Interviews

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.

On a hot Brooklyn afternoon, two optimistic losers set out to rob a bank. Sonny (Al Pacino) is the mastermind, Sal (John Cazale) is the follower, and disaster is the result. Because the cops, crowds, TV cameras and even the pizza man have arrived. The "well-planned" heist is now a circus. Pacino and director Sidney Lumet, collaborators on Serpico, reteam for this boisterous comedy/thriller that earned six Academy Award nominations (including Best Picture), and won an Oscar for Frank Pierson's streetwise screenplay.

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.

Action, arias and assassins all collide in "Diva," a romantic thriller directed by Jean-Jacques Beineix. When Jules, an 18-year-old postal worker, bootlegs the concert of a superstar diva, he finds himself with more than he bargained for. His tape is mixed up with one that identifies a top mobster involved in an international sex and drug ring, and suddenly blackmailers, hitmen and the police are chasing him through the streets of Paris.

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.

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.

Bill Duke (A Rage in Harlem) directed this edgy action yarn that stretches the barriers of the genre. It explores the fine line between good and evil, while testing the resolve of a moral man seduced by an easier, more pleasurable lifestyle. Although the plot eventually becomes too overblown and earnest, Deep Cover proves far more intelligent than the average action pic. Laurence Fishburne is the straight-arrow undercover cop who gets so far into his assumed identity that he has trouble recognizing the good guys from the bad.

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.

City Lights is a film to pick for the time capsule, a film that best represents the many aspects of director-writer-star Charlie Chaplin at the peak of his powers: Chaplin the actor, the sentimentalist, the knockabout clown, the ballet dancer, the athlete, the lover, the tragedian, the fool. It's all contained in Chaplin's simple story of a tramp who falls in love with a blind flower girl (Virginia Cherrill). Chaplin elevates the Victorian contrivances of the plot to something glorious with his inventive use of pantomime and his sure grasp of how the Tramp relates to the audience.

In the night skies near his Muncie, Indiana, home, power repairman Roy Neary (Richard Dreyfuss) experiences something out of this world. His close encounter sets into action an amazing chain of events that leads to contact with benevolent aliens and their Mothership. Spectacular special effects, John Williams' outstanding score and winning performances from Dreyfuss, Teri Garr, Melinda Dillion and legendary director Francois Truffaut in the role of Lacombe make Steven Spielberg's "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" movie magic of the best kind.