view, McCann shows both sides of the story: the panicky fear of the paranoid schizophrenic -- the arrhythmic editing and Marshall Grupp's masterful sound design convey a sense of dislocation and shifting reality -- and the bewilderment and frustration of the people who try to help him.

Figgis again aims for sensual moodiness, but so many clashing tones clamor for the viewer's attention that the result is a noisy mishmash.

This is the one that started it all and it is also one of the weakest of the "Road" pictures.

Perhaps with a few more drafts, the filmmakers could have found a means of maintaining the quiet momentum displayed early on, but as it stands, Changeling is little more than a frustrating missed opportunity that's dressed to the nines, but a day late for the party.

Bojanov's sad subjects could as easily be in Detroit or Glasgow or Marseilles. What keeps his film from being a relentless wallow in wasted lives is its surprising conclusion.

Empty shortening of Irving's book reaches for profundity, and comes up courageous but brainless.

An exciting picture with much derring-do and adventure, Where Eagles Dare is also a lengthy film, though there is more than enough action to keep it moving along.

The fourth THIN MAN film isn't nearly as good as the first ones, but it has its own rewards, thanks to the inimitable by-play of Powell and Loy.

Dark, oddball Capra, but a worthwhile watch with a tail ending wagging the dog.

Bold and unforgettable meditation on a truly bizarre incident that pokes at the very heart of one of our culture's biggest taboos.

A deep and astonishingly authentic streak of melancholy runs through this fifth sequel to the 1976 sleeper that made both struggling actor Sylvester Stallone and hard-luck slugger Rocky Balboa international stars.

Director Gore Verbiniski delivers the best one can hope for: a cleverly nostalgic, high-tech copy of the real deal.

The film's rather shallow treatment of his art only reinforces the long-held opinion that Hockney is more a brilliant visual stylist than an artist of any great depth.

Svankmajer has crafted his finest live-action feature to date.

Overall, the film is occasionally interesting but essentially unpersuasive, a footnote to a still evolving story.

Through what sounds like a project of unpromisingly limited scope, Lee manages to touch on a surprisingly wide range of subjects, from cultural identity, familial expectations, community responsibility and, above all, self-definition.

Unfortunately, EATING lacks a main plot or any truly involving developments, and the film, after a promising beginning, loses steam.

Unfortunately, the trajectory of Mueller and co-screenwriter Kevin Kennedy's repetitive screenplay echoes "Taxi Driver" so closely as to invite unfavorable comparison with Martin Scorsese's benchmark chronicle of alienation.

Wood is excellent, but this is a career highlight for Douglas. His depiction of the manic Charlie stays surprisingly grounded and prevents the story from being a naive celebration of mental illness as a kind of freedom that it so easily could have become.

The story is slight and would probably be better suited to a short subject, but first-time feature filmmaker Pierre-Paul Renders gives it a striking formal twist: It's told entirely in the first person.