In Theaters

“Run Lola Run”

If the infectious energy of Tom Tykwer’s “Run Lola Run” doesn’t make audiences break into a cold sweat, they may need to have their pulses checked.

This film is great fun, one of the year’s runaway best, a smashing, kinetic rush of style ignited with an electrified plot that may recall “Sliding Doors” and “Go,” but which nevertheless is fiercely original; indeed, it uses a nonstop techno soundtrack and periods of clever animation to help propel it well into the stratosphere.

When Lola (Franka Potente) receives a frantic telephone call from her boyfriend, Manni (Moritz Bleibtreu), her life changes … and changes … and changes in ways that are so surprising, they won’t be revealed here.

Manni’s problem? It seems that while leaving the subway, he stupidly left behind a bag filled with 100,000 deutsche marks, which a delighted homeless man came upon — and quickly ran off with.

It gets worse. The money didn’t belong to Manni but to a vicious drug dealer, who will kill him if Manni doesn’t come up with the stolen loot in 20 minutes.

That’s right — 20 minutes. Manni’s solution? Rob a grocery store. Lola’s solution? Demand that Manni wait where he is while she runs across the busy streets of Berlin to her father, a banker, whom she will beg for help.

At only 81 minutes, “Run Lola Run” is a triumph of storytelling that’s tweaked so tightly — and feels so urgent — its pace never lags. There is real imagination at work here, real thought, a clear effort to try something new, to push and alter the boundaries of film as we race toward the millennium. The result is one of this year’s most refreshing films, a standout to get excited about, especially considering a current cinematic climate overwhelmed with dull underachievers.

Grade: A

“Run Lola Run” opens Aug. 6 at the Railroad Square Cinema in Waterville.

On Video

“Shakespeare in Love”

“Shakespeare in Love” is a wonderfully witty, nuanced film that imagines the Shakespeare of 1593 as a man whose new comedy, “Romeo and Ethel, the Pirate’s Daughter,” is suffering terribly in the absence of a muse.

As played deftly by Joseph Fiennes, the man who deflowered Elizabeth in “Elizabeth,” this Shakespeare is a man on the make, hustling women into bed with the simple hope of finding someone — anyone — who will inspire him to literary greatness.

He finds his muse in Viola de Lesseps (Gwyneth Paltrow, in her Academy Award-winning performance), who is so perfect for Will, so alive and beautiful and enthusiastic about the playwright’s work, she really does seem worthy of Shakespeare’s sonnets, those words that eventually would come to be the heart of a retitled work, “Romeo and Juliet.”

All of this, of course, is historical hogwash — Shakespeare was actually inspired to write “Romeo and Juliet” after coming upon Arthur Brooke’s 1562 poem, “The Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet.” But as wildly imaginative entertainment (the film’s genius is how it plays off Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night” and “Romeo and Juliet” in form and in content), it works beautifully.

It also rings true. Very little historical record exists on Shakespeare, whose work has been attacked over the years by bands of threatened academic elitists, all stating that the soaring poetry of “Othello,” “King Lear” and “Romeo and Juliet,” for instance, couldn’t possibly have come from a man of Shakespeare’s social class and educational background.

But to see the young playwright brought to life by Fiennes, to see him so passionately in love with his Viola, and her so obviously in love with him, is to know the full extent and power of romantic inspiration — and to know how that inspiration, coupled with great talent, will always supersede class and education, and translate, quite smashingly, into art.

Grade: A-

“Message in a Bottle”

In “Message in a Bottle,” Kevin Costner follows his two biggest failures — the waterlogged “Waterworld” and the undeliverable “The Postman” — with a film that combines elements of both as it sends its mail via the sea.

The uneven news is that “Message” is better than its predecessors while never managing to rise above formula.

Shot almost entirely in Maine, the film has been manufactured for the hearts-and-flowers crowd; it’s unabashedly schmaltzy yet nevertheless well-acted, featuring Robin Wright Penn as a love-struck divorcee who falls hard for Costner, a widower, and Paul Newman as Costner’s cranky, yet fiercely loving father.

The film has its affecting moments, but counterattacks them with bleeding-heart dialogue, great big shots of great big ocean vistas, a marshmallow fight on a beach and hot sweaty sex in Chicago. The film’s ending, however, sends it all down a whirlpool. At this point director Luis Mandoki decides to break from formula? Return to sender.

Grade: C+

Christopher Smith is the Bangor Daily News film critic. His film reviews appear each Monday and Thursday in the NEWS. Tonight on WLBZ’s “News Center 5:30 Today” and “News Center Tonight,” he appears in The Video Corner.