Sean Penn and Benecio Del Toro, two of the most gripping actors around, play wildly different men linked through a grieving woman (Naomi Watts) in 21 Grams. Del Toro delves deep into the role of an ex-con turned born-again Christian, a deeply conflicted man struggling to set right a terrible accident, even at the expense of his family. Penn captures a cynical, philandering professor in dire need of a heart transplant, which he gets from the death of Watts' husband. 21 Grams slips back in forth in time, creating an intricate emotional web out of the past and the present that slowly draws these three together; the result is remarkably fluid and compelling. The movie overreaches for metaphors towards the end, but that doesn't erase the power of the deeply felt performances. -Bret Fetzer.

French director Luc Besson broke the commercial taboo against female-driven action movies with Nikita, his seminal, seductively slick film about a violent street punk (Anne Parillaud) trained to become a smooth, stylish assassin. Though it amounts, in the end, to little more than disposable pop, the film has a cohesiveness in style and tone-akin to the early James Bond films-that gives it a sense of integrity. Parillaud is compelling both as a wild child and chic-but-lethal pro (trained in good manners by none other than Jeanne Moreau). Tchéky Karyo is also good as the cop mentor who develops feelings for her. -Tom Keogh.

Patrick Swayze, Garry Goodrow, Neal Jones, Lonny Price, Jennifer Grey

In The Edge writer David Mamet created two engrossing and memorable characters; an urbane fashion photographer played by Alec Baldwin and a reserved and intellectual billionaire played by Anthony Hopkins. They find themselves teamed up against both a giant Kodiak bear and their own inner demons, when lost together in the Alaskan wilderness. The subject matter includes male rivalry, the isolationism of extreme wealth and, most conspicuously, the survival of the fittest. Mamet's script, which sounds a little too arched in spots, is well served by New Zealand director Lee Tamahori, who knows how to capture beauty and brutality in one frame. Although the themes are enormous in scope, they are well balanced and one rarely overpowers the other, nor does the achingly beautiful scenery overshadow the acting. Even if you don't like the intellectualism of the dialogue, there are some great scenes with the bear. -Rochelle O'Gorman, Amazon. com.

"A terrible idea, of course", was Krzysztof Kieœlowski's first reaction when his co-scriptwriter, Krzysztof Piesiewicz, first suggested the idea for Dekalog-a series of 10 one-hour films, each inspired by one of the Ten Commandments. But from this unpromising beginning came an edgy, unsettling tour de force, the culmination of Kieœlowski's work in his native Poland and, quite possibly, the last cinematic masterpiece to come out of Communist Eastern Europe. The full Dekalog consists of ten one-hour films: this pair of double discs contains the first five. The links to the specific commandments are often oblique and imprecise, and shouldn't be taken too literally. Kieœlowski is using this framework not as a direct exposition of Mosaic Law, nor even as a commentary on its relevance today, but rather as a series of meditations on the complexity of moral choices. All the films are set in the same drab high-rise Warsaw housing estate, and characters from one story will show up the background of others, passing across the frame as they go about their business. One young man who appears in nearly all the films never plays a leading role nor even speaks a line, but remains a watchful, melancholy presence, haunting and disquieting, gazing at the events unfolding around him like an uneasy conscience. Grim though these stories are, there's often a note of ironic humour leavening the overall bleakness. But this set ends with one of the grimmest of all. In Dekalog 5 a young man murders a taxi driver for no apparent reason, then is executed himself. [+]

Jessica Alba swivels and pops her way to the top (or at least into Missy Elliot's heart) in hip-hop dance flick Honey. Honey Daniels (Alba, Dark Angel) dances in nightclubs; when she accidentally gets videotaped, a hip-hop video director spots her unique talent and hires her first as a dancer, then as a choreographer. But when he wants her body as much as her talent, how will she sustain her career? And how will this affect her dream of creating a dance studio for the local street kids? Honey is the usual Hollywood silliness, executed with sincerity but not much imagination. For some reason, Alba's sexy gyrations are supposed to be more empowering than other dancers' sexy gyrations, while being no less titillating. Featuring Mekhi Phifer, David Moscow, and cameos by hip-hop stars like Missy Elliot and Ginuwine. -Bret Fetzer.

Taxi Driver is the definitive cinematic portrait of loneliness and alienation manifested as violence. It is as if director Martin Scorsese and screenwriter Paul Schrader had tapped into precisely the same source of psychological inspiration ("I just knew I had to make this film", Scorsese would later say), combined with a perfectly timed post-Watergate expression of personal, political and societal anxiety. Robert De Niro, as the tortured, ex-Marine cab driver Travis Bickle, made movie history with his chilling performance as one of the most memorably intense and vividly realised characters ever committed to film. Bickle is a self-appointed vigilante who views his urban beat as an intolerable cesspool of blighted humanity. He plays guardian angel for a young prostitute (Jodie Foster), but not without violently devastating consequences. This masterpiece, which is not for all tastes, is sure to horrify some viewers, but few could deny the film's lasting power and importance. -Jeff Shannon.

This semi-comic 1961 film by legendary director Akira Kurosawa (Rashomon, Ran) was inspired by the American Western genre. Kurosawa mainstay Toshirô Mifune (Seven Samurai) is cast as a drifting samurai for hire who plays both ends against the middle with two warring factions, surviving on his wits and his ability to outrun his own bad luck. Eventually the samurai seeks to eliminate both sides for his own gain and to define his own sense of honour. Yojimbo is striking for its unorthodox treatment of violence and morality, reserving judgment on the actions of its main character and instead presenting an entertaining tale with humour and much visual excitement. One of the inspirations for the "spaghetti westerns" of director Sergio Leone and later surfacing as a remake as Last Man Standing with Bruce Willis, this film offers insight into a director who influenced American films even as he was influenced by them. -Robert Lane, Amazon. com.

The heightened reality of Oz remains consistently engrossing in the fourth season of HBO's volatile prison drama. All 16 episodes were written or co-written by series creator Tom Fontana and are bookended by the wisely sardonic observations of paraplegic prisoner Augustus Hill (Harold Perrineau), whose terse, philosophical ruminations about life in "Oz" give the series its literate edge. The 2000-2001 season finds Oz in the wake of racial warfare. Tensions remain high among the factions that make the "Em City" cell block a hotbed of seething animosity among the skinhead Aryans led by Shillinger (J. K. Simmons); Muslim splinter groups led by Kareem Said (Eamonn Walker); the fearsome Adebisi (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje) and Supreme Allah (Lord Jamar) and the resident Mafia, Latinos, and lowlifes who make up Em City's embroiled population of newcomers, hard-timers, and death-row inmates. Unit Administrator McManus (Terry Kinney) sets up a centrally located penalty cage for anyone who causes outbreaks of violence (which are shockingly frequent and frequently lethal), but loses his job in a mid-season plot development that spins Oz into a maelstrom of internal politics and brutal retaliation. Through it all, Fontana and his collaborators (including guest director Steve Buscemi) maintain impressive focus on dozens of finely drawn characters. Laced with homosexual tension, jealousies, religious fervor and threats of betrayal, the season's most compelling conflicts involve impulsive killer Ryan O'Reily (played with cagey menace by Dean Winters) and his brain-damaged half-brother Cyril (Scott William Winters) and the manipulative Keller (Christopher Meloni) and his prison lover Toby Beecher (Lee Tergesen) - a lawyer and convicted murderer whose survival seems perpetually uncertain. Tenuous order is barely maintained by warden Glynn (Ernie Hudson) and Catholic counselor "Sister Pete" (Rita Moreno), but the bulk of Oz's fourth season is devoted to chaos, as shifting loyalties keep all prisoners (and all viewers) in a state of anxious anticipation. [+]

The first instalment of the late Polish director Krzysztof Kieslowski's trilogy on Liberty, Equality and Fraternity, the three colours of the French flag. Blue is the most sombre of the three, a movie dominated by feelings of grief. As the film begins, a car accident claims the life of a well-known composer. His wife, played by Juliette Binoche (Oscar winner for The English Patient), does not so much put the pieces of her life back together as start an entirely new existence. She moves to Paris, where she dissolves into a wordless life virtually without other people. Kieslowski attaches an almost subconscious significance to the colour blue but primarily he focuses on Binoche's luminous face and the way her subtle shifts in emotion flicker and disappear. The picture may be more enigmatic than the follow-ups White and Red but Binoche's quiet, heartbreaking presence becomes spellbinding; her performance won the best actress prize at the Venice Film Festival in 1993. -Robert Horton.

When people think of James Dean, they probably think first of the troubled teen from Rebel Without a Cause: nervous, volatile, soulful, a kid lost in a world that does not understand him. Made between his only other starring roles, in East of Eden and Giant, Rebel sums up the jangly, alienated image of Dean, but also happens to be one of the key films of the 1950s. Director Nicholas Ray takes a strikingly sympathetic look at the teenagers standing outside the white-picket-fence 50s dream of America: juvenile delinquent (that's what they called them then) Jim Stark (Dean), fast-girl Judy (Natalie Wood), lost-boy Plato (Sal Mineo), slick hot-rodder Buzz (Corey Allen). At the time, it was unusual for a movie to endorse the point of view of teenagers, but Ray and screenwriter Stewart Stern captured the youthful angst that was erupting at the same time in rock 'n' roll. Dean is heartbreaking, following the method-acting style of Marlon Brando but staking out a nakedly emotional honesty of his own. Going too fast, in every way, he was killed in a car crash on September 30, 1955, a month before Rebel opened. He was no longer an actor, but an icon, and Rebel is a lasting monument. -Robert Horton, Amazon. com.