Drama

Think of the most touching love story you ever saw. Think, too of the brightest comedy, the most astonishing supernatural tale and a sleek mystery-thriller. Did you come up with four separate films? Or are you among the millions of fans and critics who've discovered Ghost, the No. 1 film of 1990? Ghost will surprise you, delight you, make you believe. Patrick Swayze plays a ghost who teams with a psychic (Whoopi Goldberg) to uncover the truth behind his murder - and to rescue his sweetheart (Demi Moore) from a similar fate.

The Gambler is one of the edgier and more interesting, if forgotten, films of the mid-1970s, the kind of studio film that rarely gets made anymore. Based on a screenplay by James Toback (Two Girls and a Guy) and directed by Karel Reisz, the film stars James Caan as a brilliant college literature professor with the same weakness as one of Dostoevsky's characters: He can't resist a wager. Indeed, he's in so deep that even his seemingly good-hearted bookie (Paul Sorvino) is trying to kill him.

Winner of a 2003 Academy Award. Frida is the Life story of Mexican artist Frida Kahlo, who died in 1954. Salma Hayek plays the Mexican surrealist painter, whose tempestuous life with her unfaithful husband, muralist Diego Rivera (Alfred Molina), drives the story of Frida.

Tom Hanks gives an astonishing performance as Forrest Gump in this acclaimed film from director Robert Zemeckis that rocketed to box-office history and touched the hearts of filmgoers like no other movie. Through three turbulent decades, Forrest rides a tide of events that whisks him from physical disability to football stardom, from Vietnam hero to shrimp tycoon, from White House honors to the arms of his one true love. Forrest is the embodiment of an era, an innocent at large in an America that is losing its innocence. His heart knows what his limited IQ cannot.

Director Herbert Ross (The Turning Point) pulled a winning movie out of this almost self-consciously archetypal tale of teenage rock rebellion. Kevin Bacon stars as a hip city kid who ends up in a Bible-belt town after his parents divorce. An ill fit for a conservative community where rock is frowned upon and dancing is forbidden, Bacon's character rallies the kids and takes on the establishment.

That Oscar-winning title song buzzes in your ears long after the movie has stopped. The attraction here is youthful spirit and a pulsating score, because the weak story is merely a conduit for the song-and-dance numbers. The plot is every young woman's daydream come true. Jennifer Beals holds down a macho job as a welder by day, but performs erotic dance numbers in a club at night. It's not a strip club, so her morality remains intact.

Sigourney Weaver more than earned her Oscar nomination for Best Actress in Gorillas in the Mist, dominating every frame of Michael Apted's biopic about primatologist Dian Fossey. Tenderly mothering an orphaned gorilla infant or terrorizing an African poacher with a staged lynching, the statuesque star is never less than fiercely focused, a glamorous warrior for animal rights.

Jennifer Aniston gives a career-changing performance in The Good Girl, a movie that questions whether goodness is a virtue or a trap. Justine (Aniston), weary of her dead-end retail job and her childless marriage to Phil (John C. Reilly), diverts herself with a new coworker named Holden (Jake Gyllenhaal), who feels as ill-treated by his life as Justine does with hers. The empathy between them leads, all too quickly, to an affair--which just as quickly turns into an obsession that threatens to destroy Justine's marriage.

Gangs of New York may achieve greatness with the passage of time. Mixed reviews were inevitable for a production this grand (and this troubled behind the scenes), but it's as distinguished as any of director Martin Scorsese's more celebrated New York stories. From its astonishing 1846 prologue to the city's infernal draft riots of 1863, the film aspires to erase the decorum of textbooks and chronicle 19th-century New York as a cauldron of street warfare.

Alfred Hitchcock's final film is understated comic fun that mixes suspense with deft humor, thanks to a solid cast. The plot centers on the kidnapping of an heir and a diamond theft by a pair of bad guys led by Karen Black and William Devane. The cops seem befuddled, but that doesn't stop a questionable psychic (Barbara Harris) and her not overly bright boyfriend (Bruce Dern, in a rare good-guy role) from picking up the trail and actually solving the crime. Did she do it with actual psychic powers? That's part of the fun of Harris's enjoyably ditsy performance.