A mixed bag that received mixed reviews when released in 1994, this lavish film works overtime to honor the spirit and style of the vintage pulp novels and radio shows that made The Shadow a household name in the 1930s and '40s. Alec Baldwin plays the Shadow, a.k.a.
The unflinching realism and searing performances of Monster's Ball are stunning in all the connotations of the word. Hank (Billy Bob Thornton) and Leticia (Halle Berry) inhabit stark, queasy realities of the contemporary South, he as a death row corrections officer and she as the soon-to-be widow of an inmate (Sean Combs) whose execution Hank helps conduct. In the aftermath of the execution, both lose their children to tragic deaths and they form an unlikely bond.
If you don't mind a heavy dose of schmaltz and sentiment, this romantic comedy has a gentle way of seducing you with its charms. While You Were Sleeping was the first starring role for Sandra Bullock after her blockbuster success in Speed. In a role that nicely emphasizes her easygoing appeal, Bullock is the reason the movie works at all. She plays Lucy Eleanor Moderatz, a Chicago Transit tollbooth clerk who's hopelessly smitten with a daily commuter, Peter Callaghan (Peter Gallagher).
Mel Brooks' monstrously crazy tribute to Mary Shelley's classic pokes hilarious fun at just about every Frankenstein movie ever made. Summoned by a will to his late grandfather's castle in Transylvania, young Dr. Frankenstein (Wilder) soon discovers the scientist's step-by-step manual explaining how to bring a corpse to life. Assisted by the hunchback Igor (Feldman), he creates a monster (Boyle) who only wants to be loved.
Taxi Driver is the definitive cinematic portrait of loneliness and alienation manifested as violence. It is as if director Martin Scorsese and screenwriter Paul Schrader had tapped into precisely the same source of psychological inspiration ("I just knew I had to make this film," Scorsese would later say), combined with a perfectly timed post-Watergate expression of personal, political, and societal anxiety.
Set in the 1930's, this gangster spoof tells the comic tale of a Johnny Kelly (Michael Keaton) who is forced into a life of crime in order to pay for his ailing mother's medical treatment. Attempting to keep his straight life and his life of crime separate Johnny takes the name Dangerously and is soon a powerful mobster flush with women and riches. The Dangerously name is about to be slandered, though, by the Kelly family when Johnny's brother (Griffin Dunne) becomes the district attorney.
Michael Keaton heads an all-star cast in this wild and crazy comedy about four mental patients who get separated from their therapist on the way to a baseball game. Billy (Keaton), a pathological liar with a violent streak, finds himself on loose in New York City with his fellow group therapy patients: Henry (Christopher Lloyd), a neat freak; Jack (Peter Boyle), a former advertising executive who thinks he's Christ; and Albert (Stephen Furst), a near catatonic couch potato.
