title: A Thousand Acres function popUp(URL,NAME) { amznwin=window.open(URL,NAME,'location=yes,scrollbars=yes,status=yes,toolbar=yes,resizable=yes,width=380,height=450,screenX=10,screenY=10,top=10,left=10'); amznwin.focus();} document.open(); document.write(""); document.close();  studio: Touchtone Pictures starring: Michelle Pfeiffer, Jessica Lange, Jason Robards, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Colin Firth, Keith Carradine, Kevin Anderson, Pat Hingle film rating: Three stars reviewed by: Abbie Bernstein "A Thousand Acres" is an ambitious if not always successful re-imagining of Shakespeare's "King Lear," set in the present on an Iowa farm and told from the point of view of the two eldest daughters, here called Ginny (Jessica Lange) and Rose (Michelle Pfeiffer). Director Jocelyn Moorhouse ("How to Make an American Quilt") creates a good sense of environment overall, starting with a striking cloud-scudded sky in Chapter Two, but this film is definitely aimed at drama buffs rather than technophiles

title: Boogie Nights function popUp(URL,NAME) { amznwin=window.open(URL,NAME,'location=yes,scrollbars=yes,status=yes,toolbar=yes,resizable=yes,width=380,height=450,screenX=10,screenY=10,top=10,left=10'); amznwin.focus();} document.open(); document.write(""); document.close(); studio: New Line Home Video MPAA rating: R starring: Mark Wahlberg, Julianne Moore, Burt Reynolds, Don Cheadle, John C. Reilly, William H. Macy, Heather Graham, Nicole Parker, Philip Seymour Hoffman release year: 1997 film rating: Four stars sound/picture: Four stars reviewed by: Abbie Bernstein If you start out with your sound system cranked to a decent level, 'Boogie Nights' will give you a jolt the instant the opening titles start. Something that's a taste of what's to come--if you came of age in the '70s, the soundtrack is wall-to-wall nostalgia. Writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson has created a kind of intimate epic with 'Boogie Nights.' It's an oddly endearing and nonjudgmental comedy/drama set in the L.A. porno film industry of the mid-'70s and early '80s; a soap opera that is alternately funny and sad about an extended family-by-choice of skin flick makers and stars. Their biggest collective sin, in the film's view, may be their chronic inability to comprehend how the world works ...

title: The Trial function popUp(URL,NAME) { amznwin=window.open(URL,NAME,'location=yes,scrollbars=yes,status=yes,toolbar=yes,resizable=yes,width=380,height=450,screenX=10,screenY=10,top=10,left=10'); amznwin.focus();} document.open(); document.write(""); document.close(); <br> studio: Fox Lorber Home Video/Image Entertainment starring: Kyle MacLachlan, Anthony Hopkins, Jason Robards release year: 1992 reviewed by: Abbie Bernstein The Austrian writer Franz Kafka is so well known for his particular brand of dread of mysterious persecution that the word 'Kafkaesque' has become part of the common vernacular. Director David Jones and playwright/screenwriter Harold Pinter have turned Kafka's creepy novel 'The Trial' into a movie that is as bizarre and arbitrary as the events it depicts. Although the film was made in 1992, 'The Trial' looks and sounds uncannily like a product of the '60s. Indeed, Patrick McGoohan's 'Prisoner' would not be out of place in these surroundings, though doubtless he'd do a better job against his adversaries than does Kyle MacLachlan's smug Josef K.

title: Sling Blade function popUp(URL,NAME) { amznwin=window.open(URL,NAME,'location=yes,scrollbars=yes,status=yes,toolbar=yes,resizable=yes,width=380,height=450,screenX=10,screenY=10,top=10,left=10'); amznwin.focus();} document.open(); document.write(""); document.close(); <br> studio: Miramax MPAA rating: R starring: Billy Bob Thornton, Dwight Yoakam, J.T. Walsh, John Ritter, Lucas Black, Natalie Canerday, Robert Duvall release year: 1996 reviewed by: Bill Warren Forward up to just about any chapter heading on 'Sling Blade' and chances are you'll find a scene that works as its own stand-alone story as well as it fits into the film as a whole. Director/writer/star Billy Bob Thornton won the 1996 Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay (from his own stage play) and it's not hard to see why. Thornton is a filmmaker who knows how to create suspense and characterization without raising his voice.

title: Goodfellas function popUp(URL,NAME) { amznwin=window.open(URL,NAME,'location=yes,scrollbars=yes,status=yes,toolbar=yes,resizable=yes,width=380,height=450,screenX=10,screenY=10,top=10,left=10'); amznwin.focus();} document.open(); document.write(""); document.close(); studio: Warner Home Video MPAA rating: R starring: Robert De Niro, Ray Liotta, Joe Pesci, Lorraine Bracco, Paul Sorvino release year: 1990 film rating: Five Stars sound/picture: Four Stars reviewed by: Abbie Bernstein Unless something unexpected drops out of the sky between now and Dec. 31, ‘GoodFellas’ will rule forever as the single best film about organized crime to come out of the ‘90s. Indeed, it is one of the best films ever on the subject, making us feel as though we’ve lived through the outrageous events along with the characters. Director Martin Scorsese has explored the themes and characters of ‘GoodFellas’ before and since, but never with such immediacy. He manages to make these people thoroughly understandable without romanticizing them; we get why they are who they are without wanting to be them. It’s a tougher dynamic than it may sound, but Scorsese makes it work so that it hangs in the memory in a manner normally reserved for our ...