Trailers/TV spots

Jonathan Demme's last idiosyncratic film before he went all mainstream and "serious" with The Silence of the Lambs and Philadelphia is a wacky, energetic comedy that looks at mob life with affection, and established Michelle Pfeiffer as both a stunning leading lady and a consummate character actress. When Angela DeMarco (Pfeiffer), fed up with a house filled with furniture and appliances that "fell off a truck," asks her husband, hit man Frank "the Cucumber" (Alec Baldwin), for a divorce, he laughs at her and tells her she'll never escape the mob's clutches.

The North American anti-terrorist force Team America attacks a group of terrorist in Paris. Later, the leader of the organization, Spottswoode, invites the famous Broadway actor Gary Johnston to join his world police and work undercover in Cairo in a terrorist organization and disclose their plan of destroying the world. The Team America destroy the cell of terrorists, but then the Panama Canal is attacked by the criminals as a payback. Gary feels responsible for the death of many innocents and leaves the counter-terrorism organization.

Tailors are the secret-keepers of the power elite; customize fine apparel for the rich and powerful, and you'll hear things only whispered in the halls of government. Such is the sly conceit of The Tailor of Panama, coadapted by John le CarrÈ from his own novel, and directed by John Boorman with a delicious spin on the traditions of the spy genre. As British MI-6 agent Andy Osnard, Pierce Brosnan qualifies as James Bond's black-sheep sibling, viewing women only in terms of sexual conquest and conducting spy business by his own flexible set of rules.

That TV commercial actress is so seductive she could sell you anything. Sheís only a computer generated illusion. What about the real beauty who was the computer's model? Sorry, you can't meet her: she and others like her have been murdered. Writer/director Michael Crichton (ER, Coma) reaches into his brain-teasing bag of tricks for a mesmerizing thriller full of unfriendly persuasion generated by high-tech trickery. Albert Finney stars as a Beverly Hills plastic surgeon whose supermodel clients start dying mysteriously. Susan Dey plays his latest patient, also now in peril.

There's no mistaking the 1968 mood of Play Dirty: this cynical war movie could only have been made during the disillusioned Vietnam era, despite its WWII subject. Michael Caine plays a British captain in North Africa, tapped to lead a suicidal mission across the desert to destroy a German fuel depot. He's got a scurvy band of mercenaries to help him (this was a year after The Dirty Dozen, so keep that in mind), although most of the time they seem indifferent to both the job and Caine's survival.

Volunteers from all branches of the Allied forces made up the Australian 2 Special Force Unit, which carried out a total of 284 missions during World War II. Tight, suspenseful Attack Force Z effectively dramatizes one such sortie. Five tough commandos attempt to rescue the survivors of a downed American plane on a Japanese-held island in the southwest Pacific. Their leader is Captain P.G. Kelly, played by a youthful Mel Gibson. It's Kelly's first time in charge, and his fellow commandos, especially renegade Lieutenant J.A.

The Nativity Story is a remarkable act of imagining the tale of Christ's birth as a flesh-and-blood drama actually set in Israel two millenia ago. Written by Mike Rich (Finding Forrester) and directed by Catherine Hardwicke (Thirteen), the film makes very strong impressions in a scene-by-scene way.

Director Sydney Pollack delivers megawatt star power, high gloss, and political passion to The Interpreter, his first thriller since The Firm. With Nicole Kidman and Sean Penn delivering smooth, understated performances, the film more closely recalls Pollack's 1975 Robert Redford/Faye Dunaway paranoid thriller Three Days of the Condor, trading conspiratorial politicians for potential assassination in the United Nations General Assembly (this being the first film ever granted permission to use actual U.N. locations). Kidman plays a U.N.

The otherworldly landscape of Iceland lends an appropriate touch of dark fantasy to this modern retelling of Beowulf, the oldest epic poem in the English language. Gerard Butler (The Phantom of the Opera) brings the right balance of physicality and world-weariness as the Swedish hero Beowulf, who travels to Denmark to fight the monstrous troll Grendel (Icelandic superstar Ignvar Sigurdsson), which has been plaguing the house of King Hrothgar (Stellan SkarsgÂrd, buried under a mound of prosthetic hair).

When the Devil (Peter Cook) offers suicidal short-order cook Stanley (Dudley Moore) seven wishes, Stanley easily surrenders his soul. All of his wishes are granted, to the letter. Unfortunately, as each wish comes to life, the Devil--cheeky sod!--manages to slip some unexpected problem into the mix, ruining everything in a deliciously funny way. Bedazzled was made long before 10 and Arthur made Dudley Moore an unlikely movie star.