Interviews

Jack Walsh (Robert De Niro) is a tough ex-cop turned bounty hunter. Jonathan "The Duke" Mardukas (Charles Grodin) is a sensitive accountant who embezzled $15 million from the Mob, gave it to charity and then jumped bail. Jack's in for a cool $100,000 if he can deliver The Duke from New York to L.A. on time. And alive. Sounds like just another Midnight Run (a piece of cake in bounty hunter slang), but it turns into a cross-country chase. The FBI is after The Duke to testify-the Mob is after him for revenge-and Walsh is after him to just shut up.

Michael Collins, the man and the movie stands tall. The man is a hero whose fighting tactics became a model for other 20th-century struggles, a statesman who negotiated Ireland's break with England, a political martyr slain for the great cause he lived and breathed. Michael Collins roils with the passions of war furiously waged and peace desperately sought. A movie you won't soon forget.

uperior acting, writing, and direction are on impressive display in the critically acclaimed Mystic River, Clint Eastwood's 24th directorial outing and one of the finest films of 2003. Sharply adapted by L.A. Confidential Oscar-winner Brian Helgeland from the novel by Dennis Lehane, this chilling mystery revolves around three boyhood friends in working-class Boston--played as adults by Tim Robbins, Sean Penn, and Kevin Bacon--drawn together by a crime from the past and a murder (of the Penn character's 19-year-old daughter) in the present.

Could this be the funniest movie ever made? By any rational measure of comedy, this medieval romp from the Monty Python troupe certainly belongs on the short list of candidates. According to Leonard Maltin's Movie & Video Guide, it's "recommended for fans only," but we say hogwash to that--you could be a complete newcomer to the Python phenomenon and still find this send-up of the Arthurian legend to be wet-your-pants hilarious.

On a remote stretch of deserted highway, a band of violent bikers has taken over, attacking anyone unlucky enough to cross their savage path. Racing up and down the seemingly endless miles of asphalt, the crazed outlaws blaze through small towns, plowing into vehicles and pedestrians alike with reckless abandon. Bringing a sense of law to this lawlessness are the mobile police force, led by Max and Goose, who are as fast and mean as their adversaries and are willing to do whatever it takes to cut the enemy down.

This terrific Walter Hill Western follows the careers of the James and Younger brothers--and uses the nifty idea of casting actual clans of acting siblings in the roles. Thus, the James brothers are played by James and Stacy Keach; the Youngers by David, Keith, and Robert Carradine; the Millers by Randy and Dennis Quaid; and the Fords by Christopher and Nicholas Guest. Hill, working with an evocative Ry Cooder score, creates a film that is at once breathtakingly exciting and elegiac in its treatment of these post-Civil War outlaws.

John Schlesinger (Midnight Cowboy) directed this gripping, entertaining 1977 thriller that centers on graduate student Dustin Hoffman (The Graduate, Tootsie). Hoffman plays a sullen and cowardly loner haunted by the suicide of his father, a suspected communist. He is drawn into a murky web of international intrigue when his brother, CIA agent Doc Levy, played by Roy Scheider (Jaws, The French Connection), is murdered by a former Nazi (Laurence Olivier) who has come to the United States to reclaim a valuable stash of diamonds.

Pure dynamite! The Lethal Weapon team has done it again, putting the match to the fuse and putting the WOW! back on screen for Lethal Weapon 4. Mel Gibson and Danny Glover return as buddy cops Riggs and Murtaugh, with Joe Pesci riding comedy shotgun as chatterbox Leo. Murtaugh is still the family man. Riggs is still the gonzo loose cannon - what's this? - family man. His will he/won't he marriage to Cole (Russo) is one of the new wrinkles in this powerhouse crowd-pleaser that also stars comedy favorite Chris Rock and international action star Jet Li.

You will never find a more chillingly suspenseful, perversely funny, or viciously satirical political thriller than The Manchurian Candidate, based on the novel by Richard Condon (author of Winter Kills). The film, withheld from distribution by star Frank Sinatra for almost a quarter century after President Kennedy's assassination, has lost none of its potency over time. Former infantryman Bennet Marco (Sinatra) is haunted by nightmares about his platoon having been captured and brainwashed in Korea.

The disaster that occurred at Jurassic Park is over. It's been four years since the genetically bred dinosaurs terrorized the scientists and visitors who had come to marvel at their existence. But Dr. Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) has just learned some very disturbing news: John Hammond (Richard Attenborough), the billionaire entrepreneur who funded the original Park, has been breeding more dinosaurs at a second, secret location. What's even more shocking to Dr.