Michelle Pfeiffer's husband, television producer David E. Kelley (Ally McBeal), is partially responsible for this entertaining tearjerker about a widower (Peter Gallagher) who can't let go of his late wife and whose relationship with his adolescent daughter (Claire Danes) is stalled as a result. Invited for a weekend at the beach by his worried sister-in-law (Kathy Baker), Gallagher's character faces various humiliations (he's been set up to meet a single woman) and fatherly crises (his growing girl is attracted to a local boy). Pfeiffer plays the ghost of the dead woman and Danes is terrific, but it's Gallagher who gets a rare opportunity to carry the ball for an entire feature, and he does it very well. Michael Pressman directed what is, in the end, a very nice movie. -Tom Keogh.

The second installment in "The Walter Lantz Archive" includes 45 Woody Woodpecker cartoons from 1952 to 1958, and an assortment of films made between the early '30s and the mid-'60s. During the '50s, when the Warner Bros. directors were crafting some of the funniest cartoons ever made and MGM's "Tom and Jerry" series was winning Oscars, the Lantz shorts ranked as second-rate at best. Although some talented artists worked on them, the Woody films from this era feel stale and formulaic: the gags lack punch and the character never develops as a personality. Five Oswald the Lucky Rabbit films qualify as genuine rarities. Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks created the character; Universal's Carl Laemmle took Oswald from Disney and ultimately gave him to Lantz. "Carnival Capers" (1932), "Five and Dime" (1933), and "Wax Works" (1934) reveal just how strongly the early Oswald resembled Mickey, down to the two-button shorts and chunky shoes. But the animation remains crude, rubbery and weightless. The most interesting of these cartoons is "Puppet Show" (1936), which juxtaposes live action footage of marionettes with drawn animation of the same characters. At this point, Oswald, who pulls the puppets' strings, had been re-designed to look like a white Easter Bunny. [+]

It's easy to see why La Haine had such an explosive effect when it was released in France; its potent portrait of racial discord and life in the housing projects outside of Paris is at odds with France's egalitarian vision of itself. This impact wouldn't have lasted, however, were the movie purely a political statement; fortunately, it's a riveting journey that follows three unemployed young men (Said Taghmaoui, Hubert Kounde, and Vincent Cassel) as they wander and try to decide what to do with the gun that one of them has found. This simple scenario results in a remarkably complex examination of race, class, violence, and the abuse of power in modern society, yet never feels preachy or forced. Hugely influenced by American directors like Martin Scorsese and Spike Lee (particularly Do the Right Thing), La Haine riffs through different styles and techniques, yet the movie feels organic and whole, driven by a genuinely passionate point of view. Dynamic, reckless, sometimes obvious and sometimes subtle (and sometimes both; in one scene, Hubert and Said have been picked up by the police, who torture them for kicks. But watching the abuse is a rookie cop whose face quietly ripples with dismay, helplessness, and resignation), this is a must-see. As is usual with Criterion releases, the extra features are excellent, including an in-depth but accessible documentary about the housing projects and riots that inspired the film, retrospective material on the making of the movie, behind-the-scenes horseplay, intriguing deleted scenes (with brief but revealing explanations about the deletion from director Mathieu Kassovitz), and a wonderfully articulate introduction by Jodie Foster, who championed the film upon its release and distributed it through her production company. The audio commentary by Kassovitz, who's fluent in English, is circumspect and thoughtful, with flashes of sardonic humor. Kassovitz's directing career has turned decidedly less political (his more recent movies include The Crimson Rivers and Gothika), but his perspective on La Haine and its inspirations remains sharp and lucid. -Bret Fetzer.

A darkly comic ride, this intense and original 1991 offering from the Coen brothers (Fargo, Blood Simple) gleefully attacks the Hollywood system and those who seek to sell out to it, portraying the writer's suffering as a loony vision of hell. John Turturro (Miller's Crossing, Jungle Fever) plays the title character, a pretentious left-wing writer from New York City who is brought to 1930s Hollywood to write a script for a wrestling movie for palooka actor Wallace Beery. Fink thinks the job is beneath him, but his desire for acceptance gets the better of him, and he suddenly finds himself holed up in a fleabag hotel in Los Angeles, where he is almost immediately afflicted with writer's block. Various distractions begin to enter his life, first in the form of a famous southern writer (John Mahoney) whom Fink idolizes, and then his neighbor in the hotel, a seemingly amiable salesman played by John Goodman (Sea of Love, Raising Arizona). The writer turns out to be a self-loathing drunk whose secretary (Judy Davis) is the one actually doing the writing. And the neighbor, the working-class hero who Fink made his reputation writing about, may have a horrifying secret of his own. Equal parts social commentary and hilarious farce, and winner of the Best Picture, Actor, and Director prizes at the Cannes Film Festival, Barton Fink is a visionary and original comic masterpiece not to be missed. -Robert Lane.

One of the most ferociously iconoclastic and experimental films of the French New Wave, Alain Resnais's 1961 feature, winner of the grand prize at that year's Venice Film Festival, is based on a script by Alain Robbe-Grillet. At its center is what seems to be a simple but unanswerable puzzle: Did its protagonist (Giorgio Albertazzi) have an affair the year before with a woman (Delphine Seyrig) he just met (or possibly re-met) at his hotel? The inquiry becomes an unsettling experiment in flattening the dimensions of past, present, and future so that any difference between them becomes meaningless, while Resnais's coldly formal but oddly dreamlike geometric compositions make space itself seem a function of subjective memory. Add to that Resnais's trademark tracking shots-long, smooth, a visual correlative of a wordless feeling-and this is a film that truly gets under the skin in almost inexplicable ways. One of the most influential works of its time. -Tom Keogh.

This rousing basketball drama centers around Tommy "Shep" Sheppard (Leon), a former high school basketball star now haunted by the accidental death of his best friend, and Kyle Watson (Duane Martin), an arrogant high school player in danger of slipping into crime. Though Shep avoids commitment in his life as a security guard, his attraction to Kyle's mother (Tonya Pinkins) draws him out of his protective shell-but Kyle is more interested in mentorship from Shep's gangster brother Birdie (Tupac Shakur). Above the Rim is melodramatic but played with grit and energy by a solid cast, particularly Shakur. Writer-director Jeff Pollack keeps the story moving and gives the characters enough spin to rescue them from being clichés; the result is engaging despite its formulas. Also featuring Bernie Mac and Marlon Wayans. -Bret Fetzer.

The premise sounds great but the promise is never fulfilled. Terrence McNally's Tony Award-winning hit about a cluster of gay male friends who gather several times one summer at a Victorian house on the bank of a rural lake never quite measures up (at least on film) as anything particularly profound. The story traces a history of infighting and changing relationships within the group, with the shock of AIDS slowly pushing everyone toward greater closeness and honesty. But instead of making an impact, so much of the film is trivial: dinner conversations are banal, tantrums are tedious, genitals are a little too overexposed. The two best and most familiar actors in the piece, Jason Alexander and John Glover, ironically play the most cliché-ridden characters. Still, Glover-who portrays British twin brothers who could not be more different from one another-is a very good reason to see this film. -Tom Keogh.

A hard-hitting and impressive low-budget independent film about love and racism, Zebrahead is a volatile mix of social commentary and powerful acting. Michael Rapaport (Mighty Aphrodite, Beautiful Girls) is a white urban high school student enamored of black rap culture who pursues and falls in love with the cousin (N'Bushe Wright) of his black best friend. Their intense romance brings out racial tensions in their school, among their friends and at home. Problems escalate as a notorious gang banger goes after the girl, forcing a schoolwide confrontation with violent results. With the flavor of a modern urban Romeo and Juliet love story and a showcase for the debut of two exceptional young actors, Zebrahead is a provocative sleeper film well worth checking out. -Robert Lane.

Despite its foregone conclusion, Someone Like You is an agreeable romantic comedy about how people construct elaborate defenses to cope with emotional anguish. Based on Laura Zigman's novel Animal Husbandry, the movie is purely formulaic, with a heroine's best friend (played here by Marisa Tomei) and other supporting roles that come straight from central casting. Even the lovelorn heroine is standard-issue for the genre, but as emotionally devastated talk-show booker Jane Goodale, Ashley Judd brings intelligent charm to a role that could have been maudlin and pathetic. For a while, Jane is pathetic: after being dumped by her seemingly devoted boyfriend Ray (Greg Kinnear), she turns heartbreak into a hobby, creating self-assuring theories about male behavior based on the mating habits of cows. She comforts herself with the certainty that all men are scum, when really she just can't accept rejection. Cast adrift, Jane accepts a roommate offer from her womanizing colleague Eddie (X-Men's Hugh Jackman), who's been nursing his own heartbreak with lots of casual sex. You can see where this is going, and actor-director Tony Goldwyn (following his underrated drama Walk on the Moon) doesn't offer any surprises. But Goldwyn is alert to the comedy of human foibles, and the movie peaks when Jane's defenses are down and Judd's appeal shines at full intensity. At her best, Judd makes an average script better than it has a right to be, and while Kinnear perfects his smarmy routine, Jackman matches them both with star-making sincerity. Someone Like You won't win any awards for originality, but it's universal in its comedic sympathy for the brokenhearted. [+]