Producer-turned-director Irwin Winkler (The Net) crafted this 1992 remake of Jules Dassin's 1950 film noir about a small-time hustler in London who gets in over his head. Winkler's version is set in New York and stars Robert De Niro as a shyster lawyer who decides to get even with a boxing promoter (Alan King) who bests him in court. A couple of innocents are talked into helping the cause, notably the brother (Jack Warden) of De Niro's enemy and a barmaid (Jessica Lange) who agrees to finance the operation. Everything goes south, plunging the hero into prospects of real disaster. The film is far from an exemplary, contemporary noir, but its outstanding cast, with no shortage of charisma and dynamics, keeps things terribly interesting. So does the funny but terse script by Richard Price (Clockers), who also has a cameo as a doctor. Winkler's sensibilities as a tasteful and intelligent producer still get in the way of his daring as a director, but he does leave us with much to be satisfied about. -Tom Keogh.

By the late 1970s, Monty Python's resident animator and occasional performer, Terry Gilliam, was ready to direct a feature film on his own (he codirected Monty Python and the Holy Grail two years earlier). Returning to the medieval muck and monstrosities that served as a backdrop for Holy Grail, Gilliam chose a darker satire for this erratic but funny outing. The result was a witty, modernist fable about an unprepared hero (Michael Palin) pushed through a heroic journey by uncontrollable forces of destiny, propelling him into a duel with a fearsome, man-eating dragon called Jabberwock. Raunchy, irreverent, and borderline cynical, Jabberwocky reveals a lot of Gilliam's flaws as a first-time solo filmmaker, but it also serves as a map of his obsessions and extravagant sense of art direction-elements of his artistry that certainly flourished in subsequent works. -Tom Keogh.

A strong argument favors Gary Sinise's 1992 Of Mice and Men over the classic 1939 version that critics have historically preferred. As adapted by the great playwright-screenwriter Horton Foote, John Steinbeck's Depression-era masterpiece comes alive with timeless simplicity, more candid in language and behavior, and therefore more honest in its embrace of Steinbeck's beloved pair of lowly dreamers George (Sinise) and his retarded cousin Lennie (John Malkovich). On the lam, they find work as farmhands, joining a close-knit crew and trying to avoid trouble stirred by the dangerously seductive wife (Sherilyn Fenn) of the boss's sadistic son (Casey Siemaszko). There's not a false note or bad performance in the entire film; as veterans of Chicago's acclaimed Steppenwolf Theater, Malkovich and Sinise possess the compassionate chemistry that makes George and Lennie inseparable until the tragic, inevitable final scene. As director, Sinise serves the material with no-frills fidelity; it's easy to believe that Steinbeck would have approved. -Jeff Shannon.

The second of Eric Rohmer's Tales of the Four Seasons series is not the chilly story its title would imply. Felicie (Charlotte Véry) is a single mother with two lovers, neither of whom she feels much passion for-and Felicie knows passion. In the opening scene she frolics with youthful abandon with Charles (Frédéric van den Driessche), an American she falls head-over-heels for while on holiday. Through a careless mistake-she gives him the wrong address and doesn't have his-they never reconnect in spite of her best efforts, but his presence continues to permeate her life as she raises their child. The sunny warmth of carefree youth and the emotional ecstasy of the opening turn to the cool colors of winter as Felicie resigns herself to a life without her one true love. She tries to make the best of it by choosing one of her lovers but, in the best tradition of willful Rohmer women, she discovers she simply cannot settle for second best. Felicie is a delightfully contradictory character, lively under her somber front, headstrong and petulant, indecisive and flighty, dedicated to her search for true love. Véry invests Felicie with a spark that enlivens her even at her most exasperating, a spark that Rohmer finally allows to light up in his most emotionally magical conclusion since Summer. -Sean Axmaker.

Aidan Quinn plays a man so aggrieved by his misfortunes that he vows to break each of God's Ten Commandments in revenge. But even that act of profound defiance doesn't quite work out the way he planned, and the character undergoes a mythic-some would say biblical-experience of a different kind. Quinn is fine, as is Anthony LaPaglia as his friend and Courteney Cox as a love interest. But the heavily stylized film by Daniel Taplitz makes puffery of the drama, and the atmosphere is more silly than smart. -Tom Keogh.

There isn't a lot of middle ground when it comes to Jonathan Livingston Seagull, which comes to DVD in 2007, 34 years after it was released theatrically, 15 years after it appeared in the VHS format, and nearly 40 years after the first publication of Richard Bach's novella. One person's poetic is another's pretentious; while many find inspiration and enlightenment in its allegorical message of self-realization and fulfillment, many others are repelled by its sophomoric, superficial moralizing. There is, however, one aspect of director Hall Bartlett's film that pretty much everyone agrees on: it's beautifully photographed, and richly deserving of its 1974 Oscar nomination for Best Cinematography, with shot after breathtaking shot of the titular bird and his flock on the wing (and done without CGI or other modern technological trickery, other than the use of some radio-controlled models). Still, even an ornithologist would grow weary of endless shots of seagulls soaring and swooping, and when they start to talk, well, that's where the battle lines are drawn. James Franciscus, speaking in a hoarse, urgent whisper, supplies the voice of Jonathan, a young gull obsessed with flying higher, faster, and "without limits. " This doesn't sit too well with the conformist stiffs who run the show, and the rebellious Jonathan finds himself an outcast… at least until he hooks up with some other, more evolved birds, who show him an existentially higher place and encourage him to return to his flock (who have names like Kirk Maynard, Judy Lee, and Charles-Roland) and share his profound life lessons with the others. If all of that sounds a bit sententious, that's because it is; while there's no arguing with the film's positive gist (basically, that it's good to be yourself and take a few risks), it's hammered home with all the subtlety of a Thomas Kinkade painting. Neil Diamond's music doesn't help, either, as the songwriter (with collaborator Lee Holdridge) delivers some of the most cloying songs of his career, somehow managing to sound sentimental and grandiose at the same time. In the end, perhaps the best solution is to watch Jonathan Livingston Seagull with the sound off. -Sam Graham.

Contrary to popular rumor, this 1987 collection of comedy skits is not about a group of female employees from Amazon. com on a mission to the lunar surface. It's a series of unrelated spoofs and sketches designed to resemble an aimless night of TV channel-surfing, and the satirical targets include grade-Z science fiction films of the 1950s, sex films of the 1930s, hospital soap operas, and Playboy video centerfolds. There's a charity drive in which legendary bluesman B. B. King pleas for donations to help "Blacks Without Soul," and Ed Begley Jr. thinks he's the son of the Invisible Man, which would be fine if he weren't as visible as everyone else. The various sketches feature an all-star cast including Rosanna Arquette, Griffin Dunne, Carrie Fisher, Michelle Pfeiffer, the late Phil Hartman in an early role, and many others. It's strictly hit-or-miss, and many of the sketches fall flat, especially since the subjects being spoofed (the title sketch is a send-up of the actual 1954 movie Cat Women on the Moon) are funny enough without being satirized. Even though Leonard Maltin's Movie & Video Guide describes most of the sketches as "astonishingly unfunny," this can be a very amusing movie if you're in the mood for a no-brainer with a lot of familiar Hollywood faces. [+]

After starring in the now-legendary trilogy of spaghetti Westerns for Italian director Sergio Leone, Clint Eastwood became a box-office star and imported the style of those classic shoot-'em-ups for this 1967 Western directed by Ted Post, with whom Eastwood had worked during their days on the television series Rawhide. Eastwood plays an innocent rancher who is mistaken for a cattle rustler and sentenced to hang by an angry mob. When he is saved from the noose by a passing lawman, he embarks on a renegade campaign of vengeance against the men who attempted to lynch him. Hang 'Em High offers a number of memorable moments and stylistic flourishes, and features a superb supporting cast of Western veterans, including Ben Johnson, Ed Begley, Pat Hingle, Dennis Hopper, Bruce Dern, L. Q. Jones, and the "Skipper" himself, Alan Hale Jr. Made just three years before Dirty Harry, the film marked a turning point for Eastwood, who would soon move into a prolific period of contemporary thrillers. -Jeff Shannon.