Production notes

Hong Kong wuxia films, or martial arts fantasies, traditionally squeeze poor acting, slapstick humor, and silly story lines between elaborate fight scenes in which characters can literally fly. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon has no shortage of breathtaking battles, but it also has the dramatic soul of a Greek tragedy and the sweep of an epic romance. This is the work of director Ang Lee, who fell in love with movies while watching wuxia films as a youngster and made Crouching Tiger as a tribute to the form.

John Wayne has brawled bare-knuckled, gunned down desperadoes, fought jungle wars and piloted the skies. But The Cowboys gives him one of his juiciest roles as a leather-tough rancher who, deserted by his regular help, hires eleven greenhorn schoolboys for a cattle drive across 400 treacherous miles. When the dust settles, Wayne gives one of his best performances. In The Cowboys, Rex Reed wrote, "All the forces that have made him a dominant personality as well as a major screen presence seem to combine.

Winner of five Academy Awards including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Supporting Actor (Christopher Walken), this critically acclaimed, extraordinarily powerful motion picture tracks a group of steelworker pals from a Pennsylvania blast furnace to the cool hunting grounds of the Alleghenies to the lethal cauldron of Vietnam. Robert De Niro gives an outstanding performance as Michael, the natural leader of the group.

Arguably the greatest of American films, Orson Welles's 1941 masterpiece, made when he was only 26, still unfurls like a dream and carries the viewer along the mysterious currents of time and memory to reach a mature (if ambiguous) conclusion: people are the sum of their contradictions, and can't be known easily. Welles plays newspaper magnate Charles Foster Kane, taken from his mother as a boy and made the ward of a rich industrialist.

Fourteen years after being imprisoned, a vicious psychopath emerges with a single-minded mission: to seek revenge on his attorney. Cady (Robert De Niro) becomes a terrifying presence as he menacingly circles Bowden's (Nick Nolte) increasingly unstable family. Realizing he is legally powerless to protect his beautiful wife Leigh (Jessica Lange) and his troubled teenage daughter Danielle (Juliette Lewis), Sam resorts to unorthodox measures which lead to an unforgettable showdown on Cape Fear.

Some critics complained that City of Angels could never compare to Wim Wenders's exquisite German film Wings of Desire, which served as the later film's primary inspiration. The better argument to make is that any such comparisons are beside the point, because Wings of Desire was a much more deeply poetic, artfully contemplative film, whereas City of Angels is an enchanting product of mainstream Hollywood. Meg Ryan stars as Dr. Maggie Rice, a heart surgeon who is grieving over a lost patient when an angel named Seth (Nicolas Cage) appears to comfort her.

The fabulous Arnold Schwarzenegger, actor, author, seven times Mr. Olympia and five times Mr. Universe, is back for the further adventures of Conan, the warrior king. And this time he's joined by a large cast that includes Grace Jones, and Wilt Chamberlain. In this second Conan epic, he is asked by the evil Queen Taramis to accompany a beautiful young princess to find a magic treasure. If he returns with the treasure and the virgin, the Queen promises to bring Conan's beloved Valeria back from the dead.

Collateral offers a change of pace for Tom Cruise as a ruthless contract killer, but that's just one of many reasons to recommend this well-crafted thriller. It's from Michael Mann, after all, and the director's stellar track record with crime thrillers (Thief, Manhunter, and especially Heat) guarantees a rich combination of intelligent plotting, well-drawn characters, and escalating tension, beginning here when icy hit-man Vincent (Cruise) recruits cab driver Max (Jamie Foxx) to drive him through a nocturnal tour of Los Angeles, during which he will execute five people in a 10-hour spree.

For every TV-into-movie success like The Fugitive, there are dozens of uninspired films like The Mod Squad. Happily--and surprisingly--this breezy update of the seminal '70s jiggle show falls into the first category, with Cameron Diaz, Drew Barrymore (who also produced), and Lucy Liu starring as the hair-tossing, fashion-setting, kung fu-fighting trio employed by the mysterious Charlie (voiced by the original Charlie, John Forsythe). When a high-tech programmer (Sam Rockwell) is kidnapped, the angels seek out the suspects, with the daffy Bosley (Bill Murray in a casting coup) in tow.

Directed by Sir Richard Attenborough and starring Robert Downey Jr. and an extraordinary cast, Chaplin is a loving, grand-scale portrait of the Little Tramp's amazing life and times. His poverty-stricken childhood in England comes to life, along with his friendships with Mack Sennett (Dan Aykroyd) and Douglas Fairbanks (Kevin Kline), his many wives and scandalous affairs, and his relentless pursuit by J. Edgar Hoover. Chaplin is the larger-than-life story of the actor behind the icon and a stunning depiction of a bygone era when Hollywood was at its most glamorous.