With Sideways, Paul Giamatti (American Splendor, Storytelling) has become an unlikely but engaging romantic lead. Struggling novelist and wine connoisseur Miles (Giamatti) takes his best friend Jack (Thomas Haden Church, Wings) on a wine-tasting tour of California vineyards for a kind of extended bachelor party.
Larry McMurtry's novel becomes a winning film as directed by James L. Brooks (As Good As It Gets), with Shirley MacLaine and Debra Winger playing a combative mother and daughter who see each other through various ups and downs in love and loss, and most especially through a terminal illness endured by Winger's character. Jack Nicholson deservedly won an Oscar for his supporting role as a free-spirited astronaut who backs away from a romance with MacLaine and then returns in the clutch.
Winner of two 1995 Academy Awards, including Best Original Screenplay, this masterful, atmospheric film noir enraptured audiences with its complex and riveting storyline, gritty, tour-de-force performances (including an Oscar-winning turn by Kevin Spacey) and a climax that is truly deserving of the word stunning. This "thoroughly engrossing film" (HBO) is so "gripping and diabolically clever" (The Wall Street Journal) that it becomes "a maze you'll be happy to get lost in" (Los Angeles Times)! Held in an L.A.
As noted critic Pauline Kael wrote, the 1987 box-office hit The Untouchables is "like an attempt to visualize the public's collective dream of Chicago gangsters." In other words, this lavish reworking of the vintage TV series is a rousing potboiler from a bygone era, so beautifully designed and photographed--and so craftily directed by Brian De Palma--that the historical reality of Prohibition-era Chicago could only pale in comparison.
A high-ranking judge with a vendetta against drugs learns his own daughter is a cocaine addict - a San Diego housewife must suddenly take over her husband's drug dealing business when he is arrested - a Mexican police officer struggles to do the right thing in the midst of corruption. Michael Douglas, Catherine Zeta-Jones and Benicio Del Toro star in Steven Soderbergh's amazing intertwined stories of the failing war on drugs.
Once in a great while a movie comes along that truly grips and uplifts its audiences. Such a movie is An Officer And A Gentleman, a timeless tale of romance, friendship and growth. Loner Zack Mayo (Rcihard Gere) enters Officer Candidate School to become a Navy Pilot and in thirteen torturous weeks he learns the importance of discipline, love and friendship. Louis Gossett, Jr. won an Academy Award for his brilliant portrayal of the tough drill instructor who teaches Zack that no man can make it alone.
uperior acting, writing, and direction are on impressive display in the critically acclaimed Mystic River, Clint Eastwood's 24th directorial outing and one of the finest films of 2003. Sharply adapted by L.A. Confidential Oscar-winner Brian Helgeland from the novel by Dennis Lehane, this chilling mystery revolves around three boyhood friends in working-class Boston--played as adults by Tim Robbins, Sean Penn, and Kevin Bacon--drawn together by a crime from the past and a murder (of the Penn character's 19-year-old daughter) in the present.
Like Easy Rider, Bonnie and Clyde, The Wild Bunch, and The Graduate, The Last Picture Show is one of the signature films of the "New Hollywood" that emerged in the late 1960s and early '70s. Based on the novel by Larry McMurtry and lovingly directed by Peter Bogdanovich (who cowrote the script with McMurtry), this 1971 drama has been interpreted as an affectionate tribute to classic Hollywood filmmaking and the great directors (such as John Ford) that Bogdanovich so deeply admired.
Jerry Maguire (Tom Cruise) is a sports agent who is long on ambition but short on scruples. After he suddenly and ceremoniously loses his job and his girlfriend (Kelly Preston), both his personal and professional careers hit an all-time low. But when a single mother (Renee Zellweger) enters his life and his heart, he finds himself negotiating the biggest deal of his life... for the heart and the hand of the woman that he loves. Cuba Gooding, Jr.
Heaven Can Wait is a romantic fantasy about Joe Pendleton (Warren Beatty), a Los Angeles Rams quarterback who is accidentally summoned to heaven by an overly zealous celestial escort. Pendleton is returned to earth in the body of another man, who is a corporate giant. While practicing to once again play for the Rams, Pendleton must escape attempts on his life while romantically pursuing a beautiful Englishwoman (Julie Christie) who protests the destruction caused to her village by one of his many corporations.
