Featurettes/Behind-The-Scenes/Documentaries

The bright, glossy world of Doris Day and Rock Hudson sex comedies gets a self-aware brush-up in Down with Love. Pillow-lipped Rene Zellweger (Chicago) plays Barbara Novak, the author of a bestselling book called Down with Love that advises women to focus on their careers and have sex a la carte--just like a man would. Determined to prove that Novak is just as vulnerable to love as any woman, dashingly chauvinist magazine writer Catcher Block (ever-charming Ewan McGregor, Moulin Rouge) pretends to be a courtly astronaut who wouldn't dream of putting his hand on a woman's knee.

Britain's Hammer Studios had been making films for decades before they suddenly redefined themselves with this lurid remake of the Universal Studios horror classic. Prohibited by Universal from copying their blocky makeup (and their script, for that matter), Hammer returned to Mary Shelley's novel for inspiration, and then went in its own direction. Peter Cushing plays Dr. Frankenstein as the rational scientist turned cold-blooded criminal in his campaign to discover the secret of life, committing murder to further his ends, or to remove an inconvenient mistress.

Arguably the greatest black comedy ever made, Stanley Kubrick's cold-war classic is the ultimate satire of the nuclear age. Dr. Strangelove is a perfect spoof of political and military insanity, beginning when General Jack D. Ripper (Sterling Hayden), a maniacal warrior obsessed with "the purity of precious bodily fluids," mounts his singular campaign against Communism by ordering a squadron of B-52 bombers to attack the Soviet Union. The Soviets counter the threat with a so- called "Doomsday Device," and the world hangs in the balance while the U.S.

Fries with gravy, a cherry cola. Friendship, bragging rights...and does Sinatra or Mathis croon the best makeout music? Before there was a counterculture of the '60s, there was a counter culture. From his Oscar-nominated script, Barry Levinson makes his directing debut with this endearing study of pals in transition. Film-debuting Ellen Barkin plays a neglected wife.

A connoisseur of conning, Lawrence Jamison is running the ultimate royal scam on the Riviera--he's posing as a deposed prince raising funds for the freedom fighters of his stricken homeland. But his "hustling highness" gets royally flushed when a pretender to his throne turns up. He's Freddy Benson, a small-time scam artist who has enough on Jamison to make a mess of the monarchy. So the rivals make a wager--the first to extract $50,000 from the next woman they see, wins. And the loser goes into exile.

Whether or not you can sympathize with its fascistic/vigilante approach to law enforcement, Dirty Harry (directed by star Clint Eastwood's longtime friend and directorial mentor, Don Siegel) is one hell of a cop thriller. The movie makes evocative use of its San Francisco locations as cop Harry Callahan (Eastwood) tracks the elusive "Scorpio killer" who has been terrorizing the city by the Bay.

After Sudden Impact, no one could have expected the Dirty Harry sequel to follow. But The Dead Pool is fairly inspired, even playful--check out a "chase" scene between Clint Eastwood's Harry Callahan character and a remote-controlled toy car wielding a bomb--and it ended the long-running series on an unexpectedly positive note. This time, Callahan investigates a series of murders that appears to be on a "death list," while becoming romantically involved with a television reporter (Patricia Clarkson).

Sarah Michelle Gellar and Ryan Phillippe sizzle as a pair of unscrupulous siblings in a deliciously sexy tale of seduction, revenge and conquest. After cleverly seducing and ruining the reputation of an unsuspecting classmate (Selma Blair) the sparks fly when Kathryn (Gellar) poses the ultimate challenge to her insatiable stepbrother Sebastian (Phillippe): deflower the Headmaster's beautiful, virgin daughter Annette (Reese Witherspoon). If he fails, Kathryn gets his most prized possession, but if he succeeds, Sebastian gets to possess and bed Kathryn.

With a voracious trio of mako sharks wreaking havoc, Deep Blue Sea dares to up the ante on Jaws, but director Renny Harlin trades the nuanced suspense of Spielberg's 1975 blockbuster for the trickery of the digital age. In other words, why build genuine terror when you can show ill-fated humans getting torn into bloody chunks?

The plot for "Die Hard 2," which is more unsettling today than it was at the time, has a group of terrorists taking control of Dulles International Airport in Washington D.C in order to secure the release of a South American drug lord (Franco Nero) on his way to the United States for trial. If their demands are not met, they are going to start crashing the circling airplanes. Once again, John McClane (Willis) is in the wrong place at the wrong time, at the airport to pick up his wife, Holly (Bonnie Bedelia), who is on one of those circling airliners.