5 Star Films

Director: Jaume Balagueró, Paco Plaza

Writer: Jaume Balagueró, Luis Berdejo

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Summary: [Rec] revolves around a television reporter, Ángela, and her cameraman, Pablo, who cover the night shift in one of Barcelona's local fire stations. The firehouse receives a call from an old lady trapped in her house. When they arrive, and the firemen and the police break down the door, the old lady suddenly attacks and bites one of the policemen, and it is revealed that an unknown but virulent disease is infecting people, causing them to turn in to infected cannibals. The police and military quarantines the building and the camera crew is trapped inside, constantly recording the mayhem that ensues.[

Director: Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

Writer: Guillermo Arriaga

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Summary: This is the story of three gentle persons: Paul Rivers (Penn) an ailing mathematician lovelessly married to an English emigré (Gainsbourg), Christina Peck, an upper-middle-class suburban housewife, happily married and mother of two little girls, and Jack Jordan (Del Toro), an ex-convict who has found in his Christian faith the strength to raise a family. They will be brought together by a terrible accident that will change their lives. By the final frame, none of them will be the same as they will learn harsh truths about love, faith, courage, desire and guilt, and how chance can change our worlds irretrievably, forever.

Director: Judd Apatow

Writer: Judd Apatow, Steve Carell

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Summary: Andy at the age of 40 still hasn't had sex. He lets his secret slip at a poker game with his buds from work. After the revealing all his friends are on a mission to help get him laid. Along the way Andy meets a nice mom: Trish who fall head over heels for each other.

Director: Ki-duk Kim

Writer: Ki-duk Kim

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Summary: Romances end in blood and the frail hopes of individuals are torn apart in a vile karmic continuity of colonialism, civil war and occupation. After surviving Japanese colonization, Korea became the first war zone of the Cold War. The legacy of war remains today in this divided country. Three forlorn teenagers, Chank-guk, Jihum and Eunok are figures in the landscape of this story, which highlights the global implications of a very Korean reality. None of them is able to escape the withering pull of tragedy. All desperate pleas for love and redemption are returned stamped in red with blood.

Director:

Writer: George Casey, Mose Richards

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Summary: The Serengeti is a huge area of grassland in Tanzania, Africa. Once a year, in the time of drought, about two million herd animals like antelopes travel north to feed and mate before moving south again, when plants there begin to blossom.

James Earl Jones narrates this award-winning IMAX film that explores the natural beauty and timeless cycles of Africa's Serengeti plains. The highlight is a spectacle that few humans have witnessed--the great migration--during which 2 million wildebeests, zebras and antelope travel over 500 miles across the plains.

Director: Alan J. Pakula

Writer: Carl Bernstein, Bob Woodward, William Goldman

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Summary: In the run-up to the 1972 elections, Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward covers what seems to be a minor break-in at the Democratic Party National headquarters. He is surprised to find top lawyers already on the defence case, and the discovery of names and addresses of Republican fund organisers on the accused further arouses his suspicions. The editor of the Post is prepared to run with the story and assigns Woodward and Carl Bernstein to it. They find the trail leading higher and higher in the Republican Party, and eventually into the White House itself.

Director: Francis Ford Coppola

Writer: Joseph Conrad, John Milius, Francis Ford Coppola, Michael Herr

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Summary: Based on Joseph Conrad's Heart Of Darkness, this is a controversial addition to the multitude of Vietnam war movies in existence. Set in 1969 Vietnam, we follow U.S. Special Forces Captain Willard on his mission up a river into Cambodia to assassinate a renegade Green Beret who has set himself up as a God among a local tribe.

Director: Takashi Miike

Writer: Robert Farrar, Robert Farrar

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Summary: Seven years after the death of his wife, company executive Aoyama is invited to sit in on auditions for an actress. Leafing through the resumés in advance, his eye is caught by Yamazaki Asami, a striking young woman with ballet training. On the day of the audition, she's the last person they see. Aoyama is hooked. He notes her number from her file, calls her and takes her to dinner. He hesitates to call again, worried that he'll seem too eager. When he does, Asami knowingly lets the phone ring for some time before answering. She's alone in her darkened room - alone, that is, apart from the writhing victim she has tied up in a sack on the floor...

Director: Fabián Bielinsky

Writer: Fabián Bielinsky

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Summary: A quiet, cynic taxidermist, who suffers epilepsy attacks, is obsessed with committing the perfect crime. He claims that the cops are too stupid to find out about it when it's well executed, and that the robbers are too stupid to execute it the right way; and that he could do it himself relying on his photographic memory and his strategic planning skills. After he is invited on a hunting trip away from his home, an accident gives him the chance of his life: the possibility to commit the perfect crime he has been waiting for.

Director: Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

Writer: Guillermo Arriaga, Guillermo Arriaga

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Summary: 4 interlocking stories all connected by a single gun all converge at the end and reveal a complex and tragic story of the lives of humanity around the world and how we truly aren't all that different. In Morocco, a troubled married couple are on vacation trying to work out their differences. Meanwhile, a Moroccan herder buys a rifle for his sons so they can keep the jackals away from his herd. A girl in Japan dealing with rejection, the death of her mother, the emotional distance of her father, her own self-consciousness, and a disability among many other issues, deals with modern life in the enormous metropolis of Tokyo, Japan. Then, on the opposite side of the world the married couple's Mexican nanny takes the couple's 2 children with her to her son's wedding in Mexico, only to come into trouble on the return trip. Combined, it provides a powerful story and an equally powerful looking glass into the lives of seemingly random people around the world and it shows just how connected we really are.

Director: Kinji Fukasaku

Writer: Koushun Takami, Kenta Fukasaku

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Summary: Forty-two delinquent students, three days, one deserted Island: welcome to Battle Royale. A group of delinquent students from a Japanese high school have been forced by legislation to compete in a new forum of reality television.The students are each given a bag with a randomly selected weapon and a few rations of food and water and sent off to kill each other in a no-holds-barred (with a few minor rules) game to the death, which means that the students have three days to kill each other until one survives--or they all die. The movie focus on a few of the students and how they cope. Some decide to play the game like the psychotic Kiriyama or the sexual Mistuko, while others like the heroes of the movie--Shuya, Noriko, and Kawada--are trying to find a way to get off the Island without violence. However, as the numbers dwell down lower and lower on an hourly basis, is there any way for Shuya and classmates to survive?

Director: Alejandro Gomez Monteverde

Writer: Alejandro Gomez Monteverde, Patrick Million

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Summary: An international soccer star is on his way to sign a multi-million dollar contract when a series of events unfold that bring his career to an abrupt end. A beautiful waitress, struggling to make it in New York City, discovers something about herself that she's unprepared for. In one irreversible moment, their lives are turned upside down... until a simple gesture of kindness brings them both together, turning an ordinary day to an unforgettable experience.

Director: Joel Coen

Writer: Ethan Coen, Joel Coen

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Summary: When "The Dude" Lebowski is mistaken for a millionaire Lebowski, two thugs urinate on his rug to coerce him into paying a debt he knows nothing about. While attempting to gain recompense for the ruined rug from his wealthy counterpart, he accepts a one-time job with high pay-off. He enlists the help of his bowling buddy, Walter, a gun-toting Jewish-convert with anger issues. Deception leads to more trouble, and it soon seems that everyone from porn empire tycoons to nihilists want something from The Dude.

Director: Yang Li

Writer: Yang Li

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Summary: Blind Mountain follows young woman, Bai Xuemei, in the early 1990s who recently graduated from college and attempts to find work to help pay for her brother's education. In the process, she is drugged, kidnapped and sold as a bride to a villager in the Qinling Mountains of China's Shaanxi province. Trapped in the fiercely traditional town, the young woman finds that her avenues of escape are all blocked. As she searches for allies, including a young boy, a school teacher and a mailman, she suffers from being raped by her "husband" and continued beatings at the hands of the villagers, her husband, and her husbands' parents.

Like Li's previous film, Blind Shaft, which dealt with the notoriously dangerous mining industry, Blind Mountain turns a sharply critical eye towards another one of China's continuing social problems, this time the illegal sex slave trade.

Director: Chin-yen Yee

Writer: Chin-yen Yee

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Summary: An is-she-or-isn't-she gay comedy focused on a Taiwanese teen, the boy she might like, and the girl she may love.
Plot Synopsis:

Director: Paul Thomas Anderson

Writer: Paul Thomas Anderson

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Summary: Even if the notorious 1970s porn-filmmaking milieu doesn't exactly turn you on, don't let it turn you off to this movie's extraordinary virtues, either. Boogie Nights is one of the key movies of the 1990s, and among the most ambitious and exuberantly alive American movies in years. It's also the breakthrough for an amazing new director, whose dazzling kaleidoscopic style here recalls the Robert Altman of Nashville and the Martin Scorsese of GoodFellas. Although loosely based on the sleazy life and times of real-life porn legend John Holmes, at heart it's a classic Hollywood rise-and-fall fable: a naive, good-looking young busboy is discovered in a San Fernando Valley disco by a famous motion picture producer, becomes a hotshot movie star, lives the high life, and then loses everything when he gets too big for his britches, succumbs to insobriety, and is left behind by new times and new technology. Of course, it ain't exactly A Star Is Born or Singin' in the Rain. Writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson (in only his second feature!) puts his own affectionately sardonic twist on the old showbiz biopic formula: the ambitious upstart changes his name and achieves stardom in porno films as "Dirk Diggler." Instead of drinking to excess, he snorts cocaine (the classic drug of '70s hedonism); and it's the coming of home video (rather than talkies) that helps to dash his big-screen dreams. As for the britches ... well, the controversial "money shot" explains everything. And the cast is one of the great ensembles of the '90s, including Oscar nominees Burt Reynolds and Julianne Moore, Mark Wahlberg (who really can act--from the waist up, too!), Heather Graham (as Rollergirl), William H. Macy, John C. Reilly, and Ricky Jay. --Jim Emerson

Director: Hong-jin Na

Writer: Won-Chan Hong, Shinho Lee

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Summary: Joong-ho is a dirty detective turned pimp in financial trouble as several of his girls have recently disappeared without clearing their debts. While trying to track them down, he finds a clue that the vanished girls were all called up by a same client whom one of his girls is meeting with right now.

Director:

Writer: Owen Newman and Amanda Barrett

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Summary: This 14-year retrospective of the work of Owen Newman and Amanda Barrett features the two filmmakers talking about how they managed to capture never-before-seen footage of big cats, including some that had been written off as impossible to film. To these two filmmakers, "impossible" was just a challenge to overcome. Driving into the night, armed with night goggles, infrared lights and cameras, they were the first to film leopards at night, uncovering a whole array of behavior that was new to science and filmmakers alike.

Two other cats, servals and caracals, only glimpsed in passing by other filmmakers, became newly discovered stars of their own films. With captivating stories and characters, Newman and Barrett were able to transform lions from big cats everyone thought they knew into individuals with personalities, griefs, and grudges.

Director: Kátia Lund Fernando Meirelles

Writer: Paulo Lins, Bráulio Mantovani

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Summary: Like cinematic dynamite, City of God lights a fuse under its squalid Brazilian ghetto, and we're a captive audience to its violent explosion. The titular favela is home to a seething army of impoverished children who grow, over the film's ambitious 20-year timeframe, into cutthroat killers, drug lords, and feral survivors. In the vortex of this maelstrom is L'il Z (Leandro Firmino da Hora--like most of the cast, a nonprofessional actor), self-appointed king of the dealers, determined to eliminate all competition at the expense of his corrupted soul. With enough visual vitality and provocative substance to spark heated debate (and box-office gold) in Brazil, codirectors Fernando Meirelles and Kátia Lund tackle their subject head on, creating a portrait of youthful anarchy so appalling--and so authentically immediate--that City of God prompted reforms in socioeconomic policy. It's a bracing feat of stylistic audacity, borrowing from a dozen other films to form its own unique identity. You'll flinch, but you can't look away. --Jeff Shannon

Director: Francis Ford Coppola

Writer: Francis Ford Coppola

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Summary: After the success of the first Godfather picture, Francis Ford Coppola could do anything he wanted. He chose a very loose adaptation from the leading character and basic scenario of Michelangelo Antonioni's Blow-up, to create this both exciting and provocative thriller about a surveillance specialist who finds himself involved in a murder plot.



In Blow-up, a fashion photographer takes a picture in the park and comes to believe that he may have evidence of a murder. The difficulty is that the visual evidence is not conclusive -- it demands interpretation and no amount of manipulation can overcome the ambiguity of the image. Here, Harry Caul uses elaborate techniques to record and collect fragments from what seems to be an innocuous conversation, but that he begins to suspect will be used in a murder plot.



Just as Blow-up became not only a film about a photographer and a murderer but also a meditation on vision and on the cinema -- so The Conversation is a rich and sophisticated film about the nature of sound and the interpretation of sound and in particular about the way in which sound is captured for film. Apart from having an excellent jazz soundtrack, the film is very subtle in its sound editing.



It opens on a crowded park, and we immediately become aware that the sound of the crowds and the music and the individual people and the cars is recorded sound. We hear the subtle distortions that come from blowing up sound recorded from a distance, and that in a finished soundtrack would be removed. It turns out we are both watching the crowd and watching and listening in as a couple in the crowd is being recorded through a number of highly specialized surveillance techniques. Later in the film, we are reminded at several points and in several ways that the sound in a film is an artificial construction and that it is independent of the visuals. Some scenes that initially seem like they are part of the normal exegesis of the film, turn out to be reconstructions based on how certain characters heard and interpreted recorded sound; in other scenes the aural artifacts we have become familiar with show up to indicate that we can never be sure whether the sound is just part of the film or whether it is being recorded by a third party.



This is an excellent film on a number of levels, as a political thriller, as a portrait of a paranoid individual, but also as a meditation on the nature of sound in film. Definitely one to watch ... and listen to.

Director: Gisela Kaufmann

Writer: Gisela Kaufmann

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Summary: Call it a case of mistaken identity. When it comes to camouflage, chameleons get all the attention. But the often-overlooked cuttlefish is the real master of disguise. Cousins of the squid and octopus, cuttlefish are among the most unusual animals on our planet. With stunning underwater footage and in-depth expert interviews, NOVA gets up close and personal with this astonishing brainy bunch.

Director: Gisela Kaufmann

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Summary: Imagine an alien with three hearts and ten arms growing out of its head. This intriguing special reveals the spectacular pyrotechnics of cuttlefish, discovering what goes on between their eyes and what can they teach us about our own brainpower.

This alien actually exists. Cuttlefish are the one of the strangest animals on our planet. Leading expert Dr. Mark Norman reveals how these shape-shifting champions can hypnotize their prey, impersonate the other sex and even turn out to be deadly. And they share something with us: brainpower. Cuttlefish have the largest brain to body ratio of all invertebrates. But does this mean they are intelligent? Can they learn and remember complex new tricks? Cuttlefish – the Brainy Bunch brings to the surface the spectacular pyrotechnics of these clever creatures, discovering just what goes on between their eyes and what they can teach us about our own wits.

Cuttlefish might seem a better subject for Jamie's Kitchen - brushed with five-spice and served with a mango and coconut salad - than for a wildlife documentary, but the first few minutes of Cuttlefish: The Brainy Bunch quickly establish how fascinating the beasts can be, even if they haven't been brushed with five spice and served up with a mango and coconut salad.

Cuttlefish, we're told, are masters of disguise and, just like that, we see them underwater, changing colours and shape to blend in with surrounding coral and rocks. They are also relatively intelligent: their doughnut-shaped brains are proportionately the largest of the invertebrates and they are able to learn and remember tasks.

Director: Adam Brooks

Writer: Adam Brooks

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Summary: Romantic comedy: Will Hayes, a 30-something Manhattan dad is in the midst of a divorce when his 10 year old daughter, Maya, starts to question him about his life before marriage. Maya wants to know absolutely everything about how her parents met and fell in love. Will's story begins in 1992, as a young, starry-eyed aspiring politician who moves to New York from Wisconsin in order to work on the Clinton campaign. For Maya, Will relives his past as a idealistic young man learning the ins and outs of big city politics, and recounts the history of his romantic relationships with three very different women. On the campaign, Will's best buddy is Russell McCormack. They not only have similar political aspirations, they share the same type of girl problems, too. Will hopelessly attempts a "PG" version of his story for his daughter ad changes the names so Maya has to guess who he finally married. Is her mother Will's college sweetheart, the dependable girl next-door Emily? Is she his longtime best friend and confidante, he apolitical April? Or is she the free-spirited but ambitious journalist? As Maya puts together the pieces of her dad's romantic puzzle, she begins to understand that love is not so simple or easy. And as Will tells her his tale, Maya helps him to understand that it's definitely never too late to go back...and maybe even possible to find a happy ending.

Director: Martin Scorsese

Writer: William Monahan, Siu Fai Mak

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Summary: Two just-graduated officers from Massachusetts State Police Academy follow opposite sides of the law: William Costigan is assigned to work undercover with the Irish mobster Frank Costello to get evidences to arrest him. His true identity is only known by his superiors Dignam and Oliver Queenan. The protégée of Costello, Colin Sullivan, is promoted in the Massachusetts State Police and is the informer of Costello. Each police officer gives his best effort trying to disclose the identity of the other "rat".

Director: Oxide Pang

Writer: Oxide Pang Chun, Thomas Pang

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Summary: The film follows Winnie, a young woman who is clearly marked as being mentally disturbed from the first frame, as evidenced by her weird behaviour, fondness for making creepy and quite possibly symbolic puppets, unkempt clothes and hair, and of course, her obsessive writing in the titular book. It seems as though the poor girl has recently lost, in one way or another, her boyfriend Seth, something which has left her increasingly unable to deal with everyday life. After her friend advises moving on, Winnie finds herself a new man in the form of Ray, who just happens to be a dead ringer for Seth. Things go from bad to worse, and Winnie’s mind gradually deteriorates, leading to the expected shocking revelations.

Director:

Writer: Dereck Joubert, Marjorie M. Moomey

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Summary: Filmed on the hidden battlefields of northern Botswana where lions and spotted hyenas clash in overlapping territories. Follow the Southern Clan, led by a powerful hyena matriarch whose firstborn female cub kills her sister at birth to assure her succession as leader of the clan. Lurk in the shadows as a lioness from the Central Pride gives birth to three cubs and then encounters a deadly Egyptian cobra. Discover nature's savage conflicts in this ancient rivalry between Eternal Enemies: Lions and Hyenas.

Director: Michel Gondry

Writer: Charlie Kaufman, Michel Gondry

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Summary: A man, Joel Barish, heartbroken that his girlfriend Clementine underwent a procedure to erase him from her memory, decides to do the same. However, as he watches his memories of her fade away, he realizes that he still loves her, and may be too late to correct his mistake.

Director: William Friedkin

Writer: William Peter Blatty, William Peter Blatty

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Summary: Director William Friedkin was a hot ticket in Hollywood after the success of The French Connection, and he turned heads (in more ways than one) when he decided to make The Exorcist as his follow-up film. Adapted by William Peter Blatty from his controversial bestseller, this shocking 1973 thriller set an intense and often-copied milestone for screen terror with its unflinching depiction of a young girl (Linda Blair) who is possessed by an evil spirit. Jason Miller and Max von Sydow are perfectly cast as the priests who risk their sanity and their lives to administer the rites of demonic exorcism, and Ellen Burstyn plays Blair's mother, who can only stand by in horror as her daughter's body is wracked by satanic disfiguration. One of the most frightening films ever made with a soundtrack that's guaranteed to curl your blood, The Exorcist was mysteriously plagued by troubles during production, and the years have not diminished its capacity to disturb even the most stoical viewers. Don't say you weren't warned! --Jeff Shannon

Director:

Writer: Dereck and Beverly Joubert

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Summary: Eye of the Leopard takes viewers on an enthralling journey deep into the rarely seen lives of leopards. It is a journey of birth, life and death as a mother leopard and her first surviving cub of six, fight off marauding baboons and elude scavenging hyenas in a constant struggle for survival.

Director:

Writer: Owen Newman and Amanda Barrett

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Summary: The face of a cheetah fills the screen, then its sleek and streamlined body hurtles by in slow motion. Suddenly you are able to see the grace and poetry of this magnificent cat as never before, to watch the remarkable effort of each stride and turn as it chases its prey to the death.

These innovative images were the work of Owen Newman and Amanda Barrett, who made their reputations filming the big cats of Africa as no one had done before. This 14-year retrospective of their work features the two filmmakers talking about how they managed to capture never-before-seen footage of big cats, including some that had been written off as impossible to film. To these two filmmakers, "impossible" was just a challenge to overcome. Driving into the night, armed with night goggles, infrared lights and cameras, they were the first to film leopards at night, uncovering a whole array of behavior that was new to science and filmmakers alike.

Director: Sergio Leone

Writer: Fulvio Morsella, Sergio Leone

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Summary: A ringing instance of a sequel far outstripping its predecessor, Sergio Leone's For a Few Dollars More takes the lethal antihero from A Fistful of Dollars, gives him both a rival and an adversary worthy of sharing a gun-blazing corrida, and ratchets up the stylization to something approaching grandeur. This time the Man with No Name (Clint Eastwood) is a bounty hunter whose desert Southwest killing ground is suddenly crowded by the presence of an older, black-clad shootist (Lee Van Cleef). Individually and together, they terminate sundry grotesques while closing in on their biggest quarry, a memorably insane bandit called El Indio (Gian Maria Volonté is brilliant). There's just enough plot to imbue Van Cleef with genuine mystery, a dark avenging angel from a lost past whose pull would supply the emotional core of Leone's later masterworks Once upon a Time in the West and Once upon a Time in America. Leone's bravura widescreen compositions are breathtaking, and Ennio Morricone's music score--tinged with lunatic religiosity--is his first great one. --Richard T. Jameson

Director: Andrew Davis

Writer: Roy Huggins, David Twohy

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Summary: A well respected Chicago surgeon Dr. Richard Kimble has found out that his wife, Helen, has been murdered ferociously in her own home. The police found Kimble and accused him of the murder. Then, Kimble (without Justifiable Reason) was tried, convicted, and sentenced to death. However, on the way to prison, Kimble's transport crashed. Kimble escapes and is now on the run. Deputy Samuel Gerard from Chicago takes charge of the chase of Kimble. Meanwhile, Kimble makes up his own investigation to find who really killed his life, and to lure Gerard and his team into it as well.

Director: Stanley Kubrick

Writer: Gustav Hasford, Stanley Kubrick

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Summary: A two-segment look at the effect of the military mindset and war itself on Vietnam era Marines. The first half follows a group of recruits in basic training under the command of the punishing Sgt. Hartman. The second half shows one of those recruits, Joker, covering the war as a correspondent for Stars and Stripes, focusing on the Tet offensive.

Director: Michael Haneke

Writer: Michael Haneke

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Summary: Two seemingly well-educated young men, who call each other Paul and Peter among other names, approach a family on vacation. They are, apparently, friends of the neighbors, and, at the beginning, their true intentions are not known. But soon, the family is imprisoned and tortured in its own house violently, which the viewers are forced mostly to imagine and to share a certain complicity with the criminals. It might be some kind of game with the lives of husband, wife, son, and dog, but why are they doing it?

Director: Albert Maysles, David Maysles

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Summary: In December of 1969, four months after Woodstock, the Rolling Stones and Jefferson Airplane gave a free concert in Northern California, east of Oakland at Altamont Speedway. About 300,000 people came, and the organizers put Hell's Angels in charge of security around the stage. Armed with pool cues and knifes, Angels spent the concert beating up spectators, killing at least one. The film intercuts performances, violence, Grace Slick and Mick Jagger's attempts to cool things down, close-ups of young listeners (dancing, drugged, or suffering Angel shock), and a look at the Stones later as they watch concert footage and reflect on what happened.

Director: David Yates

Writer: Richard Curtis

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Summary: A May-December comedy becomes a political drama. Lawrence, a spindly, self-effacing civil servant, is a senior researcher for the Chancellor of the Exchequer, preparing for a G-8 summit that will determine the scope of the world's effort to reduce extreme poverty. In a crowded café, he chats awkwardly with Gina, a young Scot with time on her hands. They share a couple of meals, and he invites her to accompany him to the summit in Reykjavík. Once there, as romance blooms, Gina's past, Lawrence's work and proclivity to compromise, and the presence of ministers and presidents spur her to act.

Director: Francis Ford Coppola

Writer: Mario Puzo, Mario Puzo

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Summary: Generally acknowledged as a bona fide classic, this Francis Ford Coppola film is one of those rare experiences that feels perfectly right from beginning to end--almost as if everyone involved had been born to participate in it. Based on Mario Puzo's bestselling novel about a Mafia dynasty, Coppola's Godfather extracted and enhanced the most universal themes of immigrant experience in America: the plotting-out of hopes and dreams for one's successors, the raising of children to carry on the good work, etc. In the midst of generational strife during the Vietnam years, the film somehow struck a chord with a nation fascinated by the metamorphosis of a rebellious son (Al Pacino) into the keeper of his father's dream. Marlon Brando played against Puzo's own conception of patriarch Vito Corleone, and time has certainly proven the actor correct. The rest of the cast, particularly James Caan, John Cazale, and Robert Duvall as the rest of Vito's male brood--all coping with how to take the mantle of responsibility from their father--is seamless and wonderful. --Tom Keogh

Director: Francis Ford Coppola

Writer: Mario Puzo, Francis Ford Coppola

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Summary: Francis Ford Coppola took some of the deep background from the life of Mafia chief Vito Corleone--the patriarch of Mario Puzo's bestselling novel The Godfather--and built around it a stunning sequel to his Oscar-winning, 1972 hit film. Robert De Niro plays Vito as a young Sicilian immigrant in turn-of-the-century New York City's Little Italy. Coppola weaves in and out of the story of Vito's transformation into a powerful crime figure, contrasting that evolution against efforts by son Michael Corleone to spread the family's business into pre-Castro Cuba. As memorable as the first film is, The Godfather II is an amazingly intricate, symmetrical tragedy that touches upon several chapters of 20th-century history and makes a strong case that our destinies are written long before we're born. This was De Niro's first introduction to a lot of filmgoers, and he makes an enormous impression. But even with him and a number of truly brilliant actors (including maestro Lee Strasberg), this is ultimately Pacino's film and a masterful performance. --Tom Keogh

Director: Sergio Leone

Writer: Luciano Vincenzoni, Sergio Leone

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Summary: Clint Eastwood (the Man with No Name) is good, Lee Van Cleef (Angel Eyes Sentenza) is bad, and Eli Wallach (Tuco Benedito Pacifico Juan Maria Ramirez) is ugly in the final chapter of Sergio Leone's trilogy of spaghetti westerns (the first two were A Fistful of Dollars and For a Few Dollars More). In this sweeping film, the characters form treacherous alliances in a ruthless quest for Confederate gold. Leone is sometimes underrated as a director, but the excellent resolution on this digital video disc should enhance appreciation of his considerable photographic talent and gorgeous widescreen compositions. Ennio Morricone's jokey score is justifiably famous.

Director: Martin Scorsese

Writer: Nicholas Pileggi, Nicholas Pileggi

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Summary: Martin Scorsese's 1990 masterpiece GoodFellas immortalizes the hilarious, horrifying life of actual gangster Henry Hill (Ray Liotta), from his teen years on the streets of New York to his anonymous exile under the Witness Protection Program. The director's kinetic style is perfect for recounting Hill's ruthless rise to power in the 1950s as well as his drugged-out fall in the late 1970s; in fact, no one has ever rendered the mental dislocation of cocaine better than Scorsese. Scorsese uses period music perfectly, not just to summon a particular time but to set a precise mood. GoodFellas is at least as good as The Godfather without being in the least derivative of it. Joe Pesci's psycho improvisation of Mobster Tommy DeVito ignited Pesci as a star, Lorraine Bracco scores the performance of her life as the love of Hill's life, and every supporting role, from Paul Sorvino to Robert De Niro, is a miracle.

Director: Harold Ramis

Writer: Danny Rubin, Danny Rubin

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Summary: A weather man is reluctantly sent to cover a story about a weather forecasting "rat" (as he calls it). This is his fourth year on the story, and he makes no effort to hide his frustration. On awaking the 'following' day he discovers that it's Groundhog Day again, and again, and again. First he uses this to his advantage, then comes the realisation that he is doomed to spend the rest of eternity in the same place, seeing the same people do the same thing EVERY day.

Director: John-Paul Davidson, Roger Mills

Writer: Michael Palin

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Summary: This 2004 BBC television series records comedian and travel presenter Michael Palin's six-month trip across the Himalaya mountain range, covering an amazingly diverse range of cultures and environments in various countries. It includes:

1° North by Northwest - Pakistan's tribal province, featuring Khyber Pass, Peshawar, Gilgit, Chitral and K2;

2° A Passage to India - Lahore (still in Muslim Pakistan), and in its mainly Hindu rival India: Amritsar, Shimla, Dharamsala (meeting with the Dalai Lama) and Srinagar;

3°Annapurna to Everest - Nepal (the capital Kathmandu, meeting with King Gyanendra, and Annapurna Mountain; includes a scare involving the Maoist rebels in the Gurkha recruiting area) and Tibet (administered as a Chinese province: Pokhara and the Everest base camp on the northern side).

4° The Roof of the World - Tibet's capital Lhasa and in China's Qinghai province Yushu.

5° Leaping Tiger, Naked Nagas - from China's Yunnan province to India's Nagaland state - features Kunming, Lijiang, Lugu Lake, the Naga village of Longwa on the Indian-Burmese border and a trek along Tiger Leaping Gorge;

6° Bhutan to the Bay of Bengal - India's Assam state (Kaziranga National Park), Bhutan (capital Thimphu) and Bangladesh (Sylhet, the capital Dhaka and finally Chittagong on the Bay of Bengal)

Director: Terry George

Writer: Keir Pearson, Terry George

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Summary: Solidly built around a subtle yet commanding performance by Don Cheadle, Hotel Rwanda emerged as one of the most highly-praised dramas of 2004. In a role that demands his quietly riveting presence in nearly every scene, Cheadle plays real-life hero Paul Rusesabagina, a hotel manager in the Rwandan capital of Kigali who in 1994 saved 1,200 Rwandan "guests" from certain death during the genocidal clash between tribal Hutus, who slaughtered a million victims, and the horrified Tutsis, who found safe haven or died. Giving his best performance since his breakthrough role in Devil in a Blue Dress, Cheadle plays Rusesabagina as he really was during the ensuing chaos: "an expert in situational ethics" (as described by critic Roger Ebert), doing what he morally had to do, at great risk and potential sacrifice, with an understanding that wartime negotiations are largely a game of subterfuge, cooperation, and clever bribery. Aided by a United Nations official (Nick Nolte), he worked a saintly miracle, and director Terry George (Some Mother's Son) brings formidable social conscience to bear on a true story you won't soon forget. --Jeff Shannon

Director: Chan-wook Park

Writer: Seo-Gyeong Jeong, Chan-wook Park

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Summary: After wrapping-up his critically-acclaimed "Vengeance Trilogy" with the award-winning 2005 thriller Sympathy for Lady Vengeance, South Korean filmmaker Chan-wook Park shifts gears for this gently comic romantic drama concerning a delusional young mental patient who believes herself to be a cyborg.

Convinced that she is not entirely human but in fact part android, Young-goon (Lim Su-jeong)'s health begins to deteriorate as she gives up eating food and instead decides to "charge her batteries" by administering electric shocks to herself via a small transistor radio. As her mental state continues to deteriorate, the troubled young woman takes to donning her grandmother's dentures and carrying on extended conversations with various machines around the mental health facility. Of course Young-goon isn't the only person suffering from a mental malady in this hospital, and it's not long before Il-soon (Rain), a young man with a penchant for wearing masks and a reputation for being anti-social, is admitted as well.

A good-looking young man who sets about convincing his fellow patients that he has the power to absorb their personality traits, Il-soon gradually begins to develop a tender romance with the troubled Young-goon. Later, when hospital officials determine that the only way to save Young-goon is to administer electro-shock therapy, the treatment has the unusual side-effect of convincing the would-be android that she has been fully recharged and possesses the ability to fire bullets from her fingers.

Director: Kar Wai Wong

Writer: Kar Wai Wong

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Summary: Winner of numerous awards including Best Actor at the 2000 Cannes Film Festival, In the Mood for Love confirmed that Hong Kong director Wong Kar-wai is a major figure in world cinema. As passionate as it is politely discreet, his film takes place in 1962 Hong Kong, where neighboring apartment dwellers Mr. Chow (Tony Leung) and Mrs. Chan (Maggie Cheung) discover that their oft-absent spouses are having an affair. This realization parallels their own mutual attraction, but fidelity and decency ensure that their intimate bond remains unspoken though deeply understood. With a stealthy, eavesdropping camera style and a screenplay created through spontaneous on-set inspiration, Wong Kar-wai crafts an intricate, finely tuned platonic romance, enhancing its ambience with a kaleidoscope of color (most notably in Cheung's dazzling wardrobe of cheongsam dresses) and careful attention to character detail. Deservedly placed on many critics' top 10 lists, this elegant film should not be missed. --Jeff Shannon

Director: Gaspar Noe

Writer: Gaspar Noé

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Summary: Events over the course of one traumatic night in Paris unfold in reverse-chronological order as the beautiful Alex (Monica Bellucci) is brutally raped and beaten by a stranger in the underpass. Her boyfriend and ex-lover take matters into their own hands by hiring two criminals to help them find the rapist so that they can exact revenge. A simultaneously beautiful and terrible examination of the destructive nature of cause and effect, and how time destroys everything.

Director: Ki-duk Kim

Writer: Ki-duk Kim

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Summary: Mute Hee-Jin is working as a clerk in a fishing resort in the Korean wilderness; selling baits, food and occasionally her body to the fishing tourists. One day she falls in love to Hyun-Shik, who is on the run for the police and rescues him with a fish hook, when he tries to commit suicide.

Director: Adrian Lyne

Writer: Bruce Joel Rubin

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Summary: Vietnam veteran Jacob Singer (Tim Robbins) thinks he is going insane. Or worse. When his nightmares begin spilling into his waking hours, Jacob believes he is experiencing the aftereffects of a powerful drug tested on him during Vietnam. Or perhaps his posttraumatic stress disorder is worse than most. Whatever is happening to him, it is not good. Director Adrian Lyne sparks our interest and maintains high production values, but this confusing film chokes on its "surprise" ending. It owes much to Ambrose Bierce's haunting and more straightforward story, "An Occurrence at Owl Creek." Written by Bruce Joel Rubin, who also explored the "other side" in Ghost and My Life, it ultimately feels like an exercise in self-indulgence. A spirited performance by Elizabeth Peña outshines Robbins, who is surprisingly lethargic. --Rochelle O'Gorman

Director: John Patrick Shanley

Writer: John Patrick Shanley

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Summary: Joe versus the Volcano is a fable which opens with somewhat surrealistic scenes of the dehumanization of Joe Bank's job and work environment (at a company whose product rather literally screws people) with imagery that seems to have been inspired by the classic film Metropolis. Joe is diagnosed with an incurable disease, quits his dehumanizing job, and accepts an offer to briefly "live like a king, die like a man" - but to fulfill his agreement he must willingly jump into a live volcano on the island of Waponi Woo in order to appease the volcano god. En route to the island, Joe meets a series of interesting characters in NYC and LA, then boards a yacht, captained by Patricia Graynamore. During the voyage Joe and Patricia survive disaster, fall in love, and finally arrive at the island where they face their destiny.

Director: Chan-wook Park

Writer: Seong-san Jeong, Hyeon-seok Kim

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Summary: In the DMZ separating North and South Korea, two North Korean soldiers have been killed, supposedly by one South Korean soldier. But the 11 bullets found in the bodies, together with the 5 remaining bullets in the assassin's magazine clip, amount to 16 bullets for a gun that should normally hold 15 bullets. The investigating Swiss/Swedish team from the neutral countries overseeing the DMZ suspects that another, unknown party was involved - all of which points to some sort of cover up. The truth is much simpler and much more tragic.

Director: Martin Scorsese

Writer: Mardik Martin

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Summary: Thanksgiving, 1976, San Francisco's Winterland: the Band performs its last concert after 16 years on the road. Some numbers they do alone, some songs include guest artists from Ronnie Hawkins (their first boss, when they were the Hawks) to Bob Dylan (their last, when as his backup and as a solo group, they came into their own). Scorsese's camera explores the interactions onstage in the making of music. Offstage, he interviews the Band's five members, focusing on the nature of life on the road. The friendships, the harmonies, the hijinks, and the wear and tear add up to a last waltz.

Director: Wes Anderson

Writer: Wes Anderson, Noah Baumbach

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Summary: In The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, director Wes Anderson takes his familiar stable of actors on a field trip to a fantasy aquarium, complete with stop-motion, candy-striped crabs and rainbow seahorses. And though Anderson does expand his horizons in terms of retro-special effects and a whimsical use of color, fans will otherwise find themselves in well-charted waters. As The Life Aquatic opens, Zissou (Bill Murray), a self-involved, Jacques Cousteau-like filmmaker, has just released a documentary depicting the death of his best friend Esteban, who was eaten by some sort of sea creature--possibly a jaguar shark. Zissou's troubles also include his waning popularity with the public, and a nemesis (Jeff Goldblum) who hogs up all the grant money. Hope arrives in the form of Ned Plimpton (Owen Wilson), an amiable Kentuckian who may be Zissou's son. Despite his lack of enthusiasm for fatherhood, Zissou welcomes Ned--and Ned in turn saves Zissou's new documentary (in which he seeks revenge on the jaguar shark) in more ways than one.

One of Wes Anderson's greatest achievements as a director to date has been launching the autumnal melancholy phase of Bill Murray's career, starting with Rushmore in 1998, and Murray delivers a similarly comedic yet low-key performance here. Unfortunately, Zissou is one of the few characters in this ensemble to achieve multi-dimensionality. Even co-star Wilson doesn't get to develop Ned much beyond Noble Southerner, and he ends up seeming more like a prop for illustrating Zissou's emotional development rather than his own man. The Life Aquatic probably won't be remembered as a great film, but it is still one that no Anderson (or Murray) fan can afford to miss.--Leah Weathersby

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Summary: Lion Battlefield is a story about a pride of lions, and how daily interactions with their prey, their competitors and their deadly enemies, could affect the lives of their cubs. A chance encounter with a herd of buffalo could provide the pride with food for a week, but these hefty animals form a co-ordinated unit of advance guards, flankers and rear guards that can turn the tables and decimate a pride.

Director: Valerie Faris Jonathan Dayton

Writer: Michael Arndt

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Summary: Pile together a blue-ribbon cast, a screenplay high in quirkiness, and the Sundance stamp of approval, and you've got yourself a crossover indie hit. That formula worked for Little Miss Sunshine, a frequently hilarious study of family dysfunction. Meet the Hoovers, an Albuquerque clan riddled with depression, hostility, and the tattered remnants of the American Dream; despite their flakiness, they manage to pile into a VW van for a weekend trek to L.A. in order to get moppet daughter Olive (Abigail Breslin) into the Little Miss Sunshine beauty pageant. Much of the pleasure of this journey comes from watching some skillful comic actors doing their thing: Greg Kinnear and Toni Collette as the parents (he's hoping to become a self-help authority), Alan Arkin as a grandfather all too willing to give uproariously inappropriate advice to a sullen teenage grandson (Paul Dano), and a subdued Steve Carell as a jilted gay professor on the verge of suicide. The film is a crowd-pleaser, and if anything is a little too eager to bend itself in the direction of quirk-loving Sundance audiences; it can feel forced. But the breezy momentum and the ingenious actors help push the material over any bumps in the road.-- Robert Horton

Beyond Little Miss Sunshine

More Dysfunctional Family Comedies

More films from the stars of Little Miss Sunshine

More Independent Films Turned Sleeper Hits
Stills from Little Miss Sunshine

Director: Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck

Writer: Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck

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Summary:




























Nominated for a Best Foreign Language Film Oscar, this is a first-rate thriller that, like Bertolucci's The Conformist and Coppola's The Conversation, opts for character development over car chases. The place is East Berlin, the year is 1984, and it all begins with a simple surveillance assignment: Capt. Gerd Wiesler (Ulrich Mühe in a restrained, yet deeply felt performance), a Stasi officer and a specialist in this kind of thing, has been assigned to keep an eye on Georg Dreyman (Sebastian Koch, Black Book), a respected playwright, and his actress girlfriend, Christa-Maria Sieland (Martina Gedeck, Mostly Martha). Though Dreyman is known to associate with the occasional dissident, like blacklisted director Albert Jerska (Volkmar Kleinert), his record is spotless. Everything changes when Wiesler discovers that Minister Hempf (Thomas Thieme) has an ulterior motive in spying on this seemingly upright citizen. In other words, it's personal, and Wiesler's sympathies shift from the government to its people--or at least to this one particular person. That would be risky enough, but then Wiesler uses his privileged position to affect a change in Dreyman's life. The God-like move he makes may be minor and untraceable, but it will have major consequences for all concerned, including Wiesler himself. Writer/director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck starts with a simple premise that becomes more complicated and emotionally involving as his assured debut unfolds. Though three epilogues is, arguably, two too many, The Lives of Others is always elegant, never confusing. It's class with feeling. --Kathleen C. Fennessy















Beyond The Lives of Others




Films from Germany

Other Cold War Films


More Arthouse Selections

from Sony Pictures Classics
Stills from The Lives of Others (click for larger image)

Director: Tom DiCillo

Writer: Tom DiCillo

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Summary: You won't find a smarter, more amusing, or more accurate send-up of low-budget filmmaking than Tom DiCillo's 1995 independent feature, Living in Oblivion, wherein a motley cast of would-be artistes blunders its way through a day on the set. Steve Buscemi plays goateed Nick Reve, a harried, sweating director whose crew of numbskulls and egotists seems hell-bent on ruining his film. The trials and tribulations of independent filmmaking are not foreign material for writer-director DiCillo, who cut his teeth as Jim Jarmusch's cinematographer on 1985's Stranger Than Paradise before going on to direct his own work, such as the offbeat 1992 comedy Johnny Suede. Like that film, Living in Oblivion rides a precariously thin line between the real and the surreal, featuring a midget actor and an exploding smoke-effects machine, as well as a ridiculously narcissistic Brad Pittesque character played by James Le Gros. While films like Get Shorty, François Truffaut's Day for Night, and Jean-Luc Godard's Contempt suggest that moviemaking is hip and glamorous, Living in Oblivion will have none of that. The film within the film feels like a director's primer on what not to do, and this modest-budget gem both lovingly and caustically strips the "cool" veneer from the filmmaking process. They should show this one to kids thinking of entering film school. It might make them think better of it. --Nick Poppy

Director: Yu Li

Writer: Li Fang, Yu Li

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Summary: Set against the frenzied backdrop of Beijing, where a fast growing economy has created a new class of urban socialites and nouveau riche, Lost in Beijing features four of Asian cinema s biggest stars Tony Leung Ka Fai, Elaine Jin, Fan Bingbing and Tong Da Wei who together fumble their way through a tragicomic ménage-a-quatre that left the Chinese censors blazing. Although a commercial hit in China, the film was ultimately banned and pulled off all screens mid-run. Chinese authorities also imposed a two-year filmmaking ban on producer Fang Li (producer of Summer Palace).

Director: Sofia Coppola

Writer: Sofia Coppola

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Summary: Bob Harris is an American film actor, far past his prime. He visits Tokyo to appear in commercials, and he meets Charlotte, the young wife of a visiting photographer. Bored and weary, Bob and Charlotte make ideal if improbable traveling companions. Charlotte is looking for "her place in life," and Bob is tolerating a mediocre stateside marriage. Both separately and together, they live the experience of the American in Tokyo. Bob and Charlotte suffer both confusion and hilarity due to the cultural and language differences between themselves and the Japanese. As the relationship between Bob and Charlotte deepens, they come to the realization that their visits to Japan, and one another, must soon end. Or must they?

Director: Kaze Shindô

Writer: Kaze Shindô

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Summary: This is a sweet film about two girls with a very emotionally complicated relationship. Chinatsu is a lesbian who is in love with her friend and roommate, a straight girl (Kyoko). Kyoko loves Chinatsu but doesn't want to have sex with her and resents her interference in her relationships with men. These two live so closely (they even share a single bed) that chinatsu is basically torturing herself emotionally. Yet despite the serious emotional content, it's a very sweet and funny film. Lot's of really cute slice-of-life moments helped immeasurably by the appeal of Chika Fujimura as Kyoko. It's hard not to fall in love with such a goofy and sweet character.

Director: Ang Lee

Writer: Eileen Chang, James Schamus

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Summary: Frustrated in his attempts to assassinate Yee, who is an important official in Japanese-ruled Shanghai, Old Wu, who has lost his wife and two sons as well as two women who had attempted to seduce Yee, now recruits Kuang, Mai Tai Tai, and their troupe of drama students from Hong Kong University in yet another attempt to do away with Yee. Mai Tai Tai is chosen to befriend Yee, which she does by posing as the wife of Mak, befriending Yee's wife and her female friends, and then eventually befriending Yee himself. Even though both get together, they do end up going separate ways, only to meet again four years later. This time Mai is all set to entrap Yee at Chandni Chowk Jewellers which is owned by an East Indian man named Khalid Saiduddin. The question does remain: Will she and her troupe succeed?

Director: Paul Thomas Anderson

Writer: Paul Thomas Anderson

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Summary: 24 hours in L.A.; it's raining cats and dogs. Two parallel and intercut stories dramatize men about to die: both are estranged from a grown child, both want to make contact, and neither child wants anything to do with dad. Earl Partridge's son is a charismatic misogynist; Jimmy Gator's daughter is a cokehead and waif. A mild and caring nurse intercedes for Earl, reaching the son; a prayerful and upright beat cop meets the daughter, is attracted to her, and leads her toward a new calm. Meanwhile, guilt consumes Earl's young wife, while two whiz kids, one grown and a loser and the other young and pressured, face their situations. The weather, too, is quirky.

Director: Christopher Nolan

Writer: Jonathan Nolan, Christopher Nolan

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Summary: Guy Pearce (L.A. Confidential) and Joe Pantoliano (The Matrix) shine in this absolute stunner of a movie. Memento combines a bold, mind-bending script with compelling action and virtuoso performances. Pearce plays Leonard Shelby, hunting down the man who raped and murdered his wife. The problem is that "the incident" that robbed Leonard of his wife also stole his ability to make new memories. Unable to retain a location, a face, or a new clue on his own, Leonard continues his search with the help of notes, Polaroids, and even homemade tattoos for vital information.
Because of his condition, Leonard essentially lives his life in short, present-tense segments, with no clear idea of what's just happened to him. That's where Memento gets really interesting; the story begins at the end, and the movie jumps backward in 10-minute segments. The suspense of the movie lies not in discovering what happens, but in finding out why it happened. Amazingly, the movie achieves edge-of-your-seat excitement even as it moves backward in time, and it keeps the mind hopping as cause and effect are pieced together.
Pearce captures Leonard perfectly, conveying both the tragic romance of his quest and his wry humor in dealing with his condition. He is bolstered by several excellent supporting players, and the movie is all but stolen from him by Pantoliano, who delivers an amazing performance as Teddy, the guy who may or may not be on his side. Memento has an intriguing structure and even meditations on the nature of perception and meaning of life if you go looking for them, but it also functions just as well as a completely absorbing thriller. It's rare to find a movie this exciting with so much intelligence behind it. --Ali Davis

Director: Joon-ho Bong

Writer: Joon-ho Bong, Kwang-rim Kim

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Summary: In 1986, in the province of Gyunggi, in South Korea, a second young and beautiful woman is found dead, raped and tied and gagged with her underwear. Detective Park Doo-Man and Detective Cho Yong-koo, two brutal and stupid local detectives without any technique, investigate the murder using brutality and torturing the suspects, without any practical result. The Detective Seo Tae-Yoon from Seul comes to the country to help the investigations and is convinced that a serial-killer is killing the women. When a third woman is found dead in the same "modus-operandi", the detectives find leads of the assassin.

Director: Noah Baumbach

Writer: Noah Baumbach

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Summary: Lester is an occasional substitute teacher and he's very jealous. He is jealous about the last boyfriend of Lester's slightly wacky current partner Ramona - arrogant bestselling author Dashiell. Lester joins Dashiell's therapy group under an alias to find out if Dashiell still has any feelings for her.

Director: Pawel Pawlikowski

Writer: Helen Cross, Pawel Pawlikowski

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Summary: A tale of obsession and deception, and the struggle for love and faith in a world where both seem impossible. The film charts the emotional and physical hothouse effects that bloom one summer for two young women: Mona, behind a spiky exterior, hides an untapped intelligence and a yearning for something beyond the emptiness of her daily life; Tamsin is well-educated, spoiled and cynical. Complete opposites, each is wary of the other's differences when they first meet, but this coolness soon melts into mutual fascination, amusement and attraction. Adding volatility is Mona's older brother Phil, who has renounced his criminal past for religious fervor - which he tries to impose upon his sister. Mona, however, is experiencing her own rapture. "We must never be parted," Tamsin intones to Mona but can Mona completely trust her?

Director: Pal Sletaune

Writer: Pål Sletaune

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Summary: A psychological thriller, where the main character, John (Kristoffer Joner), have recently been dumped by his girlfriend, Ingrid. He is seduced by his beautiful neighbors, Anne and Kim, and is taken to a mystical and frightful world where he isn't able to tell reality from fantasy.

Director: Joel Coen

Writer: Joel Coen, Ethan Coen

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Summary: In rural Texas, welder and hunter Llewelyn Moss discovers the remains of several drug runners who have all killed each other in an exchange gone violently wrong. Rather than report the discovery to the police, Moss decides to simply take the two million dollars present for himself. This puts the psychopathic killer, Anton Chigurh, on his trail as he dispassionately murders nearly every rival, bystander and even employer in his pursuit of his quarry and the money. As Moss desperately attempts to keep one step ahead, the blood from this hunt begins to flow behind him with relentlessly growing intensity as Chigurh closes in. Meanwhile, the laconic Sherrif Ed Tom Bell blithely oversees the investigation even as he struggles to face the sheer enormity of the crimes he is attempting to thwart.

Director: Ted Demme

Writer: Denis Leary

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Summary: Politics aside, if you ever had wood paneling at home or slid across the bench seat of a station wagon, his riff on growing-up in a working-class family hits home.

At his brutal best, Leary froths at the mouth as he paces the stage, getting more and more worked-up about the daily inanities we all suffer daily.

Director: Sion Sono

Writer: Sion Sono

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Summary: A teenager called Noriko Shimabara runs away from her family in Tokoyama, to meet Kumiko, the leader of an Internet BBS, Haikyo.com. She becomes involved with Kumiko's "family circle", which grows darker after the mass suicide of 54 high school girls.

Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Writer: Ernest Lehman

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Summary: A strong candidate for the most sheerly entertaining and enjoyable movie ever made by a Hollywood studio (with Citizen Kane, Only Angels Have Wings and Trouble in Paradise running neck and neck). Positioned between the much heavier and more profoundly disturbing Vertigo (1958) and the stark horror of Psycho (1960), North by Northwest (1959) is Alfred Hitchcock at his most effervescent in a romantic comedy-thriller that also features one of the definitive Cary Grant performances. Which is not to say that this is just "Hitchcock Lite"; seminal Hitchcock critic Robin Wood (in his book Hitchcock's Films Revisited) makes an airtight case for this glossy MGM production as one of The Master's "unbroken series of masterpieces from Vertigo to Marnie." It's a classic Hitchcock Wrong Man scenario: Grant is Roger O. Thornhill (initials ROT), an advertising executive who is mistaken by enemy spies for a U.S. undercover agent named George Kaplan. Convinced these sinister fellows (James Mason as the boss, and Martin Landau as his henchman) are trying to kill him, Roger flees and meets a sexy Stranger on a Train (Eva Marie Saint), with whom he engages in one of the longest, most convolutedly choreographed kisses in screen history. And, of course, there are the famous set pieces: the stabbing at the United Nations, the crop-duster plane attack in the cornfield (where a pedestrian has no place to hide), and the cliffhanger finale atop the stone faces of Mount Rushmore. Plus a sparkling Ernest Lehman script and that pulse-quickening Bernard Herrmann score. What more could a moviegoer possibly desire? --Jim Emerson

Director: Chang-dong Lee

Writer: Chang-dong Lee

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Summary: Jong-du, a young man just out of prison for manslaughter, is a social misfit: fidgety, snuffling, laughing inappropriately, without a super ego. When released, he calls on the family of the victim; they send him away, but not before he has seen Gong-ju, a young woman disabled severely by cerebral palsy. Both are abused by their families, and both are used by them as well. Although their relationship begins with Jong-du's criminal behavior, a friendship develops. They talk of favorite things; he washes her hair; they go out; in late night phone calls, he helps her past her fears of the dark. Is there a place in the world for these two inarticulate people?

Director: Steven Soderbergh

Writer: George Clayton Johnson, Jack Golden Russell

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Summary: Danny Ocean likes his chances. All he asks is that his handpicked squad of 10 grifters and cons play the game like they have nothing to lose. If all goes right the payoff will be a fat $150 million. Divided by 11. You do the math.Running Time: 110 min.System Requirements:Starring: George Clooney Julia Roberts Andy Garcia Brad Pitt Matt Damon Don Cheadle Bernie Mac and Elliott Gould. Directed By: Steven Soderbergh. Running Time: 116 Min. Color. This film is presented in "Standard" format. Copyright 2002 Warner Home Video.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: ACTION/ADVENTURE Rating: PG-13 UPC: 085392263424 Manufacturer No: 22634

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Summary: A remake of the hit 2001 BBC TV series The Office (2001), this is a mockumentary that documents the exploits of a paper supply company in Scranton, Pennsylvania. Made up of head chief Michael Scott, a harmlessly deluded and ignorantly insensitive boss who cares about the welfare of his employees while trying to put his own spin on company policy. With an office including the likes of various peers who have their own hangups, The Office (2005) takes a look at the lives of its co-workers: bored but talented salesman Jim, his mildly sociopathic, butt kissing enemy Dwight, mildly righteous receptionist Pam, and indifferent temp Ryan.

Director: Steven Soderbergh

Writer: Elmore Leonard, Scott Frank

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Summary: A career bank robber busts out of jail (Clooney) with the help of his buddy (Rhames) and kidnaps a US Marshal (Lopez) in the process. When the two cons head for Detroit to pull off their final big scam, the Marshal is put on their case but she finds she is attracted to one of them and has second thoughts about bringing them in.

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Summary: Award-winning BBC nature documentary series narrated by David Attenborough and produced by Alastair Fothergill. It was first broadcast in the UK 5 March 2006. The American version is narrated by Sigourney Weaver.

Director: Fernando Leon de Aranoa

Writer: Fernando León de Aranoa

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Summary: A not too sentimental look at the lives of prostitutes, both domestic and illegally emigrated, in Spain, this film shows the influence of both Almodovar and the NeoRealists, while differing from and building on both...nothing here is as near-fantasticated as Almodovar's preferred mode, for example.

Sobering more than depressing, with a talented and striking cast, and a well-wrought character study as well as social critique.

Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Writer: Robert Bloch, Joseph Stefano

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Summary: At last--a great American movie available on video for the first time in its original aspect ratio. For all the slasher pictures that have ripped off Psycho (and particularly its classic set piece, the "shower scene"), nothing has ever matched the impact of the real thing. More than just a first-rate shocker full of thrills and suspense, Psycho is also an engrossing character study in which director Alfred Hitchcock skillfully seduces you into identifying with the main characters--then pulls the rug (or the bathmat) out from under you. Anthony Perkins is unforgettable as Norman Bates, the mama's boy proprietor of the Bates Motel; and so is Janet Leigh as Marion Crane, who makes an impulsive decision and becomes a fugitive from the law, hiding out at Norman's roadside inn for one fateful night. Psycho gets the masterpiece treatment it deserves on DVD, with extras including newsreel footage surrounding the making and release of the movie; an archive of production stills; the special trailer in which Hitchcock (acting as one of the original Universal Studio tour guides) himself leads viewers around the Bates place; credit designer Saul Bass's original "shower scene" story boards; posters and advertising materials for the movie's William Castle-like publicity campaign (No One Will Be Seated After the Feature Begins!);and a 90-minute documentary on the making of the film! What more could any movie fan possibly want? --Jim Emerson

Director: Quentin Tarantino

Writer: Quentin Tarantino, Roger Avary

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Summary: Jules Winnfield and Vincent Vega are two hitmen who are out to retrieve a suitcase stolen from their employer, mob boss Marsellus Wallace. Wallace has also asked Vincent to take his wife Mia out a few days later when Wallace himself will be out of town. Butch Coolidge is an aging boxer who is paid by Wallace to lose his next fight. The lives of these seemingly unrelated people are woven together comprising of a series of funny, bizarre and uncalled-for incidents.

Director: Paul Thomas Anderson

Writer: Paul Thomas Anderson

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Summary: Adam Sandler takes a shot at critical respectability with Punch-Drunk Love, a movie by director Paul Thomas Anderson (Boogie Nights, Magnolia). Sandler plays Barry Egan, a lonely small businessman who calls a phone sex line one night, only to find himself the victim of an extortion scheme the next day--the very same day on which he goes out on a date with the woman who may be the love of his life (the utterly delightful Emily Watson). Barry is a lot like Sandler's popular comic characters--socially maladept, prone to violence, always on the brink of embarrassment--but here Sandler plays it real; the result is both off-putting and sympathetic. Anderson's writing skills, unfortunately, are not as strong as his visual sense. Punch-Drunk Love has many strengths (including great supporting actors Philip Seymour Hoffman and Luis Guzmán), but ultimately fizzles out. --Bret Fetzer

Director: Martin Scorsese

Writer: Jake LaMotta, Joseph Carter

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Summary: Martin Scorsese's brutal black-and-white biography of self-destructive boxer Jake LaMotta was chosen as the best film of the 1980s in a major critics' poll at the end of the decade, and it's a knockout piece of filmmaking. Robert De Niro plays LaMotta (famously putting on 50 pounds for the later scenes), a man tormented by demons he doesn't understand and prone to uncontrollably violent temper tantrums and fits of irrational jealousy. He marries a striking young blond (Cathy Moriarty), his sexual ideal, and then terrorizes her with never-ending accusations of infidelity. Jake is as frightening as he is pathetic, unable to control or comprehend the baser instincts that periodically, and without warning, turn him into the rampaging beast of the title. But as Roman Catholic Scorsese sees it, he works off his sins in the boxing ring, where his greatest athletic talent is his ability to withstand punishment. The fight scenes are astounding; they're like barbaric ritual dance numbers. Images smash into one another--a flashbulb, a spray of sweat, a fist, a geyser of blood--until you feel dazed from the pummeling. Nominated for a handful of Academy Awards (including best picture and director), Raging Bull won only two, for De Niro and for editor Thelma Schoonmacher. --Jim Emerson

Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Writer: Cornell Woolrich, John Michael Hayes

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Summary: Like the Greenwich Village courtyard view from its titular portal, Alfred Hitchcock's classic Rear Window is both confined and multileveled: both its story and visual perspective are dictated by its protagonist's imprisonment in his apartment, convalescing in a wheelchair, from which both he and the audience observe the lives of his neighbors. Cheerful voyeurism, as well as the behavior glimpsed among the various tenants, affords a droll comic atmosphere that gradually darkens when he sees clues to what may be a murder.
Photographer L.B. "Jeff" Jeffries (James Stewart) is, in fact, a voyeur by trade, a professional photographer sidelined by an accident while on assignment. His immersion in the human drama (and comedy) visible from his window is a by-product of boredom, underlined by the disapproval of his girlfriend, Lisa (Grace Kelly), and a wisecracking visiting nurse (Thelma Ritter). Yet when the invalid wife of Lars Thorwald (Raymond Burr) disappears, Jeff enlists the two women to help him to determine whether she's really left town, as Thorwald insists, or been murdered.
Hitchcock scholar Donald Spoto convincingly argues that the crime at the center of this mystery is the MacGuffin--a mere pretext--in a film that's more interested in the implications of Jeff's sentinel perspective. We actually learn more about the lives of the other neighbors (given generic names by Jeff, even as he's drawn into their lives) he, and we, watch undetected than we do the putative murderer and his victim. Jeff's evident fear of intimacy and commitment with the elegant, adoring Lisa provides the other vital thread to the script, one woven not only into the couple's own relationship, but reflected and even commented upon through the various neighbors' lives.
At minimum, Hitchcock's skill at making us accomplices to Jeff's spying, coupled with an ingenious escalation of suspense as the teasingly vague evidence coalesces into ominous proof, deliver a superb thriller spiked with droll humor, right up to its nail-biting, nightmarish climax. At deeper levels, however, Rear Window plumbs issues of moral responsibility and emotional honesty, while offering further proof (were any needed) of the director's brilliance as a visual storyteller. --Sam Sutherland

Director:

Writer: Beverly Joubert, Dereck Joubert

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Summary: It is a spectacle few have seen firsthand. Two foes trapped on an island in a remote part of Africa--and a battle to survive captured in high-definition over two years by award-winning filmmakers. Now, National Geographic takes viewers onto a unique battlefield in the Okavango Delta to witness the grueling fight for survival of highly specialized lions that prey almost exclusively on buffalo in Relentless Enemies.

Director: Darren Aronofsky

Writer: Hubert Selby Jr.

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Summary: Drugs. They consume mind, body and soul. Once you're hooked, you're hooked. Four lives. Four addicts. Four failures. Doing their best to succeed in the world, but failing miserably, four people get hooked on various drugs. Despite their aspirations of greatness, they succumb to their addictions. Watching the addicts spiral out of control, we bear witness to the dirtiest, ugliest portions of the underworld addicts reside in. It is shocking and eye-opening but demands to be seen by both addicts and non-addicts alike.

Director: Catherine Breillat

Writer: Catherine Breillat

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Summary: Although deeply in love with her boyfriend - and indeed sleeping in the same bed with him - a schoolteacher cannot handle the almost complete lack of intimacy he will allow. Increasingly frustrated, she gradually finds her sexual appetites leading her into ever more risky situations, including a developing one with the headmaster.

Director: Roman Polanski

Writer: Ira Levin, Roman Polanski

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Summary: Psychological terrorism and supernatural horror have rarely been dramatized as effectively as in this classic 1968 thriller, masterfully adapted and directed by Roman Polanski from the chilling novel by Ira Levin. Rosemary (Mia Farrow) is a young, trusting housewife in New York whose actor husband (John Cassavetes), unbeknownst to her, has literally made a deal with the devil. In the thrall of a witches' coven headquartered in their apartment building, the young husband arranges to have his wife impregnated by Satan in exchange for success in a Broadway play. To Rosemary, the pregnancy seems like a normal and happy one--that is, until she grows increasingly suspicious of her neighbors' evil influence. Polanski establishes this seemingly benevolent situation and then introduces each fiendish little detail with such unsettling subtlety that the film escalates to a palpable level of dread and paranoia. By the time Rosemary discovers that her infant son "has his father's eyes" ... well, let's just say the urge to scream along with her is unbearably intense! One of the few modern horror films that can claim to be genuinely terrifying, Rosemary's Baby is an unforgettable movie experience, guaranteed to send chills up your spine. --Jeff Shannon

Director: Wes Anderson

Writer: Wes Anderson, Owen Wilson

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Summary: Wes Anderson's follow-up to the quirky Bottle Rocket is a wonderfully unorthodox coming-of-age story that ranks with Harold and Maude and The Graduate in the pantheon of timeless cult classics. Jason Schwartzman (son of Talia Shire and nephew of Francis Coppola) stars as Max Fischer, a 15-year-old attending the prestigious Rushmore Academy on scholarship, where he's failing all of his classes but is the superstar of the school's extracurricular activities (head of the drama club, the beekeeper club, the fencing club...). Possessing boundless confidence and chutzpah, as well as an aura of authority he seems to have been born with, Max finds two unlikely soulmates in his permutations at Rushmore: industrial magnate and Rushmore alumnus Herman Blume (Bill Murray) and first-grade teacher Rosemary Cross (Olivia Williams). His alliance with Blume and crush on Miss Cross, however, are thrown out of kilter by his expulsion from Rushmore, and a budding romance between the two adults that threatens Max's own designs on the lovely schoolteacher.
Never stooping to sentimentality or schmaltz, Anderson and cowriter Owen Wilson have fashioned a wickedly intelligent and wildly funny tale of young adulthood that hits all the right notes in its mix of melancholy and optimism. As played by Schwartzman, Max is both immediately endearing and ferociously irritating: smarter than all the adults around him, with little sense of his shortcomings, he's an unstoppable dynamo who commands grudging respect despite his outlandish projects (including a school play about Vietnam). Murray, as the tycoon who determinedly wages war with Max for the affections of Miss Cross, is a revelation of middle-aged resignation. Disgusted with his family, his life, and himself, he's turned around by both Max's antagonism and Miss Cross's love. Williams is equally affecting as the teacher who still carries a torch for her dead husband, and the superb supporting cast also includes Seymour Cassel as Max's barber father, Brian Cox as the frustrated headmaster of Rushmore, and a hilarious Mason Gamble as Max's young charge. Put this one on your shelf of modern masterpieces. --Mark Englehart

Director: Ki-duk Kim

Writer: Ki-duk Kim

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Summary: Jae-Young is an amateur prostitute who sleeps with men while her best friend Yeo-Jin "manages" her, fixing dates, taking care of the money and making sure the coast is clear. When Jae-Young falls in love with one of those man she surpresses her feelings towards him in respect of her friend who's jealous. One Day Yeo-Jin fails in doing her job overlooking police officers looking for underaged porstitutes. In order to not get caught Jae-Young jumps out of a window almost killing herself. On her deathbed, she wishes to see the man again whom she fell in love with and turned away from. But the man only agrees if Yeo-Jin sleeps with him. She does but as they arrive in the hospital Jae-Young is already dead. Trying to understand her best friend, Yeo-Jin tracks down every man she slept with and does the same. As her father learns about this he gets on revenge with fatal consequences...

Director: Liam Lynch

Writer: Sarah Silverman

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Summary: Sarah Silverman: Jesus Is Magic, the movie, is the year s most outrageous comedy starring the funniest, sexy woman in America today - Sarah Silverman. Sarah delivers her trademark comedy that is so outrageous you have to watch her film over and over again. Available only in its original unrated, uncut theatrical version.

Director: Steven Spielberg

Writer: Robert Rodat

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Summary: When Steven Spielberg was an adolescent, his first home movie was a backyard war film. When he toured Europe with Duel in his 20s, he saw old men crumble in front of headstones at Omaha Beach. That image became the opening scene of Saving Private Ryan, his film of a mission following the D-day invasion that many have called the most realistic--and maybe the best--war film ever. With 1998 production standards, Spielberg has been able to create a stunning, unparalleled view of war as hell. We are at Omaha Beach as troops are slaughtered by Germans yet overcome the almost insurmountable odds.
A stalwart Tom Hanks plays Captain Miller, a soldier's soldier, who takes a small band of troops behind enemy lines to retrieve a private whose three brothers have recently been killed in action. It's a public relations move for the Army, but it has historical precedent dating back to the Civil War. Some critics of the film have labeled the central characters stereotypes. If that is so, this movie gives stereotypes a good name: Tom Sizemore as the deft sergeant, Edward Burns as the hotheaded Private Reiben, Barry Pepper as the religious sniper, Adam Goldberg as the lone Jew, Vin Diesel as the oversize Private Caparzo, Giovanni Ribisi as the soulful medic, and Jeremy Davies, who as a meek corporal gives the film its most memorable performance.
The movie is as heavy and realistic as Spielberg's Oscar-winning Schindler's List, but it's more kinetic. Spielberg and his ace technicians (the film won five Oscars: editing (Michael Kahn), cinematography (Janusz Kaminski), sound, sound effects, and directing) deliver battle sequences that wash over the eyes and hit the gut. The violence is extreme but never gratuitous. The final battle, a dizzying display of gusto, empathy, and chaos, leads to a profound repose. Saving Private Ryan touches us deeper than Schindler because it succinctly links the past with how we should feel today. It's the film Spielberg was destined to make. --Doug Thomas

Director: David Fincher

Writer: Andrew Kevin Walker

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Summary: A film about two homicide detectives' desperate hunt for a serial killer who justifies his crimes as absolution for the world's ignorance of the Seven Deadly Sins. The movie takes us from the tortured remains of one victim to the next as the sociopathic "John Doe" sermonizes to Detectives Sommerset and Mills -- one sin at a time. The sin of Gluttony comes first and the murderer's terrible capacity is graphically demonstrated in the dark and subdued tones characteristic of film noir. The seasoned and cultured Sommerset researches the Seven Deadly Sins in an effort to understand the killer's modus operandi while green Detective Mills scoffs at his efforts to get inside the mind of a killer...

Director: Chang-dong Lee

Writer: Chang-dong Lee, Chong-jun Yi

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Summary: Sin-ae moves with her son Jun to Miryang, the town where her dead husband was born. As she tries to come to herself and set out on new foundations, another tragic event overturns her life.

Director: John Madden

Writer: Marc Norman, Tom Stoppard

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Summary: Romantic comedy set in London in the late 16th century: Young playwright William Shakespeare struggles with his latest work "Romeo and Ethel the Pirate's Daughter". A great fan of Shakespeare's plays is young, wealthy Viola who is about to be married to the cold-hearted Lord Wessex, but constantly dreams of becoming an actress. Women were not allowed to act on stage at that time (female roles were played by men, too), but dressed up as a boy, Viola successfully auditions for the part of Romeo. Soon she and William are caught in a forbidden romance that provides rich inspiration for his play.

Director: Laurie Collyer

Writer: Laurie Collyer

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Summary: A disturbing film about a recovering drug addict trying to regain control of her life, Sherrybaby succinctly depicts what can happen when want and desire aren't offset by control. In this bleak indie film, Sherry Swanson (Maggie Gyllenhaal, Stranger Than Fiction, Secretary) has just been released from a three-year stint in prison. Dressed in her inappropriate uniform of a halter top and oh-so-high platform heels, she goes to brother's house to see her 5-year-old daughter, Lexie (Ryan Simpkins). Sherry is determined to be a mother to her child, but without a home, job, or any other form of stability, she grows frustrated and jealous of her brother and sister-in-law's roles in Lexie's life. Tall and willowy, Gyllenhaal brings a sad desperation and simmering sexuality to the role. Sherry's middle-class childhood was a blur of sex and drugs, and she seems incapable of breaking out of that destructive trap. While the script by first-time feature film director Laurie Collyer isn't wholly original, the picture moves at a good pace, giving insight as to why Sherry's resigned to using sex to get what she wants. While the family secret doesn't come as a complete surprise, it is somewhat perplexing that no one addresses it. Ultimately, it's Gyllenhaal who makes you care about a character that most people would've given up on. --Jae-Ha Kim

Director: Robert Altman

Writer: Raymond Carver, Robert Altman

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Summary: The work of two great American artists merge in Short Cuts, maverick director Robert Altman's kaleidoscopic adaptation of the stories of renowned author Raymond Carver. Epic in scale yet meticulously observed, the film interweaves the stories of twenty-two characters struggling to find solace and meaning in contemporary Los Angeles. The extraordinary ensemble cast includes Tim Robbins, Julianne Moore, Robert Downey, Jr., Jack Lemmon, and Jennifer Jason Leigh—all giving fearless performances in one of Altman's most compassionate creations.

Director: Alexander Payne

Writer: Rex Pickett, Alexander Payne

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Summary: With Sideways, Paul Giamatti (American Splendor, Storytelling) has become an unlikely but engaging romantic lead. Struggling novelist and wine connoisseur Miles (Giamatti) takes his best friend Jack (Thomas Haden Church, Wings) on a wine-tasting tour of California vineyards for a kind of extended bachelor party. Almost immediately, Jack's insatiable need to sow some wild oats before his marriage leads them into double-dates with a rambunctious wine pourer (Sandra Oh, Under the Tuscan Sun) and a recently divorced waitress (Virginia Madsen, The Hot Spot)--and Miles discovers a little hope that he hasn't let himself feel in a long time. Sideways is a modest but finely tuned film; with gentle compassion, it explores the failures, struggles, and lowered expectations of mid-life. Giamatti makes regret and self-loathing sympathetic, almost sweet. From the director of Election and About Schmidt. --Bret Fetzer

Director: David Bruckner, Dan Bush

Writer: David Bruckner, Jacob Gentry

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Summary: A science fiction horror film told in three parts in which electronic devices broadcast only a mysterious transmission, turning people crazy. The film is broken up into three "transmissions" each of which had different directors during shooting. Each part manifests one of the following genre: visceral thriller, black comedy, and mystery-love story.