Production notes

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.

She's living in the gateway to hell. In this gruesome shocker directed by Michael Winner (Death Wish, Lawman), model Alison Parker (Cristina Raines) learns that the Brooklyn Heights house where she rents an apartment guards the gateway to Hell. Base on the bestseller by Jeffrey Konvitz, who wrote and produced the film with Winner, it stars horror legend John Carradine as the blind Father Halliran, who maintains a solitary vigil against the forces of evil.

This sprawling epic of bloodshed and excess, Brian De Palma's update of the classic 1932 crime drama by Howard Hawks, sparked controversy over its outrageous violence when released in 1983. Scarface is a wretched, fascinating car wreck of a movie, starring Al Pacino as a Cuban refugee who rises to the top of Miami's cocaine-driven underworld, only to fall hard into his own deadly trap of addiction and inevitable assassination.

One of the all-time big box-office hits, Smokey and the Bandit stars Burt Reynolds and Jackie Gleason in an outrageous comedy that boasts full-throttle laughs and high-velocity thrills. Reynolds is the Bandit, a king-of-the-road trucker hero who accepts the ultimate challenge: pick up a truckload of Coors beer in Texarkana--the closest place it can be legally sold--and haul it cross-country to Atlanta in 28 hours. The reward? $80,000! The result? The wildest series of car chases and crashes ever filmed! The reason? A Texas "Smokey," Sheriff Buford T.

After creating many of the innovative special effects for 2001: A Space Odyssey, Douglas Trumbull tried his hand at directing, and 1971's Silent Running marked an impressive debut.

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.

This irreverent and outrageously funny look at the world of professional ice hockey has Paul Newman as the coach of the Chiefs, a third-rate, minor league hockey team. To build up attendance at their games, management signs up three odd-looking players whose job it is to literally attack and demolish opposition - to the delight and cheers of a steadily increasing throng of fans. Slap Shot's hockey sequences, reminiscent of the football games in M*A*S*H and The Longest Yard, offer a freewheeling mixture of slapstick humor and grisly physical violence.

William Steig's delightfully fractured fairy tale is the right stuff for this computer-animated adaptation full of verve and wit. Our title character (voiced by Mike Myers) is an agreeable enough ogre who wants to live his days in peace. When the diminutive Lord Farquaad (John Lithgow) evicts local fairy-tale creatures (including the now-famous Seven Dwarfs, Pinocchio, and the Gingerbread Man), they settle in the ogre's swamp and Shrek wants answers from Farquaad.

In the annals of action movies, few can compare with The Road Warrior, a full-throttle epic of speed and carnage that rockets you into a dreamlike landscape where the post-nuclear future meets the mythological past. More simply, it's also one of the most mind-blowing stunt movies ever made. Mel Gibson plays Max, the heroic loner who drives the roads of outback Australia in an unending search for gasoline.