Jagged Edge was one of a series of entertaining if porous thrillers crafted by screenwriter Joe Eszterhas before he wrote the ridiculous Showgirls. This 1985 movie is a taut mystery about an attorney (Glenn Close) who defends a newspaper publisher (Jeff Bridges) accused of murder. The fact that Close's character falls for him is more convenient than plausible, but it is a necessary emotional bridge for Eszterhas and director Richard Marquand (Eye of the Needle) to build toward a powerful finale. Scary, fun as courtroom dramas go, the film is well serviced by the two lead stars and has impressive support from co-star Peter Coyote and especially from Robert Loggia, who plays Close's cop buddy. --Tom Keogh, Amazon.com

Jakob the Liar has a hard road to travel, since--Roberto Benigni's Life is Beautiful aside--milking the Holocaust for laughs is a dangerous game. Even the blackest, most therapeutic humour turns queasy in the shadow of such monstrous evil: it's like dancing on a mass grave. Here the eponymous schlemiel plays out his semi-farcical adventures in the mean streets of the Warsaw Ghetto circa 1944. The skies are always leaden over Jakob's hometown, reflecting the comic climate that pervades this mostly unfortunate adaptation of Jurek Becker's autobiographical book (first filmed in 1975). Jakob Heym (Robin Williams in overbearingly earnest mode) gets tangled in a string of self-perpetuating lies about a hidden radio, supposedly broadcasting news that the victorious Red Army is nearing. His desperate attempts to convince a clutch of insistently idiosyncratic friends (clichés to a man: Liev Schreiber, Bob Balaban, Michael Jeter, Alan Arkin) and obligatory Nazi bad guys that the radio doesn't exist are complicated by the fact that he's stashed a fugitive kid (a dead ringer for Anne Frank) in his attic--and by abundant evidence that lies are the best medicine for the ghetto's skyrocketing suicide rate. Copious unfunny misunderstandings and pratfalls abound in this Holocaust rendition of Fiddler on the Roof (you expect Williams to break into "If I were a funny man... "). Ultimately, Jakob the Liar loses its way for good in some very ugly violence and a rather nasty final twist: the film's ending might just be rubbing our noses in another feel-good lie. --Kathleen Murphy, Amazon.com