Best of Movies

Cinema Paradiso A little boy in a small Italian town serves as acolyte to the keeper of the flame -- the projectionist in the local theater. With graceful sentiment, director Giuseppe Tornatore evokes the magic by which our first films grasp at memory.

Cyrano de Bergerac Moonlit idealism and moonstruck love, dashing swordplay and flashing wordplay, bold intelligence and bustling spectacle . . . And the winner is -- by more than a nose -- Gerard Depardieu.

Dick Tracy Warren Beatty and a brilliant crew turn comic-strip art into glamorous movie artifice. This is not only a straightforward rendering of the story about the big-city dick with a right-angle jaw; it is also a tribute to the lithe, blithe entertainment that Hollywood once served up with style.

Edward Scissorhands Spooky-cute Johnny Depp and Winona Ryder -- they look like the figures on a Transylvanian wedding cake -- make ideally mismatched lovers in Tim Burton's witty fable, in which a sweet-souled alien comes to suburbia, makes a few friends and scurries back home. E.T., meet E.S.

GoodFellas Martin Scorsese's Mafia wiseguys rob decent folks, kill crippled kids, snort and sell coke -- and have a swell time together -- in this dark farce that blazes through its 2 1/2 hours like a hit man on a contract high.

Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer Bleakly dispassionate, wrenchingly violent, John McNaughton's study of anonymous psychopathy is a scary and scarring experience.

Internal Affairs The year's best urban action film -- cool, smart and heartless -- is also a moral tale about the infinitely corruptive power of sexual attraction. Richard Gere's performance as a good cop gone rancid is a marvel of slipperiness.

Misery In this Stephen King thriller, James Caan is a romance writer rescued from an accident and held captive while he recuperates. Kathy Bates is his nurse and "biggest fan" -- alternately giddy and menacing in a great turn. Rob Reiner proves himself a director of Hitchcockian wit and wiliness.

The Nasty Girl Michael Verhoeven's exuberant, stylish satire, based on recent fact, examines the lingering shadow Nazism casts across Germany and the obsessive determination of one teenager to expose it. As the anti-Nazi girl, Lena Stolze is impish, imperious, utterly adorable.

Postcards from the Edge Hollywood has so much fun hating itself that the venom can taste like fine wine. Carrie Fisher puts plenty of savory laughs into her, well, perhaps slightly autobiographical script, and under Mike Nichols' direction, Meryl Streep parades her dazzling comedic gifts; she adds spin and sizzle to every bon mot.