After making a critically acclaimed debut with the low-budget independent drama Heavy, writer-director James Mangold took on this gritty crime drama, which was highly touted as Sylvester Stallone's long-awaited return to a serious dramatic role. With an illustrious cast of co-stars, including GoodFellas alumni Robert De Niro, Harvey Keitel, and Ray Liotta, Stallone plays Freddy Heflin, the ineffectual sheriff of a New Jersey suburb that a group of corrupt New York cops have turned into their own off-duty criminal empire. Deaf in one ear and desperate to prove his worth, the sheriff takes on the cops with standoffish assistance from an Internal Affairs cop (De Niro), resulting in an explosive climactic showdown. The stellar cast can't be beat, and Stallone is quite good as the overweight cop whose pride is on the line. Mangold's script is wildly uneven, but Cop Land still packs a white-knuckled punch. -Jeff Shannon.

With refreshing energy, Blue Crush is the kind of movie that girls and young women deserve to see more of. It's mostly for them (although nice tans and bikinis will attract the guys), and it rejuvenates the surf-movie tradition by showing real girls with real friendships, coping with absent parents, borderline poverty, rocky romance, and the challenge of raising a kid sister. For young Hawaiian Anne Marie (Kate Bosworth), those responsibilities are motivations to excel as a champion-class surfer-if she can overcome the fear of drowning, which she nearly did in a previous wipeout. Supportive friends (Girlfight's Michelle Rodriguez, and Sanoe Lake) help her reach the climactic competition on Oahu's infamous Bonzai Pipeline, and like Saturday Night Fever, this engaging film uplifts the working class without condescension, riding high toward the joy of achievement. As an amateur surfer, director John Stockwell (Crazy/Beautiful) captures the extreme thrill of the sport while respecting the forces of nature and human behaviour. -Jeff Shannon.

No review of Lawn Dogs can adequately describe this extraordinary movie, nor can the title or any simple synopsis. In fact, there's no way of knowing what Lawn Dogs is really about until the very end when the last 90-minutes takes on a whole new significance. The basic story follows the formation and fruition of a simple friendship. Devon (astounding newcomer Mischa Barton) is a 10-year-old girl born to glamour magazine identikit parents who live in the plush US suburban Camelot Gardens Estate. Trent (Sam Rockwell) is a 20-something lawnmower man whom everyone considers trash and who lives in a forest trailer. As secret friends they fill the holes in one another's lives. She has no other friends because she thinks "other kids smell like TV". It's all perfectly sweet and innocent. But naturally there's no way the uptight neighbourhood would perceive it that way. A creeping sense of doom begins to overtake events; but it is where this seemingly obvious tale twists at the end that makes the community's darker quirks a revelation. [+]

Based on the memoir Rocket Boys by Homer H. Hickam Jr, October Sky emerged as one of the most delightful sleepers of 1999-a small miracle of good ole fashioned movie-making in the cynical, often numbingly trendy Hollywood of the late 20th century. Hickam's true story begins in 1957 with Russia's historic launch of the Sputnik satellite, and while Homer (played with smart idealism by Jake Gyllenhaal) sees Sputnik as his cue to pursue a fascination with rocketry, his father (Chris Cooper) epitomises the admirable yet sternly stubborn working-man's ethic of the West Virginia coal miner, casting fear and disdain on Homer's pursuit of science while urging his "errant" son to carry on the family business-a spirit-killing profession that Homer has no intention of joining. As directed by Joe Johnston (The Rocketeer), this wonderful movie is occasionally guilty of overstating its case and sacrificing subtlety for predictable melodrama. But more often the film's tone is just right, and the spirit of adventure and invention is infectiously conveyed through Gyllenhaal and his well-cast fellow rocketeers, whose many failures gradually lead to triumph on their makeshift backwoods launching pad. Capturing time and place with impeccable detail and superbly developed characters (including Laura Dern as an inspiring schoolteacher), October Sky is a family film for the ages, encouraging the highest potential of the human spirit while giving viewers a clear view of a bygone era when "the final frontier" beckoned to the explorer in all of us. -Jeff Shannon.

In this behind the scenes look at life among Tinsel Town's moviemakers, power wielders and 'beautiful people', a major motion picture is being cast and every actor in Hollywood is clamouring for a part. This chaos exposes every morsel of intrique , extra-marital affairs, blackmail and murder. Jackie Collins' steamy best seller is based on lifestyles and sizzling encounters among the film colony's rich and famous. Faithful to the finely-honed novel, 'Hollywood Wives' is fiction drawn from life in the very, very fast lane.

Patch Adams raises two schools of thought: there are those who are inspired by the true story of a troubled man who finds happiness in helping others-a man set on changing the world and who may well accomplish the task. And then there are those who feel manipulated by this feel-good story, who want to smack the young medical student every time he begins his silly antics. Staving off suicidal thoughts, Hunter Adams commits himself into a psychiatric ward, where he not only garners the nickname "Patch" but learns the joy in helping others. To this end, he decides to go to medical school, where he clashes with the staid conventions of the establishment as he attempts to inject humour and humanity into his treatment of the patients ("We need to start treating the patient as well as the disease", he declares throughout the film). Robin Williams, in the title role, is as charming as ever, although someone should tell him to broaden his range-the ever-cheerful, do-gooder à la Good Will Hunting and Dead Poets Society is getting a little old. His sidekick Truman (Daniel London) steals the show with his gawky allure and eyebrows that threaten to overtake his lean face-he seems more real, which is odd considering that Patch Adams does exist and this film is based on his life. Monica Potter is the coolly reluctant love interest and she makes the most of her one-dimensional part. While moments of true heartfelt emotion do come through, the major flaw of this film is that the good guys are just so gosh-darn good and the bad ones are just big meanies with no character development. Patch Adams, though, does provide the tears, the giggles and the kooky folks who will keep you smiling at the end. -Jenny Brown.

Set almost entirely on a single set with a small handful of players spending a single evening together, it's not hard to spot that Un Air de Famille was adapted from a stage play, which is usually a recipe for boring cinema. Happily Un Air de Famille is an exception to this rule, mostly because it features a witty and frequently poignant script and superb ensemble performances, all shot with unfussy crispness and joie de vivre by director Cédric Klapisch and cinematographer Benoît Delhomme. The plot revolves around a typical bourgeois French family, their ritualised displays of affection and concern for one another barely disguising jealousies, resentments, and long suppressed hostilities. The clan gathers to celebrate the birthday of Yolande, wife of successful son and Maman's favourite Phillipe. Henri, the irascible inheritor of the bar, always in Phillipe's shadow, frets over the absence of his wife Arlette, while Phillipe worries vainly over his appearance earlier that evening on television. Rebellious sister Betty mulls over her stalled clandestine affair with Denis, Henri's sweet-natured and downtrodden bar man. Maman clucks and bullies and undermines her brood with a skill only a lifetime's practice can achieve, while poor old Caruso, the family's crippled golden retriever pants silently in the corner, waiting to die. Along with Klapisch, stars and screenwriters Jean-Pierre Bacri and Agnés Jaoui won Césars, the equivalent of a French Oscar, for their script, while Catherine Frot, who plays mousey chignoned Yoyo, and Jean-Pierre Darroussin (Denis), also won Césars for their delightfully understated performances, if not for their nimble ce rock dance routine to Patti Smith's "People Have the Power". Frot's plaudits are particularly well deserved especially for her magnificent display of tipsy, barely disguised disappointment when she learns she's been given another golden retriever, doomed to develop arthritis, from her domineering mother-in-law (Claire Maurier, who also played the neglectful mother in François Truffaut's first film, The 400 Blows). -Leslie Felperin.

From the outset, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine was about conflict. Producers Rick Berman and Michael Piller challenged the utopian ideals of Gene Roddenberry's Star Trek universe to create something totally different from its predecessors. This meant no familial camaraderie, squeaky-clean Federation diplomacy or beige décor. Instead they wanted interpersonal friction, ruthless enemies (Gamma Quadrant Imperialists-The Dominion) and rebellion at every turn. The DS9 concept was originally facilitated by introducing the Cardassian/Bajoran war during The Next Generation's final days. After a muted first reception fans gradually came to accept the new look, but no one liked Star Trek without a starship and eventually the producers capitulated to viewers' wishes by introducing the USS Defiant (an apt name) in Season 3. Relying far less on technobabble than TNG, DS9 was unafraid to focus on matters of the spirit demonstrating a gutsy independence from its parent shows. Taking up the gauntlet thrown down by Babylon 5, improved CGI space battles also became a fan favourite. Throughout the increasingly serialised story arc there were rebellious factions within the different establishments: Kira had belonged to the Shakaar resistance cell; The Maquis was Starfleet vs. Cardassians; Section 31 was a secret Starfleet group; The True Way was a Bajoran group opposed to peace; the Cardassians had their Obsidian Order and the Romulans their Gestapo-like Tal Shiar. [+]