Trailers/TV spots

The Griswolds have planned all year for a great summer vacation. From their suburban Chicago home, across America, to the wonders of the Walley World fun park in California, every step of the way has been carefully plotted. So what if they lose all their money when their new car gets wrecked. And it's not too bad when Cousin Eddie deposits sour Aunt Edna in their back seat for a lift to Phoenix. But what really keeps Clark's eyes on the road is a flirtation with a mysterious blonde in a red Ferrari.

After years of being sheltered in private school, Clifford Peache finds life difficult at his new Chicago high school, where a tough-talking bully and his pals regularly extort students lunch money. Refusing to pay up, Peache hires a bodyguard, the intimidatingly large class misfit whose rumored violent behavior is legendary. Though everyone else is afraid of him, Peache strikes up a friendship with the troubled loner. Their deepening relationship and unified stand against the thugs manages to rouse the entire school.

This holiday season Clark Griswold vows his clan will enjoy "the most fun-filled family Christmas ever." Before you can sing "fa-la-la-la-lah," he decks the halls with howls of folly in the perennial favorite National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation. Seeing is believing. There are 25,000 lights on the roof. An exploding turkey on the dining room table. And a SWAT team taking siege outside. Yule love it!

This love letter to the golden days of live television in the 1950s is a thinly veiled depiction of Your Show of Shows, the groundbreaking comedy show that starred Sid Caesar. The story, set in 1954, focuses on one of the writers for the show (Mark Linn-Baker), who is given the task of chaperoning that week's guest star, a famously ill-behaved movie star named Alan Swann. He's based on Errol Flynn and played with Oscar-nominated glee by Peter O'Toole.

Hammer Studios' greatest nemeses, Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee, once again square off in this reworking of Universal's The Mummy (with elements of The Mummy's Tomb and The Mummy's Ghost thrown in for good measure). Cushing stars as archeologist John Banning, whose dig for a lost tomb results in untold treasures but leaves his father a mumbling madman and marks the rest of the company for death.

Michael Collins, the man and the movie stands tall. The man is a hero whose fighting tactics became a model for other 20th-century struggles, a statesman who negotiated Ireland's break with England, a political martyr slain for the great cause he lived and breathed. Michael Collins roils with the passions of war furiously waged and peace desperately sought. A movie you won't soon forget.

uperior acting, writing, and direction are on impressive display in the critically acclaimed Mystic River, Clint Eastwood's 24th directorial outing and one of the finest films of 2003. Sharply adapted by L.A. Confidential Oscar-winner Brian Helgeland from the novel by Dennis Lehane, this chilling mystery revolves around three boyhood friends in working-class Boston--played as adults by Tim Robbins, Sean Penn, and Kevin Bacon--drawn together by a crime from the past and a murder (of the Penn character's 19-year-old daughter) in the present.

There's A Mighty Wind a-blowin', along with the gales of laughter you'll get from Christopher Guest's third exercise in brilliant "mockumentary." After tackling small-town theatricals in Waiting for Guffman and obsessive dog-show contestants in Best in Show, Guest and his reliable stable of repertory players (including Fred Willard, Parker Posey, and Bob Balaban) apply their improvisational genius to a latter-day reunion of fictional '60s-era folk singers, a comedic goldmine that Guest first explored 30 years earlier on The National Lampoon Radio Hour.

Randy Newman's opening song, "A Fool in Love," perfectly sets up the movie that follows. The lyrics begin, "Show me a man who is gentle and kind, and I'll show you a loser," before praising the man who takes what he wants. Greg Focker (Ben Stiller) is the fool in love in Meet the Parents. Just as he's about to propose to his girlfriend Pam (Teri Polo), he learns that her sister's fiancÈ asked their father, Jack Byrnes (Robert De Niro), for permission to marry. Now he feels the need to do the same thing.

Jackie Chan is a celebrity chef turned reluctant hero after he rescues a pretty journalist from the clutches of a ruthless drug lord. At stake is an incriminating videotape that has accidentally fallen into Jackie's hands. With the gang in hot pursuit, the action stretches from one spectacular, stunt-filled scene to another. When Jackie's girlfriend is kidnapped and his apartment blown up, this mild-mannered chef cooks up his own recipe for justice. The mob will never know what hit them, because Jackie's back with a vengeance to strike a blow for good guys everywhere.