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.