Joan Allen

After he beats his dad (Joe Mantegna) in a chess match, Josh Waitzkin (Max Pomeranc), a 7-year-old, gets noticed for his talent. He becomes interested in speed chess at the park and learns the game from a hustler named Vinnie (Laurence Fishburne). However, Josh's parents invest in the services of Bruce (Ben Kingsley), a famous coach who has very different practices. Between Bruce's methods and the stress of the competitions, Josh learns that even a chess prodigy cannot make all the right moves.

The turbulent, 20-year love affair between artist Georgia O'Keeffe and photographer Alfred Steiglitz fuels some of the most important art of the 20th century. A rich, deep view of the O'Keeffe/Stieglitz relationship, primarily of its emotional toll on O'Keeffe and its spill-over onto O'Keeffe's work. Adds another dimension to O'Keeffe as a young woman artist.

Based on a true story from Japan, Hachi: A Dog's Tale is a moving film about loyalty and the rare, invincible bonds that occasionally form almost instantaneously in the most unlikely places. College professor Parker Wilson (Richard Gere) finds a young Akita puppy that's been abandoned at the local train station, and he's instantly captivated by the dog. Assuming the dog's owner will return to the train station to claim him in the morning, Parker takes the puppy home overnight.

The often breathtaking, final installment in the Bourne trilogy finds the titular assassin with no memory closing in on his past, finally answering his own questions about his real identity and how he came to be a seemingly unstoppable killing machine. Matt Damon returns for another intensely physical performance as Jason Bourne, the rogue operative at war with the CIA, which made him who and what he is and managed to kill his girlfriend in the series' second film, The Bourne Supremacy.

Director Francis Ford Coppola and executive producer George Lucas shared a strong desire to film the story of Preston Tucker, the man who revolutionized car design in the late 1940s, only to have his innovation squelched by the "big three" automakers in a legal battle between Tucker and powerful political lobbies. Coppola surely related to and sympathized with Tucker as a visionary underdog, and so this stylish, energetic film envisions "the man and his dream" in idealistic terms--an unabashed optimist (played by Jeff Bridges) who realizes his vision through blind faith and tenacity.

When you consider that old-fashioned tearjerkers are an endangered species in Hollywood, a movie like The Notebook can be embraced without apology. Yes, it's syrupy sweet and clogged with cliches, and one can only marvel at the irony of Nick Cassavetes directing a weeper that his late father John--whose own films were devoid of saccharine sentiment--would have sneered at.

When '90s teens David and Jennifer (Maguire and Witherspoon) get zapped into the perfect suburbia of the black & white '50s sitcom, Pleasantville, what results is a "visionary adventure" (Peter Travers, Rolling Stone) that Siskel and Ebert give "Two big thumbs up!" Pleasantville's perfect people includes a mild-mannered soda jerk (Daniels), a socially repressed mom (Allen) and a father who always knows best (Macy). But, when '90s pop culture clashes with '50s family values, chaos ensues, turning the town of Pleasantville upside down and black and white into color.

In this plot-twisting, high-tech thriller, relentless FBI agent Sean Archer must go dangerously undercover to investigate the location of a lethal biological weapon planted by his arch rival, the sadistic terrorist-for-hire Castor Troy. After undergoing a radical surgical procedure, Archer literally "borrows" Troy's face and identity to carry out his mission. But things go awry when Troy, emerging from a coma, transforms into Archer and wreaks havoc upon his life, both at work and at home.