Rain Man is the kind of touching drama that Oscars are made for--and, sure enough, the film took Academy honors for best picture, director, screenplay, and actor (Dustin Hoffman) in 1988. Hoffman plays Raymond, an autistic savant whose late father has left him $3 million in a trust. This gets the attention of his materialistic younger brother, a hot-shot LA car dealer named Charlie (Tom Cruise) who wasn't even aware of Raymond's existence until he read his estranged father's will.
When '90s teens David and Jennifer (Maguire and Witherspoon) get zapped into the perfect suburbia of the black & white '50s sitcom, Pleasantville, what results is a "visionary adventure" (Peter Travers, Rolling Stone) that Siskel and Ebert give "Two big thumbs up!" Pleasantville's perfect people includes a mild-mannered soda jerk (Daniels), a socially repressed mom (Allen) and a father who always knows best (Macy). But, when '90s pop culture clashes with '50s family values, chaos ensues, turning the town of Pleasantville upside down and black and white into color.
Clint Eastwood (making his very assured directorial debut) is a poetry-spouting stud-muffin DJ stalked by a maniacally amorous fan after a misguided one-night stand in this enjoyably schlocky, undeniably effective film about good intentions gone murderously wacky.
Platoon put writer-turned-director Oliver Stone on the Hollywood map; it is still his most acclaimed and effective film, probably because it is based on Stone's firsthand experience as an American soldier in Vietnam. Chris (Charlie Sheen) is an infantryman whose loyalty is tested by two superior officers: Sergeant Elias (Willem Dafoe), a former hippie humanist who really cares about his men (this was a few years before he played Jesus in Martin Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ), and Sergeant Barnes (Tom Berenger), a moody, macho soldier who may have gone over to the dark side.
After a spectacular crash-landing on an uncharted planet, brash astronaut Leo Davidson (Mark Wahlberg) finds himself trapped in a savage world where talking apes dominate the human race. Desperate to findia way home, Leo must evade the invincible gorilla army led by ruthless General Thade (Tim Roth) and his most trusted warrior, Attar (Michael Clarke Duncan). Now the pulse-pounding race is on to reach a sacred temple that may hold the shocking secrets of mankind's past- and the last hope for its salvation.
Charlton Heston and Roddy McDowall star in this legendary science-fiction masterpiece. Astronaut Taylor (Heston) crash lands on a distant planet ruled by apes who use a primitive race of humans for experimentation and sport. Soon Taylor finds himself among the hunted, his life in the hands of a benevolent chimpanzee scientist (McDowall). Winner of an honorary Academy Award for Outstanding Make-Up Achievement, Planet Of The Apes is grand entertainment, from its visually arresting beginning to the chilling last moment.
Sharper and deeper than Robin Williams's previous road material, Live on Broadway is a mature comedian's view of all things to do with power, prejudice, and paranoia in the 21st century.
When it comes to ramping up to vein-bursting levels of tormented anxiety, Mel Gibson has a kind of mainstream intensity that makes him perfect for his heroic-father role in director Ron Howard's child-kidnapping thriller. When you think of Ransom, you automatically think of the scene in which Mel reaches his boiling point and yells, "Give me back my son!" to the kidnapper on the other end of several torturous phone calls.
During a routine drive to his observatory, Professor Quatermass (Brian Donlevey) stumbles upon a mysterious government facility surrounded by guards and mines. Curious of this unusual site, Quatermass begins to investigate and discoversia remarkably large number of meteors in the area. As his investigation comes to a turning point, Quatermass comes to a horrific conclusion: alien invaders. The ensuing danger could mean the end of human civilization!
The thriller that began five million years ago in another world has come to earth! A London subway excavation abruptly halts when construction workers find a cluster of prehistoric skulls and skeletons. Anthropologist Dr. Roney (James Donald), his assistant Barbara Judd (Barbara Shelley), andispace expert Professor Quatermass (Andrew Keir) are driven by curiosity and dig deeper to discover a "strange" missile that is not of this earth.
