But transforming full, live-action performances into quavering cartoons isn't inherently lyrical, and here it produces the jittery sense of a world dissolving into flat forms and buzzing prattle.

The film is both fun and frightening, and can also be viewed (however modest its intentions) as a commercialized techno-version of Franz Kafka's allegory Metamorphosis.

Only Rejtman's sharp eye for absurd detail and the bleakly subtle joke separates comedy from tragedy in this story of listless Bonaerenses chasing their own tails through successive drab rings of urban hell.

De Sica handles his fantastic material subtly and with simplicity, yielding an original mix of sharp satire and poetic fable that extended the limits of the neo-realist style.

A tense and chilling espionage picture, Sabotage contains one sequence that many consider among the director's most excruciatingly suspenseful.

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.

Throughout, Holstein makes no bones about the fact that Father Mychal was hardly perfect -- he was a recovering alcoholic who found salvation in Alcoholics Anonymous -- nor does he attempt to disguise Father Mychal's homosexuality, something he never made public but which no doubt grounded his gutsy work with gay Catholics and people with AIDS.

Fisher's dialogue draws heavily on the original film's intertitles and script directions and the addition of sound is a plus for moviegoers uncomfortable with the artificial embarrassment of silence.

If you can get past the lips, Ryan gives a touching performance as a woman determined to battle her cancer while knowing life offers no guarantees except death -- an understanding no doubt sharpened by Kasdan's own experience battling Hodgkin's disease as a teenager.

The film's highlights are far and away the musical performances.

Urzua's unsentimental story of shattered idealism is specific to Cuba, but anyone whose path to adulthood was paved with disillusionment, -- whether they were betrayed by faith, family or institutions – will understand her melancholy nostalgia.

Shot on location in the Bahamas, Austria, and on Salisbury Plain, HELP!, the second Beatles film, is nonsensical fun.

Director Roger Spottiswoode, who edited a number of Sam Peckinpah movies, succeeds brilliantly in creating the chaotic last days of Somoza's government while at the same time incisively evaluating the moral dilemma faced by war correspondents.

Hilarious pseudo-documentary spoof of a British rock group that was so on-target in its satire, many viewers took it for the real thing.

The film is visually stunning, and Peckinpah makes great use of his Durango, Mexico, locations.

Without their efforts, ordinary moviegoers would never know that air-guitar competitors must craft a series of one-minute routines, some to songs they've only just heard, or that their efforts are judged on the 4.0 to 6.0 scale used to rank competitive figure skaters. Important to know? No. Fascinating? Absolutely.

Gripping adventure tale.

Disney does it again in this delightful comedy.

An uneven, but generally well done and entertaining, potpourri of 10 cartoons set to disparate musical styles, ranging from jazz to classical, and performed by such artists as Benny Goodman, The Andrews Sisters, Dinah Shore, and Nelson Eddy.

The film is dazzling in its use of color and odd shapes and is enhanced by the distinctive voices of Ed Wynn as the Mad Hatter, Sterling Holloway as the Cheshire Cat, Jerry Colonna as the March Hare, and Verna Felton as the Queen of Hearts.

Returning director Richard Donner seems to have smoothed over the few stylistic rough edges remaining from the earlier film to deliver here two hours of pure, breathless, high-impact entertainment.

While many of the jokes don't pay off, it's still funny enough to merit your attention. Mancini's score adds pace and flow. This spectacle is almost totally uncontrolled, and therein lies much of its charm.

A hard-hitting action thriller.

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.

While this is a wonderful showcase for some fine acting--notably by Fonda--it is not great filmmaking, and one may be left wishing for the biting, off-the-wall satire of Dr. Strangelove.

The overall effect of watching his film is a bit like a nerve-racking game of Russian roulette: You just know a gun is going to go off, but you don't know which of this multitude of characters it's going to hit.

Horse lovers and racing enthusiasts are this likable film's obvious audience, but you don't have to care about the Derby to get caught up in the stories of the people and the horses behind the two minutes of glory.

A charming surprise.