French

Anybody hungering for a good old-fashioned Western needs to check out Warriors of Heaven and Earth, which--although it's set in 7th-century China--has all the valor and spectacle of a John Ford picture. It also has a goofy supernatural streak, for the chopsocky crowd. The opening 10 minutes or so offer an alarmingly convoluted plot, but it swiftly settles down. What's going on is that a long-exiled Japanese hit man (Kiichi Nakai), hired to kill a renegade Chinese warrior (Jiang Wen), temporarily teams up with his quarry in order to escort a camel caravan along the Spice Road.

The Warriors combines pure pulp storytelling and surprisingly poetic images into a thoroughly enjoyable cult classic. The plot is mythically pure (and inspired by a legendary bit of Greek history): When a charismatic gang leader is shot at a conclave in the Bronx meant to unite all the gangs in New York City, a troupe from Coney Island called the Warriors get blamed and have to fight all the way back to their own turf--which means an escalating series of battles with colorful and improbable gangs like the Baseball Furies, who wear baseball uniforms and KISS-inspired face make-up.

Ex-crime reporter Raymond St. Ives has elegant taste, a yen for gambling and an unfinished novel in his typewriter. When he crosses paths with sinister Oliver Procane, he gets something else: a price on his head. St. Ives is a hard-boiled update of classic mystery thrillers, particularly The Maltese Falcon. Charles Bronson is smoothly right as the clever title character, at odds with petty crooks and high-rollers, among them Maximilian Schell as a whining lackey and Jacqueline Bisset as a modern femme fatale.

One of the great lost buddy films of the 1970s, this Jerry Schatzberg movie somehow never found its audience, despite the fact that both lead actors were riding high: Hackman from The French Connection, Pacino from The Godfather. They play a pair of drifters, seeing America by thumb, who hook up and discover unexpected soul mates in each other. Hackman is the loner who would rather pile on another layer of clothes than chance letting someone get close to him; Pacino is the likably funny loser who gets under Hackman's skin and teaches him to open up.

Jane Fonda came into her own with this Oscar-winning performance as an insecure high-class call girl who can't make it as a legitimate actress or model yet can't give up her addiction. She loves the control too much. But when she's stalked by a killer, she's forced to confront the darker aspects of her nature and profession. It's a complex and authentic performance and Fonda plays it cool and smart. Typical of early '70s films, Klute peels away social inhibition and hypocrisy with precision and candor. It's also typical of director Alan J.

Will Smith's easygoing charm makes Hitch the kind of pleasant, uplifting romantic comedy that you could recommend to almost anyone--especially if there's romance in the air. As suave Manhattan dating consultant Alex Hitch Hitchens, Smith plays up the smoother, sophisticated side of his established screen persona as he mentors a pudgy accountant (Kevin James) on the lessons of love.

It's fast, funny, outrageously illegal - and the granddaddy of the cross-country speed spectacles that have raced across movie screens in the past two generations. Put your pedal to the metal for The Gumball Rally. New York City is the starting point and this supersonic contest ends 2,900 miles later in Los Angeles. In between, director Chuck Bail (coordinator of many classic movie stunt sequences) and a crew of actors and stuntpersons treat you to a truly breakneck road comedy. Gary Busey plays a daredevil in a 600-horsepower Camaro.

Inspired casting puts sparks in this comedy of counterculture clash between an aging 1960s radical and a buttoned-down FBI agent. Dennis Hopper plays an Abbie Hoffman-esque sixties activist and prankster who lands in the custody of a conservative young agent (a suitably uptight Kiefer Sutherland) and proceeds to literally unravel the agent's carefully constructed front through a series of slippery mind games. Hopper has a blast as the unreformed sixties relic, and Carol Kane is delightful as a hippie holdout who puts both men back in touch with their identities.

Movie studios, by and large, avoid controversial subjects like race the way you might avoid a hive of angry bees. So it's remarkable that Crash even got made; that it's a rich, intelligent, and moving exploration of the interlocking lives of a dozen Los Angeles residents--black, white, latino, Asian, and Persian--is downright amazing.

Just when you think it's getting silly, Cellular serves up another tantalizing twist. In the time-honored tradition of Sorry, Wrong Number and Wait Until Dark, Kim Basinger is well-cast as a resourceful damsel-in-distress who thwarts her kidnappers by connecting with a n'er-do-well cell-phone user (Chris Evans, later seen in The Fantastic Four) who races against time to rescue her from afar. One good cop (William H.