It's Sergio Leone meets Sam Peckinpah meets Quentin Tarantino in this ultraviolent, mythological shoot-'em-up by auteur Robert Rodriguez. In Desperado, Rodriguez creates larger-than-life, genre-tweaking stock characters and puts them through their paces. As they stride bravely through an Old West lightly dusted with camp humor, they're periodically called upon to nimbly dodge bullets and fireballs through outrageously choreographed displays of Hollywood pyrotechnics.
With The Curse of the Jade Scorpion, Woody Allen pays another visit to his idealized past, and his retro blend of humor and nostalgia will surely satisfy the filmmaker's most loyal fans. Like The Purple Rose of Cairo, Radio Days, and Sweet and Lowdown, The Curse of the Jade Scorpion is physically impeccable: its period-perfect costumes and sets capture 1940 New York with splendid authenticity and are further enhanced by the burnished glow of Zhao Fei's cinematography.
Winner of five Academy Awards including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Supporting Actor (Christopher Walken), this critically acclaimed, extraordinarily powerful motion picture tracks a group of steelworker pals from a Pennsylvania blast furnace to the cool hunting grounds of the Alleghenies to the lethal cauldron of Vietnam. Robert De Niro gives an outstanding performance as Michael, the natural leader of the group.
Hong Kong wuxia films, or martial arts fantasies, traditionally squeeze poor acting, slapstick humor, and silly story lines between elaborate fight scenes in which characters can literally fly. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon has no shortage of breathtaking battles, but it also has the dramatic soul of a Greek tragedy and the sweep of an epic romance. This is the work of director Ang Lee, who fell in love with movies while watching wuxia films as a youngster and made Crouching Tiger as a tribute to the form.
This visually sumptuous adaptation of the classic French novel of seduction, betrayal, and revenge stars the great Catherine Deneuve (Repulsion, Belle de Jour) as the scheming Madame de Meurteuil, who--to get back at a man who spurned her for a younger woman--persuades her equally amoral friend Valmont (Rupert Everett, My Best Friend's Wedding) to seduce the young woman in question. Thus begins one of the most intricate and hypnotic plots every orchestrated; it's no wonder Les Liaisons Dangereuses has been adapted into film so many times.
Harry Block has gone through three wives, six psychiatrists and dozens of girlfriends during his long literary career. But when Harry writes a bestseller about his best friends, his best friends become his worst enemies. Caroline Aaron, Woody Allen, Kirstie Alley, Bob Balaban, Richard Benjamin, Eric Bogosian, Billy Crystal, Judy Davis, Hazelle Goodman, Mariel Hemingway, Amy Irving, Julie Kavner, Eric Lloyd, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Tobey Maguire, Demi Moore, Elisabeth Shue, Stanley Tucci and Robin Williams star in this comic masterpiece from one of America's most revered talents.
Like The Gumball Rally (1976) before it, former stuntman Hal Needham's The Cannonball Run was inspired by the same real-life cross-country road race. If The Gumball Rally was the critical favorite, The Cannonball Run was the box-office favorite (spawning the almost-as-successful sequel, Cannonball Run II, a few years later). Aside from top-billed stars Burt Reynolds and Dom DeLuise (stars of Needham's Smokey and the Bandit series) plus Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr.
Directed by Sir Richard Attenborough and starring Robert Downey Jr. and an extraordinary cast, Chaplin is a loving, grand-scale portrait of the Little Tramp's amazing life and times. His poverty-stricken childhood in England comes to life, along with his friendships with Mack Sennett (Dan Aykroyd) and Douglas Fairbanks (Kevin Kline), his many wives and scandalous affairs, and his relentless pursuit by J. Edgar Hoover. Chaplin is the larger-than-life story of the actor behind the icon and a stunning depiction of a bygone era when Hollywood was at its most glamorous.
Director Martin Scorsese reunites with members of his GoodFellas gang (writer Nicholas Pileggi; actors Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci, and Frank Vincent) for a three-hour epic about the rise and fall of mobster Sam "Ace" Rothstein (De Niro), a character based on real-life gangster Frank "Lefty" Rosenthal. (It's modeled after on Wiseguy and GoodFellas and Pileggi's true crime book Casino: Love and Honor in Las Vegas.) Through Rothstein, the picture tells the story of how the Mafia seized, and finally lost control of, Las Vegas gambling.
Collateral offers a change of pace for Tom Cruise as a ruthless contract killer, but that's just one of many reasons to recommend this well-crafted thriller. It's from Michael Mann, after all, and the director's stellar track record with crime thrillers (Thief, Manhunter, and especially Heat) guarantees a rich combination of intelligent plotting, well-drawn characters, and escalating tension, beginning here when icy hit-man Vincent (Cruise) recruits cab driver Max (Jamie Foxx) to drive him through a nocturnal tour of Los Angeles, during which he will execute five people in a 10-hour spree.
