Turbo-charged comic Jack Black shakes School of Rock to its foundations, wailing with born-again metalhead passion as Dewey Finn, a guitarist who gets kicked out of a band because he grandstands too much--or, to put it another way, enjoys himself. Through an intercepted phone call, Finn gets a job as a substitute teacher for a fifth grade class at a private grade school.
Tony Manero (John Travolta) in Saturday Night Fever and Dirk Diggler (Mark Wahlberg) in Boogie Nights have one major thing in common: They both have posters of Al Pacino as Serpico on their bedroom walls. As the real-life NYPD detective whose integrity cost him virtually everything (and almost cost him his life), Pacino became one of the icons of gritty, realistic 1970s filmmaking.
One of the most endearing and intelligent romantic comedies of the '90s, the Oscar-winning Shakespeare in Love is filled with such good will, sunny romance, snappy one-liners, and devilish cleverness that it's absolutely irresistible. With tongue placed firmly in cheek, at its outset the film tracks young Will Shakespeare's overwrought battle with writer's block and the efforts of theater owner Philip Henslowe (Geoffrey Rush, in rare form) to stage Will's latest comedy, Romeo and Ethel, the Pirate's Daughter.
Think of the greatest terror imaginable. Is it a monstrous alien? A lethal epidemic? Or, as in this harrowing masterpiece from Stanley Kubrick, is it fear of murder by someone who should love and protect you - a member of your own family? From a script he co-adapted from the Stephen King novel, Kubrick melds vivid performances, menacing settings, dreamlike tracking shots and shock after shock into a milestone of the macabre.
While setting a milestone in the progress of digital filmmaking, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow resurrects a nostalgic fantasy world derived from a wide variety of vintage inspirations. It's a dazzling dream for anyone who appreciates the look and feel of golden-age sci-fi pulp magazines, drawing its unique, all-digital design from such diverse sources as Howard Hawks adventures, Fritz Lang's Metropolis, Buck Rogers, Blackhawk comics, The Third Man, cliffhanger serials, and the action-packed Indiana Jones franchise.
Brought back from his dead mouldering remains with blood drooled on them by one of the bats he commands, Count Dracula once again spreads his evil from his mountaintop castle. When libertine Paul Carlson disappears one night, his more sober brother Simon and his girlfriend trace him to the area, discovering a terrified populace. Thrown out of the inn, they make their way, like Paul before them, towards the sinister castle and its undead host.
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.
Woody Allen's wonderful 1920s mystery comedy is the story of one fantastic, Kafka-esque night when the circus came to a small European town and a maniac strangler walked the streets. Recruited by an inept mob of vigilantes, Kleinman (Allen), a cowardly clerk, is forced to search for a notorious murderer - only to stumble upon a feisty sword-sallower, Irmy (Farrow), running away from the circus, and her 'clownish' boyfriend (Malkovich). Determined to help Irmy, and eager to escape the vigilantes, Kleinman abandons his search for the killer... or so he thinks.
If Interiors was Woody Allen's Bergman movie, and Stardust Memories was his Fellini movie, then you could say that Sleeper is his Buster Keaton movie. Relying more on visual/conceptual/slapstick gags than his trademark verbal wit, Sleeper is probably the funniest of what would become known as Allen's "early, funny films" and a milestone in his development as a director. Allen plays Miles Monroe, cryogenically frozen in 1973 (he went into the hospital for an ulcer operation) and unthawed 200†years later.
