In the emotionally-charged adventure The Patriot, Academy Award-winner Mel Gibson stars as Benjamin Martin, a reluctant hero who is swept into the American Revolution when the war reaches his home and threatens his family. A hero of the fierce French and Indian conflict, Martin had renounced fighting forever to raise his family in peace.
Trapped in their New York brownstone’s panic room, a hidden chamber built as a sanctuary in the event of break-ins, newly divorced Meg Altman (Jodie Foster) and her daughter Sarah (Kristen Stewart) play a deadly game of cat-and-mouse with three intruders--Burnham (Forest Whitaker), Raoul (Dwight Yoakam) and Junior (Jared Leto) -- during a brutal home invasion. But the room itself is the focal point because what the intruders really want is inside it.
Woody Allen stars in Picking Up the Pieces, playing a butcher named Tex who cuts up his adulterous wife (played by Sharon Stone) in a jealous rage. On his way to bury the pieces, he loses her hand on the side of the road, where it's found by a blind woman--and miraculously gives her back her sight. Before long, the hand has become a religious relic, drawing huge crowds to the small town of El Nino, New Mexico, and testing the faithlessness of a straying priest (David Schwimmer), who's in love with the town's leading prostitute (Maria Gracia Cucinotta, from Il Postino).
Highly entertaining albeit thin journalism thriller, this examination of a 24-hour period in the life of a New York Post-ish tabloid focuses on a hard-working metro editor (a pitch-perfect Michael Keaton) thinking of going to a loftier job at a rival paper. Edgy, "NYC as the center of the universe" full of sweat and grit, the paper debates the hot story of the day: a racial shooting. Like most movies from Ron Howard's universe (Parenthood, Backdraft), it's always just a movie, full of dramatic, over-the-top setups instead of the genuine article.
A free-thinking rebel goes hand-to-hand with a tough chief nurse and the bureaucratic mental hospital she represents. His inflammatory energy and lust for life transform the other patients and shake the system to its foundations. Winner of all five top Academy Awards: Best Picture, Director, Actor, Actress and Screenplay. Special Edition includes 48 minute documentary featuring actors, moviemakers and writer Ken Kesey recounting the history of the original novel to its Stage and Movie adaptations.
For Norman and Ethel Thayer, this summer On Golden Pond is filled with conflict and resolution. When their daughter Chelsea (Jane Fonda) arrives, the family is forced to renew the bonds of love and overcome the generational friction that has existed for years. Norman (Henry Fonda) must find his way through his anger and fear of growing old, while Chelsea struggles to rebuild their relationship. Ethel's (Katharine Hepburn) consistent support of her "knight in shining armor" is inspirational in its simplicity. This is a movie to ponder and always keep in your heart.
Frank Sinatra and his Rat Pack prove how to win in Las Vegas: rob the casinos! He, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., Peter Lawford, Angie Dickinson and more are the epitome of cool in this hot heist caper. The tone of the film is curiously serious--one somehow expected that the Rat Pack would have made a more buoyant first picture. But it is something to see these guys together, if largely for nostalgia reasons.
Eddie Murphy gives the "performances" of his career playing no less than seven roles in this uproarious, Jekyll-and-Hyde comedy from Imagine Entertainment. Murphy stars as Dr. Sherman Klump, a kind, "calorically challenged" genetics professor who longs to shed his 400-pound frame in order to win the heart of beautiful Jada Pinkett. So, with one swig of his experimental fat-reducing serum, Sherman becomes "Buddy Love," a fast-talking, pumped-up, plumped down Don Juan. Can Sherman stop his buff alter ego before it's too late, or will Buddy have the last laugh?
The Net, the first of Hollywood's big cyberthrillers of the mid-1990s, was also the most successful, thanks in large part to the natural appeal of star Sandra Bullock. Still riding high from Speed and While You Were Sleeping, Bullock plays a computer expert victimized by sinister cyberforces who steal her identity for reasons unknown. It's a clever combination of high-tech paranoia and Hitchcockian references (including Jeremy Northam as a romantic stranger named Devlin, after Cary Grant in Notorious).
Neil Simon wrote this 1976 spoof in which virtually every famous fictional detective of the 1930s and 1940s congregate at the home of a mysterious fellow (Truman Capote) to try and solve the mystery of who's trying to kill them all. Simon's jokes are mostly obvious, and the film's real appeal is the clever concept matched with fine--sometimes legendary--actors. Peter Falk plays a very Bogart-like Sam Spade equivalent, James Coco is a Hercule Poirot wannabe, Peter Sellers does a Charlie Chan bit, David Niven and Maggie Smith are reflections of Nick and Nora.... You get the picture.
