It's been branded with the "blaxploitation" label, but there is little that's exploitive in J. D. 's Revenge, a film of well-drawn, articulate characters dragged into a supernatural showdown. Glynn Turman (Cooley High) is especially fine as the sensitive and quiet Ike, a determined student moonlighting as a cab driver, so wound up he's on the verge of cracking. Enter (literally) the ghost of J. D. , a violent, vengeful gangster murdered in the opening moments. He could be Ike's own Mr. Hyde, a dapper, flamboyant ladykiller with a fiery temper and a straight razor who slowly smothers Ike's easygoing personality. Driven by flashes of memory, he sets his vengeful sights on fire-and-brimstone preacher Reverend Bliss (Louis Gossett Jr. [+]

Some of us will never understand why this boy-and-his-whale tale became the hit family film of 1993 and one of the bestselling videos of all time. But it is easy to see how clever marketing and a tear-jerking story could touch the hearts of kids and parents the world over, especially because the endangered Orca whale named Willy is such a majestic creature. The story couldn't be more conventional-it's like Old Yeller and The Black Stallion with a big sea mammal-but as the boy who comes to Willy's aid against the whale's exploitative owner, young Jason James Richter gives an appealing performance with which children can readily identify. After two sequels and an animated television series, this popular film also had a happy real-life ending: Keiko the whale (who plays Willy) recovered from failing health and was gradually trained to survive outside of captivity. -Jeff Shannon.

Christopher Lambert, the imposing French actor with the nasal whine best known to American audiences as Scottish swordsman Highlander, plays a rank amateur in The Hunted. He's an American businessman in Japan who lucks into a one-night stand with slinky Joan Chen and winds up a witness to her murder by a mysterious band of black-clad ninjas. Escaping not one but two attempts on his life by a little quick thinking and a lot of dumb luck, he winds up on a harrowing bullet train ride. As swarms of masked assassins decimate passengers in search of the elusive eyewitness, Lambert's laconic protector, rough-edged samurai Yoshio Harada, unleashes a martial arts frenzy of flashing swords in close quarters. His savior is not as altruistic as he seems, however. He just wants to lure mysterious ninja overlord John Lone out of hiding and into a fight to the death on Harada's island fortress, and Lambert is little more than live bait. Though it made few ripples at the box office, The Hunted is a slick and surprisingly smart thriller. Lone and Harada cut striking figures as the warriors following ancient codes in the modern world, and writer-director J. F. Lawton (screenwriter of Pretty Woman and Under Siege) gives them almost as much screen time as ostensible hero Lambert. [+]

Although it was ultimately overshadowed by Peter Jackson's live-action Lord of the Rings trilogy, Ralph Bakshi's animated adaptation of J. R. R. Tolkien's fantasy classic is not without charms of its own. A target of derision from intolerant fans, this ambitious production is nevertheless a respectably loyal attempt to animate the first half of Tolkien's trilogy, beginning with the hobbit Frodo's inheritance of "the One Ring" of power from Bilbo Baggins, and ending with the wizard Gandalf's triumph over the evil army of orcs. While the dialogue is literate and superbly voiced by a prestigious cast (including John Hurt as Aragorn), Leonard Rosenman's accomplished score effectively matches the ominous atmosphere that Bakshi's animation creates and sustains. Bakshi's lamentable decision to combine traditional cel animation with "rotoscoped" (i. e. , meticulously traced) live-action footage is jarringly distracting and aesthetically disastrous, but when judged by its narrative content, this Lord of the Rings deserves more credit than it typically receives. -Jeff Shannon.

A tough truck driver takes his quiet sensitive son on a hunting trip with him to teach him the manly arts. When the young man becomes enamored with a "worldly" waitress, he soon learns an even more valuable masculine skill.

Star Wars meets A Wrinkle in Time in this dimension-hopping adventure of an intergalactic war and one unassuming young man who holds the key to dimensional travel, a legacy of his mysterious adventurer father. Boyish Josh Charles is the lucky Luke Skywalker stand-in, a good-natured underachiever shocked out of his lovelorn moping when gorgeous guerrilla fighter Andrea Roth takes the battle to his bedroom. Rutger Hauer is the coffee-chugging freedom fighter roused from retirement to fill out the trio and face dimensional mob boss Stuart Wilson to settle the fate of the universe. This obviously low- budget picture makes the most of limited special effects and striking settings-notably an elevator ride that turns into a free-floating mind-game hanging in space and a knockdown, drag-out finale that sends our hapless hero popping up all over the universe. Hauer makes for a surprisingly charismatic mercenary turned father figure and Charles turns out to be modestly charming, once he loses the smart-ass wisecracks. Though it reaches for a scope that's beyond its means, it remains an entertaining bit of sci-fi fluff. -Sean Axmaker.