In this crowd-pleasing 1983 comedy of high finance about a homeless con artist who becomes a Wall Street robber baron, Eddie Murphy consolidated the success of his startling debut in the previous year's 48 Hours and polished his slick-winner persona. The turnabout begins with an argument between super-rich siblings, played by Ralph Bellamy and Don Ameche: Are captains of industry, they wonder, born or made? To settle the issue, the meanies construct a cruel experiment in social Darwinism. Preppie commodities trader Dan Aykroyd (perfectly cast) is stripped of all his worldly goods and expelled from the firm, and Murphy's smelly derelict is appointed to take his place, graduating to tailored suits and a world-class harem in record time. Eventually the two men team up to teach the nasty old manipulators a lesson, cornering the market in frozen orange juice futures in the process. Director John Landis (The Blues Brothers) doesn't have the world's lightest touch, but he hits most of the jokes hard and quite a few of them pay off. Trading Places is also a landmark film for fans of Jamie Lee Curtis. -David Chute.

Tom Berenger and Billy Zane head the cast in this silly action film about a tough Marine and an Olympics marksman who team up in the Panamanian jungle to take out a rebel leader and the drug kingpin financing him. Berenger's done this switched-off soul bit before, but Zane doesn't seem quite ready for his part. In any case, the acting doesn't matter as much to director Luis Llosa as fancy camerawork to give viewers the sense of a bullet hurling along its trajectory. -Tom Keogh.

Martial arts matinee idol Jet Li Lin-Kit, who made his U. S. debut as a bad guy in Lethal Weapon 4, portrays a real life turn-of-the-century Cantonese patriot, the dauntless Fong Sai-Yuk. This is a much more blunt and straightforward effort than Tsui Hark's flamboyant Once Upon a Time in China films, but codirectors Ann Hui (Song of the Exile) and Yuen Kwai (Yes, Madam) deliver many lively and funny sequences. For U. S. viewers, the revelation of the film will be Josephine Siao, a Cantonese film star of the '60s, in both comedies and high-flying swordplay films, who plays Fong Sai-Yuk's martial mother. Siao disguises herself as man to enter a martial arts competition and ends up winning both the prize and the heart of a high official's daughter-mostly because the girl has never met a hero with so much poetic sensitivity lurking just beneath the surface. Chu Kong (Sidney in John Woo's The Killer) plays Fong Sai-Yuk's father as an anti-Manchu patriot so unbendingly upright that he's a bit of a prig, and as the action heats up, political stakes emerge more clearly. In the grand finale, Fong Sai-Yuk squares off against a Manchu killer played with great panache by newcomer Chiu Man-cheuk. [+]

A Risky Business clone with loftier ambitions, Mystery Date holds up surprisingly well despite its '80s teen-flick trappings. This was Ethan Hawke's follow-up to the successful family adventure White Fang, and it's fun to watch the fresh-faced future Mr. Uma Thurman playing a shy guy named Tom who's obsessed with his dishy neighbor Geena (then-newcomer Teri Polo, in '80s big-hair splendor). When Tom's criminally entangled brother (Brian McNamara) manipulates Tom into a mistaken-identity date with Geena, they soon find themselves chased by a crazed delivery driver (Fisher Stevens), a hot-headed L. A. detective (SCTV alumnus Tony Rosato), and a Chinese mob kingpin (B. D. Wong) whose henchmen are named Ben and Jerry (giving some indication of this movie's dim sense of humor). Plot twists proliferate, and Polo (who had to wait until 2000's Meet the Parents for another decent movie role) manages to flatten her funniest line of dialogue. All of which makes Mystery Date a hit or miss affair, but mostly it hits. [+]

Half of the characters in this 1988 John Landis potboiler seem to be played either by Eddie Murphy or costar Arsenio Hall, swaddled in elaborate Rick Baker makeup appliances that render them unrecognizable but also weirdly immobile. As a pampered African prince who journeys incognito to Queens, New York, to find a bride who will love him just for himself, Murphy manages to look smug and naive at the same time. There are enjoyable sequences of Murphy's Prince Akeem applying his lordly manner to his new job in a fast-food emporium, and falling for the boss's spirited daughter (Shari Headley), who teaches him how to party down, American style. But the fish-out-water premise is never fully exploited. Star spotters will have a field day locating Cuba Gooding Jr. , Donna Summer, Louie Anderson, Vondie Curtis Hall, E. R. 's Eriq La Salle, and Samuel L. Jackson in their minuscule supporting roles. -David Chute.

Luc Besson (The Fifth Element) made his American directorial debut with this stylized thriller about a French hit man (Jean Reno) who takes in an American girl (Natalie Portman) being pursued by a corrupt killer cop (Gary Oldman). Oldman is a little more unhinged than he should be, but there is something genuinely irresistible about the story line and the relationship between Reno and Portman. Rather than cave in to the cookie-cutter look and feel of American action pictures, Besson brings a bit of his glossy style from French hits La Femme Nikita and Subway to the production, and the results are refreshing even if the bullets and explosions are awfully familiar. -Tom Keogh.

This oddball sequel to Smoke is less a sequel than a free-wheeling companion piece. Filmed by Wayne Wang and Paul Auster the week after they finished Smoke, the idea was to create a wholly improvised film, using the same characters from the first and a few new ones. The challenge was to improvise scenes that would keep the characters talking and interacting for 10 minutes at a crack-the length of a magazine of film. Some of it works well, some less well, but some of it is pure gold (though there is no real story, per se). Among the highlights: Jim Jarmusch as a guy who is about to quit smoking, waxing eloquent about why he loves cigarettes; rocker Lou Reed discussing his various philosophies on life in hilarious deadpan; a few disquisitions on the joys of Brooklyn; and, if you can believe it, a love scene between Harvey Keitel and Roseanne. -Marshall Fine.

In 1963 Elvis could still be energized by the music in his movies, and the production values hadn't yet descended to budget-crunching level. Thus the breezy pleasure of Fun in Acapulco, which sees the pelvis-swinger coming to life for a rousing "Bossa Nova Baby" and a clutch of faux-Mexican tunes. Nice scenery of the fabled resort, but the movie has a strange disconnect (which becomes weirdly fascinating if you keep track of it): Elvis himself is limited to standing and singing in front of rear-projection Mexican vistas, while his hard-working double bicycles down streets, strides across beaches, etc. The newly hot Ursula Andress keeps Elvis and his double company. Elvis's jobs are among his craziest movie gigs: he begins as a deckhand, is hired as a nightclub entertainer/lifeguard, but is revealed to be a trapeze artist in his former life. By the end, of course, he is also a cliff diver. -Robert Horton.