Philip Noyce

The Quiet American proves that elegant and intelligent filmmaking can be emotionally powerful. Michael Caine plays Thomas Fowler, a British journalist in 1950s Vietnam with a lovely Vietnamese mistress named Phuong (Do Thi Hai Yen) and a jaded view of the political strife teeming around him. He befriends a seemingly innocuous American named Alden Pyle (Brendan Fraser), who falls in love with Phuong--and slowly, Pyle's real purpose in Vietnam becomes revealed. Fowler finds that, to hold on to the carefully balanced life he's created for himself, he must make choices he's long avoided.

Angelina Jolie confirms her status as action-heroine supreme in the sinewy thriller Salt. Evelyn Salt (Jolie) is a respected high-ranking CIA agent… until a defecting Russian operative declares that she's a Russian mole in deep cover, launching her on the most delicious chase sequence since the Bourne movies. When the film's over you'll realize the motivations for much of what happened didn't make much sense, but while the movie's going on the pell-mell pace will brush such concerns from your mind.

With a terrific cast at his service, director Phillip Noyce (Dead Calm, Patriot Games) turns the pulpy indulgence of Jeffery Deaver's novel into a slick potboiler that is grisly fun. Noyce expertly builds palpable tension around a series of gruesome murders that lead us into the darkest nooks of New York City. Now a bedridden quadriplegic prone to life-threatening seizures and suicidal depression, forensics detective Lincoln Rhyme (Denzel Washington) gets a new lease on life with a sharp young beat cop (Angelina Jolie) who's a wizard at analyzing crime scenes.

Val Kilmer plays suave espionage hero Simon Templar--aka The Saint--and Elisabeth Shue costars in this atmospheric mix of bold adventure and grand romance. An array of sophisticated gadgetry is at Templar's command as he plunges into a cloak-and-dagger netherworld of move and countermove. Cool, too, is Templar's knack for coming up with the right disguise at theiright time. Now you see him. Now you don't... or do you? Each close-call escape is a breathless miracle--and no one knows miracles better than a saint.