Cast biographies/profiles/filmographies

Highly entertaining albeit thin journalism thriller, this examination of a 24-hour period in the life of a New York Post-ish tabloid focuses on a hard-working metro editor (a pitch-perfect Michael Keaton) thinking of going to a loftier job at a rival paper. Edgy, "NYC as the center of the universe" full of sweat and grit, the paper debates the hot story of the day: a racial shooting. Like most movies from Ron Howard's universe (Parenthood, Backdraft), it's always just a movie, full of dramatic, over-the-top setups instead of the genuine article.

For Norman and Ethel Thayer, this summer On Golden Pond is filled with conflict and resolution. When their daughter Chelsea (Jane Fonda) arrives, the family is forced to renew the bonds of love and overcome the generational friction that has existed for years. Norman (Henry Fonda) must find his way through his anger and fear of growing old, while Chelsea struggles to rebuild their relationship. Ethel's (Katharine Hepburn) consistent support of her "knight in shining armor" is inspirational in its simplicity. This is a movie to ponder and always keep in your heart.

The so-called spaghetti Western achieved its apotheosis in Sergio Leone's magnificently mythic (and utterly outlandish) Once upon a Time in the West. After a series of international hits starring Clint Eastwood (from A Fistful of Dollars to The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly), Leone outdid himself with this spectacular, larger-than-life, horse-operatic epic about how the West was won.

In the emotionally-charged adventure The Patriot, Academy Award-winner Mel Gibson stars as Benjamin Martin, a reluctant hero who is swept into the American Revolution when the war reaches his home and threatens his family. A hero of the fierce French and Indian conflict, Martin had renounced fighting forever to raise his family in peace.

Trapped in their New York brownstone’s panic room, a hidden chamber built as a sanctuary in the event of break-ins, newly divorced Meg Altman (Jodie Foster) and her daughter Sarah (Kristen Stewart) play a deadly game of cat-and-mouse with three intruders--Burnham (Forest Whitaker), Raoul (Dwight Yoakam) and Junior (Jared Leto) -- during a brutal home invasion. But the room itself is the focal point because what the intruders really want is inside it.

Woody Allen stars in Picking Up the Pieces, playing a butcher named Tex who cuts up his adulterous wife (played by Sharon Stone) in a jealous rage. On his way to bury the pieces, he loses her hand on the side of the road, where it's found by a blind woman--and miraculously gives her back her sight. Before long, the hand has become a religious relic, drawing huge crowds to the small town of El Nino, New Mexico, and testing the faithlessness of a straying priest (David Schwimmer), who's in love with the town's leading prostitute (Maria Gracia Cucinotta, from Il Postino).

A free-thinking rebel goes hand-to-hand with a tough chief nurse and the bureaucratic mental hospital she represents. His inflammatory energy and lust for life transform the other patients and shake the system to its foundations. Winner of all five top Academy Awards: Best Picture, Director, Actor, Actress and Screenplay. Special Edition includes 48 minute documentary featuring actors, moviemakers and writer Ken Kesey recounting the history of the original novel to its Stage and Movie adaptations.

Frank Sinatra and his Rat Pack prove how to win in Las Vegas: rob the casinos! He, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., Peter Lawford, Angie Dickinson and more are the epitome of cool in this hot heist caper. The tone of the film is curiously serious--one somehow expected that the Rat Pack would have made a more buoyant first picture. But it is something to see these guys together, if largely for nostalgia reasons.

Perception: Our day-in, day-out world is real. Reality: That world is a hoax, an elaborate deception spun by all-powerful machines of artificial intelligence that control us. Whoa. Mind-warp stunts. Techno-slammin' visuals. Mega-kick action. Keanu Reeves and Laurence Fishburne lead the fight to free humankind in The Matrix, the see-and-see-again cyberthriller written and directed by the Wachowski brothers (Bound). The story sears, the special effects stake out new moviemaking territory - the movie flat-out rocks.

Winner of 3 Golden Globes and two Academy® Awards, Moulin Rouge is a musical unlike any other. Dive into the trippy underworld of the Moulin Rouge, where an impoverished poet falls in love with a lovely singer/dancer/courtesan. Ewan McGregor and Nicole Kidman star in this colorful mosaic of modern pop songs and timeless drama.