None

Award level: 
None

Friday Night Lights

Based on the perennial nonfiction bestseller by H.G. Bissinger, Friday Night Lights looks at high school football in the harsh light of reality, finding heart and hardness while stirring our emotions. Actor-director Peter Berg (Very Bad Things, The Rundown) is Bissinger's cousin; he knows the material well, and understands how an obsession with winning turns high school kids into somber, over-pressured gladiators--expendable soldiers in a community war against shame and obscurity.

Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed

Peter Cushing delivers his most cold-blooded portrayal of the mad Baron in his fifth turn as Dr. Frankenstein. Abandoning his latest experiment after a drunk stumbles into his secret lab (upsetting a severed head) he hurriedly finds new lodgings with a sweet young thing (Hammer glamour babe Veronica Carlson) whose boyfriend (Simon Ward, in his film debut) works in the local sanitarium.

The Gauntlet

Phoenix cop Ben Shockley's dream of breaking "the big case" has faded through the years. His assignment to escort from Las Vegas "a nothing witness for a nothing trial" seems like just another meaningless exercise. Until the fireworks start. Clint Eastwood runs The Gauntlet into an explosive movie embodying its title with a vengeance. The witness is a hardened hooker (Locke) whom everyone - including Vegas oddsmakers - wants dead.

Flatliners

What if you could stop your heart to simulate a temporary death, and then be revived so you could describe your near-death experience to others? The mysteries of life--and the afterlife--compel five medical students (Julia Roberts, Kiefer Sutherland, Kevin Bacon, William Baldwin, Oliver Platt) to experiment with their own mortality, and what they discover has unsettling psychological implications.

Gothika

The title of Gothika prepares you for a spooky, atmospheric thriller with an emphasis on supernatural mystery. The best way to appreciate the movie itself is to understand that it's a waking nightmare that needn't make sense in the realm of sanity. Making a flashy Hollywood debut after his superior 2000 thriller Crimson Rivers, French actor-director Mathieu Kassovitz pours on the dark and stormy atmosphere, trapping a competent psychologist (Halle Berry) in the prison ward where she treated inmates (including Penelope Cruz) until she was committed for killing her husband (Charles S.

The Goonies

You may be surprised to discover that the director of the Lethal Weapon movies and scary horror flick The Omen, Richard Donner, also produced and directed this classic children's adventure (which, by the way, was written by Donner's screen-wizard friend Steven Spielberg). Then again you may not. The Goonies, like Donner's other movies, is the same story of good versus evil. It has its share of bad guys (the Fratelli brothers and their villainous mother), reluctant-hero good guys (the Walsh bothers and their gang of friends), and lots of corny one-liners.

The Good, The Bad And The Ugly

By far the most ambitious, unflinchingly graphic and stylistically influential western ever mounted, The Good, The Bad And The Ugly is an engrossing actioner shot through with a volatile mix of myth and realism. Clint Eastwood returns as the "Man With No Name," this time teaming with two gunslingers (Eli Wallach and Lee Van Cleef) to pursue a cache of $200,000, and letting no one, not even warring factions in a civil war, stand in their way.

Ghost Story

Put together a gloomy New England house, a dark night and four of America's legendary leading men and you have all the ingredients for the classic Ghost Story, a spellbinding motion picture based on the bestseller by Peter Straub. Co-starring Patricia Neal, Ghost Story is about the Members of the Chowder Society: Fred Astaire, Melvyn Douglas, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. and John Houseman, who get together each week to share tales of horror. Soon, however, a secret terror invades the group, and one by one, they die mysteriously because of a real life ghost story that is part of their past.

Gettysburg

Three days in the summer of 1863, at a place called Gettysburg. Based on Michael Shaara's book The Killer Angels, this film takes a refreshingly slow, thorough approach to the intricacies of battle. In ordinary circumstances, those intricacies might seem of importance only to fans of military strategy or Civil War enthusiasts, yet in Gettysburg they come across as the very stuff of life, death, and unexpected heroism.

Fun With Dick And Jane

Jane Fonda was so respected as a serious actress that her comedy chops sometimes were overlooked. But it should be remembered that her first real hits (Barefoot in the Park, Cat Ballou) were comedies. This underrated 1977 outing also played for laughs, though it had social-satire underpinnings that still ring true. Fonda and George Segal play an upwardly mobile couple in the time before yuppies--think of them as protoyuppies. But their status-oriented existence suffers what could be a fatal blow when hubby is maneuvered out of his job.

Pages

Subscribe to RSS - None