Photo gallery

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.

James Bond (Roger Moore) may have met his match in Francisco Scaramanga (Christopher Lee), a world-renowned assassin whose weapon of choice is a distinctive gold pistol. When Scaramanga seizes the priceless Solex Agitator energy converter, Agent 007 must recover the device and confront the trained killer in a heart-stopping duel to the death!

A perfume magnate (Barbra Streisand), with plenty of chutzpah, falls victim to an embezzling employee who takes her for everything she owns. Well, almost everything.... There is one $60,000 investment that still belongs to her -- a washed up prizefighter (Ryan O'Neal) with a sore paw, whose talents had been purchased as a tax write-off. Seeing him as her only chance to recoup some of her former wealth, she decides to manage the mild-mannered boxer's career herself. Can she stimulate a return to championship form?

Akira Kurosawa's rousing Seven Samurai was a natural for an American remake--after all, the codes and conventions of ancient Japan and the Wild West (at least the mythical movie West) are not so very far apart. Thus The Magnificent Seven effortlessly turns samurai into cowboys (the same trick worked more than once: Kurosawa's Yojimbo became Sergio Leone's A Fistful of Dollars). The beleaguered denizens of a Mexican village, weary of attacks by banditos, hire seven gunslingers to repel the invaders once and for all.

Sam and his older brother Michael are all American teens with all American interests. But after they move with their mother to peaceful Santa Carla, California, things mysteriously begin to change. Michael's not himself lately. And Mom's not going to like what he's turning into. The Lost Boys reshapes vampire tradition, deftly mixing heart pounding terror, rib tickling laughs and a body gyrating rock soundtrack.

Roger Moore was introduced as James Bond in this 1973 action movie featuring secret agent 007. More self-consciously suave and formal than predecessor Sean Connery, he immediately reestablished Bond as an uncomplicated and wooden fellow for the feel-good '70s. This film also marks a deviation from the more character-driven stories of the Connery years, a deliberate shift to plastic action (multiple chases, bravura stunts) that made the franchise more of a comic book or machine.

James Bond (Timothy Dalton) takes on his most daring adventure ever when he turns renegade and goes head to head with one of the international drug cartel's most brutal and powerful leaders. This time, he's fighting not for country, not for justice...but for revenge. Timothy Dalton's second and last go-around as 007 remains one of the best. In some ways, Licence to Kill is a radical departure from the previous films, with James Bond becoming judge, jury and executioner.

Recovering from the box-office disappointment of The Cable Guy, Jim Carrey gave his fans what they wanted in this good-natured and frequently hilarious 1997 comedy. In a vehicle tailor-made for his verbal and physical antics, Carrey plays a lawyer whose penchant for prevarication is tested when his son makes a birthday wish that his father would tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth for 24 hours, so help him God!

The winning comic finesse of Reese Witherspoon drives Legally Blonde 2: Red White and Blonde. It's astonishing that the sequel could possibly be daffier than the first movie, but Legally Blonde 2 leaves reality behind like an unflattering outfit. Unemployed lawyer Elle Woods (Witherspoon) sets off to our nation's capitol to ban cosmetics testing on animals, after discovering that her beloved chihuahua's own mother is being used as a test subject.

Professor Van Helsing and Dracula meet again in this kung fu horror spectacular set in the village of Ping Kuei. After learning about the Seven Golden Vampires of the village, Hsi Ching, Vanessa Beren and Mai Kwei offer to guide Van Helsing and his son to Ping Kuei to free it from the curse of Count Dracula. Throughout their journey, the party encounters several unwanted attackers until they arrive at the golden vampires' derelict temple, inhabited by Count Dracula.