Saturday Night Fever is one of those movies that comes along and seems to change the cultural temperature in a flash. After the movie's release in 1977, disco ruled the dance floors, and a blow-dried member of a TV-sitcom ensemble became the hottest star in the U.S. For all that, the story is conventional: a 19-year-old Italian American from Brooklyn, Tony Manero (John Travolta), works in a humble paint store and lives with his family.
It's the early 1960s and fifth-grader Scotty Smalls (Tom Guiry) has just moved into town with his folks (Karen Allen and Denis Leary). Kids call him a dork - he can't even throw a baseball. That changes when the leader of the neighborhood gang recruits him to play on the nearby sandlot field. It's the beginning of a magical summer of baseball, wild adventures, first kisses, and fearsome confrontations with the dreaded beast and its owner (James Earl Jones) who live behind the left field fence.
Adapted from the best-selling book by Thomas Keneally and filmed in Poland with an emphasis on absolute authenticity, Spielberg's masterpiece ranks among the greatest films ever made about the Holocaust during World War II. It's a film about heroism with an unlikely hero at its center--Catholic war profiteer Oskar Schindler (Liam Neeson), who risked his life and went bankrupt to save more than 1,000 Jews from certain death in concentration camps. By employing Jews in his crockery factory manufacturing goods for the German army, Schindler ensures their survival against terrifying odds.
We could tell you what it's about. But then, of course, we would have to kill you. Robert Redford leads an all-star cast in one of the most satisfying suspense films! Computer expert Martin Bishop (Redford) heads a team of renegade hackers - including a former CIA employee (Sidney Poitier), a gadgets wizard (Dan Aykroyd), a young genius (River Phoenix) and a blind soundman (David Strathairn) - who are routinely hired to test security systems.
Proving that truth is often greater than fiction, the handsome production of Seabiscuit offers a healthy alternative to Hollywood's staple diet of mayhem.
Turbo-charged comic Jack Black shakes School of Rock to its foundations, wailing with born-again metalhead passion as Dewey Finn, a guitarist who gets kicked out of a band because he grandstands too much--or, to put it another way, enjoys himself. Through an intercepted phone call, Finn gets a job as a substitute teacher for a fifth grade class at a private grade school.
When Steven Spielberg was an adolescent, his first home movie was a backyard war film. When he toured Europe with Duel in his 20s, he saw old men crumble in front of headstones at Omaha Beach. That image became the opening scene of Saving Private Ryan, his film of a mission following the D-day invasion that many have called the most realistic--and maybe the best--war film ever. With 1998 production standards, Spielberg has been able to create a stunning, unparalleled view of war as hell. We are at Omaha Beach as troops are slaughtered by Germans yet overcome the almost insurmountable odds.
Jackie Chan and Owen Wilson jump back in the saddle for Shanghai Knights, the hilarious sequel to the hit action-comedy Shanghai Noon. When Chon Wang (Chan) gets news of his estranged father's murder in Shanghai, he leaves his honorable life as Carson City's sheriff in a cloud of dust and reunites with his yarn-spinning sidekick, Roy O'Bannon (Wilson). Together they make their way to London on a daring quest for honor and revenge. Hilarious escapades and hair-raising adventures ensue as our heroes find themselves in the middle of a devious plot to eliminate the entire royal family.
It's Samantha Baker's Sweet Sixteen and no one in her family remembers the important occasion. John Hughes, the writer of "National Lampoon's Vacation" shows how coming-of-age can be full of surprises in this warm-hearted teenage comedy starring Molly Ringwald. She's your average teen, enduring creepy freshmen, spoiled siblings, confused parents and the Big Blonde on Campus who stands between her and the boy of her dreams. But wait...the day isn't over yet!
As upscale sitcoms go, Something's Gotta Give has more to offer than most romantic comedies. Obviously working through some semi-autobiographical issues regarding "women of a certain age," writer-director Nancy Meyers brings adequate credibility and above-average intelligence to what is essentially (but not exclusively) a fantasy premise, in which an aging lothario who's always dated younger women (Jack Nicholson, more or less playing himself) falls for a successful middle-aged playwright (Diane Keaton) who's convinced she's past the age of romance, much less sexual re-awakening.
