Michael Mann

Experience the celebrated film The Insider on Blu-ray for the first time with a new digital restoration. Nominated for 7 Academy Awards (1999), including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actor, this gripping true-life drama features an astonishing cast, including Oscar winners Al Pacino (Best Actor, 1992, Scent Of A Woman), Russell Crowe (Best Actor, 2000, Gladiator) and Christopher Plummer (Best Supporting Actor, 2011, Beginners). Witness the incredible chain of events that pitted an ordinary man against the tobacco industry and dragged two people into the fight of their lives.

Having developed his skill as a master of contemporary crime drama, writer-director Michael Mann displayed every aspect of that mastery in this intelligent, character-driven thriller from 1995, which also marked the first onscreen pairing of Robert De Niro and Al Pacino. The two great actors had played father and son in the separate time periods of The Godfather, Part II, but this was the first film in which the pair appeared together, and although their only scene together is brief, it's the riveting fulcrum of this high-tech cops-and-robbers scenario.

James Caan is at his very best as a tough, wisecracking professional thief trapped between Chicago organized crime families and corrupt police in this "gripping drum-tight tale" (Los Angeles Magazine). Michael Mann, who directed Last of the Mohicans and Manhunter and produced "Miami Vice" and "Crime Story," wrote and directed this taut, visually dazzling "heist"-drama called "the best of that breed since The Asphalt Jungle" by New West Magazine.

An epic adventure and passionate romance unfold against the panorama of a frontier wilderness ravaged by war. Academy Award winner Daniel Day-Lewis (Best Actor in 1989 for My Left Foot) stars as Hawkeye, rugged frontiersman and adopted son of the Mohicans, and Madeleine Stowe is Cora Munro, aristocratic daughter of a proud British colonel. Their love, tested by fate, blazes amidst a brutal conflict between the British, the French and Native American allies that engulfs the majestic mountains and cathedral-like forests of Colonial America.

Collateral offers a change of pace for Tom Cruise as a ruthless contract killer, but that's just one of many reasons to recommend this well-crafted thriller. It's from Michael Mann, after all, and the director's stellar track record with crime thrillers (Thief, Manhunter, and especially Heat) guarantees a rich combination of intelligent plotting, well-drawn characters, and escalating tension, beginning here when icy hit-man Vincent (Cruise) recruits cab driver Max (Jamie Foxx) to drive him through a nocturnal tour of Los Angeles, during which he will execute five people in a 10-hour spree.