Taxi Driver is the definitive cinematic portrait of loneliness and alienation manifested as violence. It is as if director Martin Scorsese and screenwriter Paul Schrader had tapped into precisely the same source of psychological inspiration ("I just knew I had to make this film," Scorsese would later say), combined with a perfectly timed post-Watergate expression of personal, political, and societal anxiety.
I feel like I've been handed a new life, says Tom Ripley at a crucial turning point of this well-cast, stylishly crafted psychological thriller. And indeed he has, because the devious, impoverished Ripley (played with subtle depth by Matt Damon) has just traded his own identity for that of Dickie Greenleaf (Jude Law), the playboy heir to a shipping fortune who has become Ripley's model for a life worth living.
In this crowd-pleasing 1983 comedy of high finance about a homeless con artist who becomes a Wall Street robber baron, Eddie Murphy consolidated the success of his startling debut in the previous year's 48 Hours and polished his slick-winner persona. The turnabout begins with an argument between super-rich siblings, played by Ralph Bellamy and Don Ameche: Are captains of industry, they wonder, born or made? To settle the issue, the meanies construct a cruel experiment in social Darwinism.
The sunny streets of Brooklyn, just after World War II. A young would-be writer named Stingo (Peter MacNicol) shares a boarding house with beautiful Polish immigrant Sophie (Meryl Streep) and her tempestuous lover, Nathan (Kevin Kline); their friendship changes his life. This adaptation of the bestselling novel by William Styron is faithful to the point of being reverential, which is not always the right way to make a film come to life. But director Alan J.
Richard Donner's 1978 epic about the Man of Steel showed how a film about a superhero could be a moving and romantic experience even for people who long ago gave up comic books. Beginning on the icy planet Krypton, the story follows the baby Kal-El, whose rocket ship lands in Smallville, Kansas. He is found there by a childless couple and raised as the shy Clark Kent (the young Kent is played by Jeff East).
It is a dark time for the Rebellion. After a devastating attack on their ice base on the frozen planet of Hoth, the Rebels are scattered by Imperial pursuit. Luke Skywalker seeks out the mysterious Jedi Master Yodaiin the swamps of Dagobah, while Han Solo and Princess Leia outrun the Imperial fleet to the beautiful Cloud City of Bespin. In an attempt to convert Luke to the dark side, the evil Darth Vader lures young Skywalker into a trap. In the midst of a fierce lightsaber duel with the Sith Lord, Luke faces a terrible truth about the Skywalker legacy.
In the spectacular final chapter of the Star Wars saga, Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia must travel to Tatooine to free Han Solo by infiltrating the wretched stronghold of Jabba the Hutt, the galaxy's most loathsome gangster. Reunited, the Rebels team up with tribes of Ewoks to combat the Imperial forces on the forest moon of Endor. Meanwhile the Emperor and Darth Vader conspire to turn Lukeito the dark side, and young Skywalker is determined to rekindle the spirit of the Jedi within his father.
In Star Trek: The Motion Picture, a giant luminescent cloud is on a direct course for Earth, absorbing everything in its path. After a Klingon fleet and a Federation space station are destroyed, Admiral James T. Kirk (Shatner) assumes command of the newly-refitted starship Enterprise and heads at warp speed to intercept the menacing force. Once they are underway, they are joined by Mr. Spock (Nimoy), whose interest in the intruder seems more than scientific.
William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy and the rest of the U.S.S. Enterprise crew take to the skies in one of the most acclaimed and intriguing Star Trek adventures ever. It's the 23rd century and a mysterious alien power is threatening Earth by evaporating the oceans and destroying the atmosphere. In a frantic attempt to save mankind, Kirk and his crew must time travel back to 1986 San Francisco where they find a world of punk, pizza and exact-change buses that are as alien as anything they've ever encountered in the far reaches of the galaxy.
What a combo! Tobe Hooper, the director of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, teamed up with family-oriented producer Steven Spielberg to make Poltergeist. The film is about a haunted suburban tract home in a development very much like the Arizona one in which Spielberg was raised. (Because it came out the same summer as Spielberg's E.T., it was tempting to see both movies as representing Spielberg's ambivalent feelings about childhood in suburbia.
