A sterling cast and vivid direction give North Country an emotional heft to match its political convictions. Charlize Theron (Monster) plays Josey Aimes, who goes to work at a Minnesota steel mine after splitting with her violent husband. But the job proves to be almost as harrowing as her marriage; the male miners, resentful of women taking jobs, verbally abuse and play humiliating pranks on the female miners.
The dominant themes of director Sidney Lumet's distinguished career are in full force in this moral melodrama involving a young district attorney (Andy Garcia) who takes on a career-making case only to uncover his father's possible involvement in pervasive police corruption. Balancing personal ethics and political compromise in a high-wire act of power and its abuse, Lumet relies on dialogue and superb performances (including those by Ron Leibman, Richard Dreyfuss, and Lena Olin) to achieve a devastating impact.
The unflinching realism and searing performances of Monster's Ball are stunning in all the connotations of the word. Hank (Billy Bob Thornton) and Leticia (Halle Berry) inhabit stark, queasy realities of the contemporary South, he as a death row corrections officer and she as the soon-to-be widow of an inmate (Sean Combs) whose execution Hank helps conduct. In the aftermath of the execution, both lose their children to tragic deaths and they form an unlikely bond.
The lethal business of arms dealers provides an electrifying context for the black-as-coal humor of Andrew Niccol's Lord of War. Having proven his ingenuity as the writer of The Truman Show, and writer-director of Gattaca and the under-appreciated Simone, Niccol is clearly striving for Strangelovian relevance here as he chronicles the rise and inevitable fall of Yuri Orlov (Nicolas Cage), a Ukrainian immigrant to America who makes his fortune selling every kind of ordnance he can get his amoral hands on.
If you're going to submit yourself to a dazzling example of mainstream action, this thriller is as good a choice as any. Eraser is a live-action cartoon, the kind of movie in which Arnold Schwarzenegger can survive nail bombs, hails of bullets, an attack by voracious alligators ("You're luggage," he says, after killing one of the beasts), and still emerge from the mayhem relatively intact. Arnold plays an "eraser" from the Federal Witness Protection Program, so named because he can virtually erase the existence of anyone he's been assigned to protect.
An epic story, exotic locales and electrifying performances from Bai Ling (Sky Captain and The World of Tomorrow), Tim Roth (Dark Water) and Nick Nolte (Hotel Rwanda) highlight this moving film that celebrates the power of the human spirit. Raised as an orphan, Binh (Damien Nguyen) is a young Vietnamese man with one impossible dream: to be reunited with his birth father, an American G.I. who left without a trace.
Academy Award winner Jodie Foster and international action star Chow Yun-Fat bring to life the epic true story of a woman who challenged the heart of a king and inspired the destiny of a nation. English school teacher Anna Leonowens has traveled to Siam to educate the fifty-eight children of King Mongkut. If she has preconceived notions about the East, the King has similar notions about the West. But amid the danger of growing political unrest, their respect for each other slowly turns into something more.
The late "Pistol" Pete Maravich made basketball history as the most spectacular college scorer ever, and he's still inspiring kids through this movie based on his first season of high school varsity basketball (which he played when he was in eighth grade). This 90-minute film explores the supportive father-son relationship that pushed him to the heights of achievement and fame (Dad was a former pro and Clemson University coach) and includes a story line on the stirrings of the quest for racial equality in the late 1950s.
Their licenses suspended, their vehicles impounded, a hapless band of misfits, malcontents and dreamers meet in traffic school. As it turns out, this isn't your ordinary run of the mill traffic school. The crew find themselves in the clutches of two over zealous police officers lead by the Judge to running the school so that the students are forever without licenses and cars. What ensues is a side splitting, tire screeching battle of wits. Who will be king of the road?
In this swordfighting comedy, a young noblewoman falls in love with a prince of the Imperial House. By accident, she acquires the martial arts skills of the White Dragon. New in her power, she learns that there are definite advantages in performing "good deeds" as the Little White Dragon. When she discovers that the famed assassin, Chicken Feathers, is planning to kill her beloved prince, she seeks to prevent this by killing the assassin first. After more than one unsuccessful attempt, she begins to grow in her compassion and understanding for the blind assassin.
