Cast biographies/profiles/filmographies

War is hell, but it can bring out the best in the unlikeliest of men. Sword of Honour, a splendid British miniseries, is based on the semi-autobiographical novel by Evelyn Waugh. Waugh's alter ego in the film, Guy Crouchback, played with gravitas, fortitude, and a wee bit of vulnerability by a pre-James Bond Daniel Craig, joins the World War II effort as an older soldier because he feels a pure calling to fight evil. And fight he does, though the realities of war and army life are ultimately revealed to him in all their venality and haphazardness.

This rousing, explosive 1961 WWII adventure, based on Alistair MacLean's thrilling novel, turns the war thriller into a deadly caper film. Gregory Peck heads a star-studded cast charged with a near impossible mission: destroy a pair of German guns nestled in a protective cave on the strategic Mediterranean island of Navarone, from where they can control a vital sea passage.

I Have Found It (Kandukondain Kandukondain) transplants Jane Austen's Sense And Sensibility into an irresistibly musical, infectiously funny and sweetly romantic widescreen wonder world that could only by found in a Bollywood film. An eye-popping riot of brilliant color, show-stopping musical numbers, spectacular global locations and exuberant performances, I Have Found It represents a gigantic leap forward for Southern Indian "Kollywood" movies - the Tamil-speaking cousin of Bollywood Hindi language film.

Imagine if an actor's director like Eric Rohmer--whose films consist almost entirely of conversation between pairs or small groups of people--made a film that incorporated elements from movies like Dark City, eXistenZ, The Thirteenth Floor, The Truman Show, and Total Recall. The result might resemble Alejandro Amenabar's remarkable second feature, Open Your Eyes, which favors ideas over effects and offers twist upon twist with mind-warping agility.

In what may be the angriest portrait of Cuba ever made, director Leon Ichaso (Crossover Dreams) charts the journey of one young man from patriot to disillusioned dropout to angry rebel. Gustavo (RenÈ Lavan) is an idealistic young Marxist scholar who dreams of attending the University of Prague. When he falls for an earthy dancer with a more pragmatic view of her homeland, who plans to escape to Florida, his ideals are systematically chipped away in the face of poverty, repression, corruption, and police brutality until it all becomes too much for him to bear.

An elderly quintet of men escapes from a nursing home in search of a common dream of playing their music in public. Along the way they confront the police, drug lords, nursing home authorities, their families and everyone else who is determined to destroy their only chance to perform - which finally happens when they are hired as a backup band for exotic dancers in a cabaret. A compelling, funny, and moving film, If I Never See You Again is about life, death, and the quest for happiness.

In his direction of The Hurricane, veteran filmmaker Norman Jewison understands that slavish loyalty to factual detail is no guarantee of compelling screen biography. In telling the story of boxer Rubin "Hurricane" Carter--who was wrongly convicted of murder in 1967 and spent nearly two decades in jail--Jewison and his screenwriters compress time, combine characters, and rearrange events with a nonchalance that would be galling if they didn't remain honest to the core truth of Carter's ordeal.

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.

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.

Jackie Brown is the name of a flight attendant who gets caught smuggling her boss' gun money on the airline she works for. Luckily for her, the Fed Ray Nicolet and the LA Cop Mark Dargus decide to team up in order to arrest the arms dealer she works for, whose name they don't even know. Here's when she has to choose one way: tell Nicolet and Dargus about Ordell Robbie (the arms dealer) and get her freedom -except that if Ordell suspects you're talking about him, you're dead- or keep her mouth shut and do some time.