Robert Beatty

Christopher Reeve not only dons the hero's cape for the fourth time in Superman IV: The Quest For Peace but also helped develop the film's provocative theme: nuclear disarmament. "For me, it's the most personal of the entire series," Reeve says. "It directly reflects what Superman should be, and should be doing." Superman does a lot this time around. To make the world safe for nuclear arms merchants, archvillain Lex Luthor (Gene Hackman) creates a new being to challenge the Man of Steel: the radiation-charged Nuclear Man (Mark Pillow).

When Stanley Kubrick recruited Arthur C. Clarke to collaborate on "the proverbial intelligent science fiction film," it's a safe bet neither the maverick auteur nor the great science fiction writer knew they would virtually redefine the parameters of the cinema experience. A daring experiment in unconventional narrative inspired by Clarke's short story "The Sentinel," 2001: A Space Odyssey is a visual tone poem (barely 40 minutes of dialogue in a 139-minute film) that charts a phenomenal history of human evolution.