Ethan Hawke, fresh faced and full of determination, tackles the icy wilds and rowdy boom towns of Alaska in Disney's 1991 adaptation of Jack London's turn-of-the-century gold rush classic. Though somewhat tamed for young audiences, the story of a city kid who befriends a feral half-wolf/half-dog orphan while learning to survive the dangers of nature and man has its share of peril and rousing scenes of wilderness adventure. But the humans are upstaged by both the animals (the standoff between White Fang and a wild brown bear is a highlight) and the Alaskan landscape, from the snow-covered mountains and frozen lakes of winter to the rich green forests and whitecap rivers of summer. The scenes of dogfights and wild wolves hunting game are carefully shot to avoid bloodshed (the opening disclaimer takes pains to remind viewers that all such scenes have been simulated), but they may still be too intense for young children. Recommended for 9 and up. -Sean Axmaker.

Actor turned director Nick Cassavetes, son of American independent godfather John Cassavetes, makes his directorial debut with this quietly unpredictable character piece written for Gena Rowlands. Left adrift when her willful daughter (Moira Kelly) leaves home, the polite, poised widow dotes over the darling 6-year-old son (Jake Lloyd of The Phantom Menace) of her foul-mouthed, working-class neighbor (Marisa Tomei). The girls form an unlikely friendship, and the easy way these opposites find a comfortable space is one of the film's pleasures, as is Rowlands's grandmotherly way with the boy and Gérard Depardieu's shy romancing of Rowlands. Cassavetes focuses on the rhythms and relationships of these people, and they make good company, sometimes at the expense of a meandering story, but ultimately the film belongs to Rowlands's middle-aged survivor, who learns to stop wrapping her life around others and start living for herself. -Sean Axmaker.

The second theatrical film from the popular television show is better than the original surprise hit. Instead of delving into their rich fantasy life, the Rugrats gang goes on a real adventure when their families visit Paris together. Mr. Pickles is brought over to fix his giant Reptar robot, the centerpiece of EuroReptarland (a biting version of the trouble-plagued EuroDisney). The underlying story has Chuckie (the one with the square glasses) looking for a new mommy, as his dad (who has a square personality) starts to fall for a villainous executive (voiced by Susan Sarandon). Soon Paris takes it on the chin as the diaper gang tries to save Chuckie's dad from the altar. The success of the Rugrats is in the writing, where much thought goes into finding comic gems for the adults (there are wonderful parodies of The Godfather and King Kong that will sail over kids' heads). The garble-mouthed youngsters keep up their joyful ways in this 78-minute feature that feels no different from their Nickelodeon series except in length, some 3-D animation sequences, and an eclectic song score (with Cyndi Lauper's "I Want a Mom That Will Last Forever" the real catch). (Ages 6 and older) -Doug Thomas.

How can a movie be so ludicrous and so ecstatic at the same time? The Lovers on the Bridge stars Juliette Binoche as a street person (there, in a nutshell, is the ludicrous part) who was formerly an artist, but began to go blind and whose life fell apart as a result. She hooks up with a homeless street performer (Denis Lavant) who lives on a bridge in the middle of Paris that has been cordoned off for repairs. He falls madly in love with her; she can't bear the thought of being close to anyone. Both are more than a little irrational. But this banal scenario is merely the pretext for a series of lush and stunning images-including midnight water-skiing, fireworks displays, wandering through falling snow, burning posters in subway tunnels-and richly committed performances from the actors. It's not quite as overwhelming on video as it is on a movie screen, but there's such a gushing of emotional images that it's hard to resist the angst and yearning passion. Though the film dives into some cliches, it manages to avoid others; when Binoche's wealthy family starts looking for her, a frightened Lavant tries to keep her hidden away, and you really don't know whether their relationship can possibly survive. An unusual and sweeping film-and an example of the power of visual images to create a state of rapture. -Bret Fetzer.

The folks at Pixar can do no wrong with Monsters, Inc. , the studio's fourth feature film, which stretches the computer animation format in terms of both technical complexity and emotional impact. The giant, blue-furred James P. "Sulley" Sullivan (wonderfully voiced by John Goodman) is a scare-monster extraordinaire in the hidden world of Monstropolis, where the scaring of kids is an imperative in order to keep the entire city running. Beyond the competition to be the best at the business, Sullivan and his assistant, the one-eyed Mike Wazowski (Billy Crystal), discover what happens when the real world interacts with theirs in the form of a 2-year-old baby girl dubbed "Boo," who accidentally sneaks into the monster world with Sulley one night. Director Pete Doctor and codirectors David Silverman and Lee Unkrich follow the Pixar (Toy Story) blueprint with an imaginative scenario, fun characters, and ace comic timing. By the last heart-tugging shot, kids may never look at monsters the same, nor artists at what computer animation can do in the hands of magicians. -Doug Thomas.

The original title of Living Out Loud was The Kiss, which also happens to be the title of one of the two Anton Chekhov stories the movie is loosely based on. (For those Russian lit mavens out there, the other story is "Misery. ") The actual kiss in Living Out Loud is a somewhat mysterious affair: newly single Judith (Holly Hunter) suddenly finds herself laying a wet 'n' sloppy one on a total stranger (Elias Koteas, Hunter's Crash costar) in the back room of a cool jazz club, and then parting ways with the man. For good. Like so much of this exceptionally smart, generous movie, no explanation is given-or necessary. Screenwriter Richard LaGravenese (The Fisher King), making his directing debut, charts Judith's struggles in the wake of being dumped by her doctor husband (Martin Donovan). It turns out life has its ups and downs, some of which come courtesy of the elevator operator (Danny DeVito) in her swanky Upper East Side apartment building. DeVito's character is a nice guy in need of a little human touch, and the actor soft-pedals his usual sleaze in favor of a warm, directly emotional approach. It's the kind of turn that garners Oscar nominations, except that this movie didn't attract the box office it deserved. His performance, like the film, keeps surprising you-a fantasy sequence here, an ensemble dance there, plus a couple of smoky jazz tunes contributed by Queen Latifah. [+]

Directors Sidney Lumet, Alan J. Pakula, Sydney Pollack, and Norman Jewison astutely documented the political pulse of the '60s and '70s with such films as Prince of the City, The Parallax View, Three Days of the Condor, and In the Heat of the Night. Lumet and Jewison have carried their cinematic social consciousness into their past two decades of filmmaking as well. In Country (1989) is Jewison's mournful look at one American family's struggle to survive the aftermath of Vietnam. The film is based on Bobbie Ann Mason's book and it was Bruce Willis's first effort to break out of his Moonlighting and Die Hard mold by tackling the dramatically dark role of Emmett, a Vietnam veteran whose flashbacks of battle horror have pushed him into isolation from the world. His niece, Samantha (Emily Lloyd), lost her dad in the war, and these two unlikely people form a bond based on a past Emmett can't escape and a future that looms bright and beautiful for Samantha. What Jewison does best is evoke the sense of hope that was once held by the forgotten survivors of that terrible war. In Country ambitiously struggles to pull all of its threads together, and while this is a wonderful character study, it has a messy, meandering structure that never quite gels or answers the questions it poses. Yet there's no denying that the climactic closing scenes have a poignancy and power that will bring tears to anyone watching. -Paula Nechak.

Time-hoppers from the future, led by Cheryl Ladd, are abducting airline passengers about to crash, and transporting them a millennium hence in order to reseed a future blighted by environmental disaster. This is a dangerous business, plagued by the specter of accidentally creating time paradoxes, which could throw the future out of whack. Unfortunately, they've lost a couple of the stunners they use to subdue troublesome passengers, and these fall into the hands of a curious physicist (Daniel J. Travanti) and an investigator for the National Transportation Safety Board (Kris Kristofferson). Cheryl Ladd must retrieve these devices before a time paradox wipes out her world, but manages to complicate things by developing a romance with Kristofferson. All of which is very intriguing, having come from the short story, "Air Raid," by science fiction luminary John Varley, who also is credited with the screenplay. The part about airline abductions to save the disastrous future is straight from the original story, and the rest is expanded (you wouldn't say extrapolated) from it. The results are not very happy. About a third of the film is maddeningly wasted by repeating action from a different point of view. Seems natural when there are disparate timelines to deal with, but here nothing is added by the conceit. [+]