A big-budget summer epic with money to burn and a scale worthy of its golden Hollywood predecessors, Ridley Scott's Gladiator is a rousing, grisly, action-packed epic that takes moviemaking back to the Roman Empire via computer-generated visual effects. While not as fluid as the computer work done for, say, Titanic, it's an impressive achievement that will leave you marveling at the glory that was Rome, when you're not marveling at the glory that is Russell Crowe.
Tom Hanks gives an astonishing performance as Forrest Gump in this acclaimed film from director Robert Zemeckis that rocketed to box-office history and touched the hearts of filmgoers like no other movie. Through three turbulent decades, Forrest rides a tide of events that whisks him from physical disability to football stardom, from Vietnam hero to shrimp tycoon, from White House honors to the arms of his one true love. Forrest is the embodiment of an era, an innocent at large in an America that is losing its innocence. His heart knows what his limited IQ cannot.
Director William Friedkin was a hot ticket in Hollywood after the success of The French Connection, and he turned heads (in more ways than one) when he decided to make The Exorcist as his follow-up film. Adapted by William Peter Blatty from his controversial bestseller, this shocking 1973 thriller set an intense and often-copied milestone for screen terror with its unflinching depiction of a young girl (Linda Blair) who is possessed by an evil spirit.
Winner of four Academy Awards®, including Best Visual Effects, Best Sound Effects, Best Music, and Best Sound, E.T. The Extra Terrestial is the heart-warming family classic from director Steven Spielberg. When an alien (E.T.) is inadvertently left behind on Earth, he finds refuge with youngster Elliot (Henry Thomas). As Elliot and E.T. bond as friends, it soon becomes clear that E.T. must find his way home before government officials capture him for study. Together, E.T., Elliot, and Elliot's family and friends help unite E.T. with his spaceship.
In the last 15 years Jack Baker (Jeff Bridges) and Frank Baker (Beau Bridges) have played every hotel and cocktail lounge they could book. But lately business has been off and they decide to hire Susie Diamond (Michelle Pfeiffer), a chain-smoking, hard-talking beauty with a terrific voice. The trio hits the road and they are an instant success. Susie has given the act a touch of class and a lot of sex appeal. Jack secretly yearns to play solo jazz gigs even though Frank wants to keep the group together.
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.
A truly perfect movie, the 1942 Casablanca still wows viewers today, and for good reason. Its unique story of a love triangle set against terribly high stakes in the war against a monster is sophisticated instead of outlandish, intriguing instead of garish. Humphrey Bogart plays the allegedly apolitical club owner in unoccupied French territory that is nevertheless crawling with Nazis; Ingrid Bergman is the lover who mysteriously deserted him in Paris; and Paul Heinreid is her heroic, slightly bewildered husband.
Winner of six Academy Awards and a Golden Globe, Chicago is a dazzling spectacle cheered by audiences and critics alike! At a time when crimes of passion result in celebrity headlines, nightclub sensation Velma Kelly (Zeta-Jones) and spotlight-seeking Roxie Hart (Rene Zellweger) both find themselves sharing space on Chicago's famed Murderess Row! They also share Billy Flynn (Richard Gere), the town's slickest lawyer with a talent for turning notorious defendants into local legends. But in Chicago, there's only room for one legend!
Arguably the greatest of American films, Orson Welles's 1941 masterpiece, made when he was only 26, still unfurls like a dream and carries the viewer along the mysterious currents of time and memory to reach a mature (if ambiguous) conclusion: people are the sum of their contradictions, and can't be known easily. Welles plays newspaper magnate Charles Foster Kane, taken from his mother as a boy and made the ward of a rich industrialist.
Freely adapted from Charles Frazier's beloved bestseller, Cold Mountain boasts an impeccable pedigree as a respectable Civil War love story, offering everything you'd want from a romantic epic except a resonant emotional core.
