Cast biographies/profiles/filmographies

If you thought The Recruit was full of surprises, Basic will spin your head around. Assuming that cleverness is its own reward, this military mystery shares many of The Recruit's strengths and weaknesses, offering multi-layered deception as its dramatic raison d'etre. Copping plenty of machismo attitude befitting a semi-effective thriller from Die Hard director John McTiernan, John Travolta stars as an ex-Army Ranger-turned-DEA agent, recruited by an Army investigator (Connie Nielsen) to solve the fratricide of a reviled Sergeant (Samuel L.

A macabre mix of humor and horror from the acclaimed director John Landis (Animal House). This classic horror/comedy tells the beastly tale of two American youths whose European adventure turns to terror after they are attacked by a werewolf. One of the travelers is killed, but the other's fate is worse than death as every full moon now seems to bring out the beast in him.

Amelie, a shy waitress in a cafe in central Paris, is looking for love, and perhaps for the meaning of life in general. When she finds a box of childhood toys in her apartment, it inspires her to conduct a series of good deeds for her co-workers and neighbors. In doing so, she gradually finds the route to happiness by coming out of her shell and reaching out to others.

Michael Douglas stars as Nick Curran, a tough but vulnerable detective. Sharon Stone costars as Catherine Tramell, a cold, calculating, and beautiful novelist with an insatiable sexual appetite. Catherine becomes a prime suspect when her boyfriend is brutally murdered--a crime she had described in her latest novel. But would she be so obvious as to write about a crime she was going to commit? Or is she being set up by a jealous rival?

Translating Rowan Atkinson's Mr. Bean character from British television to the big screen takes a bit of a toll, but there are some hilarious sequences in this popular comedy. Bean, a boy-man twit with a knack for getting into difficult binds (and then making them worse and worse and worse), is a London museum guard who is sent to Los Angeles in the company of the famous painting Whistler's Mother. He's mistaken as an art expert by the well-meaning curator (Peter MacNicol) of an L.A. museum, but Bean's famously eccentric behavior soon causes the poor guy to almost lose his family and job.

Audiences and critics alike are raving about this larger-than-life rock 'n' roll favorite that Roger Ebert calls "one of the best movies of the year!" The guys of Stillwater have the sound, they have the look, and Rolling Stone magazine wants their story. For young reporter William Miller, it's the opportunity of a lifetime as he hits the road with his favorite band and discovers the price of fame, the value of family and the limits of friendship.

A Beautiful Mind manages to twist enough pathos out of John Nash's incredible life story to redeem an at-times goofy portrayal of schizophrenia. Russell Crowe tackles the role with characteristic fervor, playing the Nobel prize-winning mathematician from his days at Princeton, where he developed a groundbreaking economic theory, to his meteoric rise to the cover of Forbes magazine and an MIT professorship, and on through to his eventual dismissal due to schizophrenic delusions. Of course, it is the delusions that fascinate director Ron Howard and, predictably, go astray.

Back in 1967, buck-toothed, crushed-velvet-wearing, mop-topped Austin Powers worked as a swingin' fashion photographer by day and a groovy super agent for a British organization the rest of the time. His chief nemesis was the bald-pated, cat-loving, megalomaniacal Dr. Evil. Just before Austin Powers catches him once and for all, Dr. Evil has himself place in a cryogenic capsule and blasted into space. Not wanting to be outdone, Powers volunteers to have himself frozen, too. Thirty years pass, and Evil eventually returns to London to continued his wicked machinations.

Twisty brilliance from screenwriter Charlie Kaufman and director Spike Jonze, the team who created Being John Malkovich. Nicolas Cage returns to form with a funny, sad, and sneaky performance as Charlie Kaufman, a self-loathing screenwriter who has been hired to adapt Susan Orlean's book The Orchid Thief into a screenplay.

Set in New York City in 1961, 61* is a film directed by Billy Crystal for baseball lovers. Zooming in on Yankee players Roger Maris and Mickey Mantle, the film follows these two opposites as they attempt to break Babe Ruth's 1927 home run record. In heated competition, the two players each try to score over 60 home runs and set the new world record. While the fans align themselves with one player to be the winner, the players choose the other, igniting the playing field with tension, excitement, and anticipation.