French

It's not Blazing Saddles, but there are some chuckles to be found in Mel Brooks's 1993 spoof of the Robin Hood legend. Cary Elwes is Robin (with a lighthearted jab at Kevin Costner's bad English accent in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves), while Richard Lewis plays an angst-ridden King John, and Roger Rees a snotty Sheriff of Nottingham. Comic David Chappelle has some good moments as the only black member of Robins's noble thieves, and Brooks does his own spin on Friar Tuck: Rabbi Tuchman.

Super-spy Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) has retired from active duty to trains new IMF agents. But he is called back into action to confront the toughest villain he's ever faced - Owen Davian (Philip Seymour Hoffman), an international weapons and information provider with no remorse and no conscience. Hunt assembles his team - his old friend Luther Strickell (Ving Rhames), transportation expert Declan (Jonathan Rhys Meyers), and background operative Zhen (Maggie Q), to rescue one of his very own trainees, Lindsey (Keri Russell) who was kidnapped while on a surveillance detail of Davian.

Over a meal in a French restaurant, Sy poses a conundrum to his fellow diners: Is the essence of life comic or tragic? For the sake of argument, he tells a story, which the others then embellish to illustrate their takes on life. The story starts as follows: A young Manhattan couple, Park Avenue princess Laurel and tippling actor Lee, throw a dinner party to impress Lee's would-be producer when their long-lost friend Melinda appears at their front door, bedraggled and woebegone.

Jet Li's Fearless, directed by Ronny Yu (helmer of the Hong Kong classic The Bride with White Hair), is Jet Li's final martial arts masterpiece, capping a tremendous body of work in that genre. Jet Li's Fearless reunites the actor and martial arts superstar with producer Bill Kong (Hero) and action choreographer Yuen Wo Ping (Unleashed) as he portrays martial arts legend Huo Yuanjia, who became the most famous fighter in all of China at the turn of the 20th Century.

From the producer of Independence Day and The Patriot, and starring James Franco, Flyboys soars to new cinematic heights with spectacular special effects and thrilling, edge-of-your-seat aerial dogfights. Inspired by the true story of the legendary Lafayette Escadrille, this action-packed epic tells the tale of America's first fighter pilots. These courageous young men distinguish themselves in a manner that none before them had dared, becoming true heroes who experience triumph, tragedy, love, and loss amid the chaos of World War I. Hang on for the ride of your life!

Thematically ambitious and emotionally complex, Clint Eastwood's Flags of Our Fathers is an intimate epic with much to say about war and the nature of heroism in America. Based on the non-fiction bestseller by James Bradley (with Ron Powers), and adapted by Million Dollar Baby screenwriter Paul Haggis (Jarhead screenwriter William Broyles Jr. wrote an earlier draft that was abandoned when Eastwood signed on to direct), this isn't so much a conventional war movie as it is a thought-provoking meditation on our collective need for heroes, even at the expense of those we deem heroic.

Martin Scorsese makes a welcome return to the mean streets (of Boston, in this case) with The Departed, hailed by many as Scorsese's best film since Casino.

Catch a Fire is an intelligent, fact-based apartheid thriller that tells the story of Patrick Chamusso (sympathetically played by Derek Luke), a South African wrongly accused, in 1980, of sabotaging the oil refinery where he worked. After both he and his wife are tortured by agents of the Boer government (led by a conflicted security chief played by Tim Robbins), Chamusso becomes a radicalized guerilla for the MK, or military wing, of the African National Congress.

Beerfest is the kind of zany time-killer that's a lot funnier if you're within reach of a six-pack and Doritos. In other words, this is yet another low-brow laff-a-thon from the Broken Lizard gang (Super Troopers) that's likely to draw a bigger audience on DVD than it did in theaters, especially since there's a lot of duds (and flat suds) to sit through while waiting for the next big beer-belly-laugh.

Striking images abound in the twisty, surreal thriller Stay: Walruses rubbing up against the glass in an aquarium; a corridor painted neon green; entire crowds composed of twins and triplets; a piano being lifted several stories in the air. The plot is impossible to encapsulate: A psychiatrist named Sam (Ewan McGregor, Trainspotting) takes on a colleague's patient, Henry (Ryan Gosling, The Notebook), who announces his intention to kill himself.