Nicolas Cage stars as... Nick Cage in the action-comedy The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent. Creatively unfulfilled and facing financial ruin, the fictionalized version of Cage must accept a $1 million offer to attend the birthday of a dangerous superfan (Pedro Pascal).Things take a wildly unexpected turn when Cage is recruited by a CIA operative (Tiffany Haddish) and forced to live up to his own legend, channeling his most iconic and beloved on-screen characters in order to save himself and his loved ones. With a career built for this very moment, the seminal award-winning actor must take on the role of a lifetime: Nicolas Cage.
1989 and the Berlin Wall is about to fall. But the small matter of the end of the Cold War doesn't seem to stop soldier Ray Elwood's blackmarket shenanigans in a base in Germany.
What private eye Harry Moseby doesn't know about the girl he's looking for... just might get him killed. Gene Hackman stars as Harry Moseby a second-rate gumshoe working on low-end cases while trying to straighten out his own muddled life. When he is contacted by a mother looking for her young movie-actress daughter Harry supposes it is just another dull case. He finds the girl and brings her home with little trouble. But soon Harry learns of the girl's death shortly after her return. He discovers the death of one of her boyfriends as well and connecting the two 'accidents' tries to unravel an ever-growing mystery.
The Abyss A civilian oil-rig crew is recruited to conduct a search-and-rescue effort when a nuclear submarine mysteriously sinks. One diver (Ed Harris) soon finds himself on a spectacular odyssey over 25 000 feet below the ocean's surface where he confronts a mysterious force that has the power to change the world or destroy it... Aliens In this action-packed sequel to Alien Sigourney Weaver returns as Ripley the only survivor from mankind's first encounter with the
Based on the acclaimed book by neurologist Oliver Sacks, director Penny Marshall's hit 1990 drama Awakenings stars Robin Williams as Dr. Malcolm Sayer. Sayer is a neurologist who discovers that the drug L-Dopa can be used to "unlock" patients in a mental hospital from the mysterious sleeping sickness that has left them utterly immobilized. Leonard (Robert De Niro) is one such patient who awakens after being in a comatose state for 30 years, leaving Sayer to guide Leonard in adjusting to the world around him. Penelope Ann Miller costars as the daughter of another patient, with whom Leonard falls tenuously in love. Earning Oscar nominations for best picture, actor and screenplay, this moving fact-based drama was a hit with critics and audiences alike. --Jeff Shannon
Fred Williamson is imposing tough and unflappable as a street kid who muscles his way into the big-time mob racket in this super-slick drama from writer/director Larry Cohen which became a smash hit of the Blaxploitaion genre and spawned a successful sequel (Hell Up In Harlem). Tommy Gibbs (Williamson) has always had it tough. Growing up on the streets without a father and trying to make his mother proud Tommy resorts to running errands for The Man. But when a crooked cop beats h
Inspired by true events, THE QUIET ONES tells the story of an unorthodox professor (Harris) who uses controversial methods and leads his best students off the grid to take part in a dangerous experiment: to create a poltergeist.
Struggling twenty-something actress Resse Holden (Deschanel) has been promised a small fortune for the publication of love letters written by her legendary, but reclusive, father Don Holden (Harris) to Reese's mother. The search for these letters sees the fractious reunion of the estranged father and daughter back home. On her arrival Reece is greeted by Don's younger house mate and a would-be Christian rock musician, Corbit (Ferrell). Although at first she does not approve of her fathers awk...
Waking the Dead, like director-writer Keith Gordon's earlier films (The Chocolate War, A Midnight Clear, Mother Night), is based on a well-regarded modern novel (by Scott Spencer) and has a great many quiet virtues: a genuine engagement with near-contemporary America, complicated characters well-played by a cast of perfectly selected not-quite-star performers and a questioning approach that sits ill with the too-easy answers of most contemporary films. The complex story opens in 1974 with the death in a car bomb explosion of Sarah Williams (Jennifer Connelly), a radical working with a faction of left-wing Catholics to rescue dissidents from Chile. This has a devastating effect on her straighter boyfriend, Fielding Pierce (Billy Crudup), who is working within the system with an eye on rising in the Democratic Party through the patronage of a senior figure (Hal Holbrook), the man who is eventually to become the President. We flash back to 1972 and Fielding's intense relationship with Sarah, marked by romantic and political differences that feel far more real than the contrived oppositional arguments in most political movies. Then skip 10 years forward to find a sleeker, hollow-faced Fielding running for Congress, tormented not only by memories of Sarah but her actual or phantasmal appearances. Another film might play this as a paranoid mystery thriller, but this goes for psychology, and Crudup delivers an intense portrait of a man cracking up by the loss of his ideals as much as his life's love--climaxing in a terrific restaurant outburst to his needy, congratulatory family. Unreleased theatrically in the UK, this outstanding film has award-quality performances from Crudup and Connelly, both doing their best screen work to date. On the DVD: The picture is presented in 1.85.1 anamorphic widescreen, with Dolby Digital sound. You get the usual trailer, filmographies and puff piece featurette, but also three superb extras: a commentary from Gordon that passionately and intelligently addresses the thematic material and production circumstances of the film; a package of deleted scenes that goes well beyond the usual irrelevant snippets--everything here offers additional insights into the plot and character; tracks from the composers Tomandandy which play over the menus--a rare feature that's liable to become more common. --Kim Newman
Frankenstein: Boris Karloff stars as the screen's most memorable monster in what many consider to be the greatest horror film ever made. Director James Whale's adaptation of the Mary Shelley novel blended with Karloff's compassionate portrayal of a creature groping for identity make it a classic to be watched time and time again! Bride Of Frankenstein: One of the most popular horror classics of all time and an acclaimed sequel to the original Frankenstein. Boris Karl
This HBO docu-drama depicts the notorious 1971 prison revolt at the State Penitentiary at Attica, in upstate New York. One can sense the mastery of veteran theatrical feature director John Frankenheimer at the helm, in the movie's gripping suspense and gritty, hard-hitting realism. The semi-fictionalised narrative is told from the point of view of young Michael Smith, (Kyle MacLachlan), a newly recruited prison guard (the real Smith worked as a consultant on the film). When Smith arrives at Attica, the place is a revolt waiting to happen. When riots break out and the inmates take command of the prison, Smith and several other guards are held hostage. In this powder-keg climate, a relationship develops between Smith and the rebellion's wise, cool-headed leader, Jamaal, (the superb Samuel L Jackson), a political prisoner representing the African Liberation Movement. The insurrection at Attica became emblematic of protests taking place all over the United States at the time. "We've got a civil war going on in this country," says one prison guard, "This is where we hold the line." Against the Wall illustrates in no uncertain terms which side won this particular battle, and at what tragic cost. Then it goes one step further, becoming a platform for contemporary prison reform. The film's terrific performances include Clarence L Williams III as a wild-eyed, malcontent prisoner, Frederic Forrest as a rabid prison guard and Anne Heche as Smith's stalwart wife. --Laura Mirsky
William Walker (Harris) and his mercenary corps enter Nicaragua in the middle of the 19th century in order to install a new government by a coup d'etat...
Director Clint Eastwood's 1997 box-office hit stars himself as Luther Whitney, a highly skilled thief who finds himself in the wrong place at the wrong time, witnessing the murder of a woman involved in a secret tryst with the US president (played by Gene Hackman). Determined to clear his name, Whitney cleverly eludes a tenacious detective (Ed Harris) while investigating a corruption of power reaching to the highest level of government. Adapted by veteran screenwriter William Goldman from David Baldacci's novel, this thriller balances expert suspense with well-drawn characters and an intelligent plot that's just a pounding heartbeat away from real White House headlines. Absolute Power features the great Judy Davis in a memorable supporting role as the White House chief of staff who desperately attempts to cover up the crime. --Jeff Shannon, Amazon.com
Ed Harris and Ethan Hawke star in this thriller written and directed by Michael Almereyda. Based on the play by William Shakespeare, this modern-day adaptation follows the story of Cymbeline (Harris), the reigning king of the Briton Motorcycle gang who has developed an understanding with local Roman police that allows them to conduct their illegal affairs without prosecution. As Cymbeline prepares to marry off his daughter Imogen (Dakota Johnson) to the Queen (Milla Jovovich)'s son Cloten (Anton Yelchin), Cymbeline is outraged to learn that Imogen has secretly wed the penniless Posthumus (Penn Badgley) with whom she has fallen in love. As Cymbeline forces Posthumus into exile, a war erupts between the Britons and the Romans, leaving Imogen torn between two very different worlds.
An attractive young woman is driving her car on a dark country road and singing along to the radio. She's running out of gas and so she pulls into a gas station (run by a jittery, stuttering Brad Dourif) but then flees what seems to be an attack, only to find the real threat in her backseat: a hooded killer with an axe who takes her head off with a well-aimed swing. You've heard the story before? Not surprising, given that it's one of the more famous urban legends borrowed for Urban Legend, a post-Scream exercise in self-referential horror. The students at an ivy-covered New England college are turning up dead, the victims of a serial killer who murders in the fashion of the "apocryphal" modern myths. It's all for the benefit of good girl with a dark secret Alicia Witt, the sole witness to most of the killings. Doe-eyed Rebecca Gayheart, as her gullible best friend, and Jared Leto, the ambitious campus journalist who tracks down the secret that hangs over the school, lead a cast of pretty young women, hunky guys and campus characters, notably the suspicious professor Robert Englund, a genre legend in his own right as the star of seven Nightmare on Elm Street films. Take away the cheeky remarks and self-awareness and it's a throwback to the 1970s' rash of teen slasher movies, where sexually active teens are sliced, diced and otherwise slaughtered in elaborate and ingenious ways. The increasingly preposterous film is no Scream but the modestly stylish production has its moments. --Sean Axmaker
Between his high-octane debut, Bad Boys, and 1998's wannabe blockbuster Armageddon, hotshot director Michael Bay forged his dubious reputation with this crowd-pleasing action extravaganza. In Rock, a psychotically disgruntled war hero (Ed Harris) seizes the island prison of Alcatraz and threatens to wage chemical warfare against nearby San Francisco unless the government publicly recognises the men who were killed under Harris's top-secret command. Nicolas Cage plays the biochemist who teams up with the only man ever to have escaped from Alcatraz (Sean Connery) in an attempt to foil Harris's terrorist scheme. As one might expect, what follows is an action-packed barrage of bullets, bodies, and climactic confrontations, replete with enough plot contrivances to give even the most jaded action fan cause for alarm. It's a load of hooey, but the cast is obviously having a grand old time, and there's enough wit to make the recycled action sequences tolerable. --Jeff Shannon
There's going to be no middle-ground in your opinion of Harmony Korine's second film Julien Donkey Boy--it's either a blazing, daring masterpiece or one of the worst movies ever made. Ewen Bremner, the gawkiest of the Trainspotting gang, transforms himself into the terrifying yet pathetic Julien, with curly black hair, removable teeth, a letter-perfect American maniac accent and the body language of the truly demented. Julien is a schizophrenic but rather than observe his mental problems the film chooses to crawl inside them--we're never sure how much of what we see is actually happening and none of the "sane" characters make much sense either. Julien's family consists of a brother (Evan Neuman) who is constantly climbing stairs like a lizard to beef himself up for a contest that turns out to be ridiculous, a pregnant sister (Chloe Sevigny) who sometimes phones him up pretending to be their dead mother and a hard man father (Werner Herzog) who douses him with freezing water to toughen him up and delivers a bizarrely sincere soliloquy about the superiority of the ending of Dirty Harry over Julien's pretentious improvised poem. Though it comes with a certificate of authenticity from the Danish Dogma 95 movement, it violates several of the cardinal rules of their manifesto epitomised by Festen and The Idiots: there is unsourced music on the soundtrack, special effects in the form of pixellated or freeze-frame images and action as family arguments explode into scrum-like fights (Korine's directorial debut, Gummo, was closer in spirit to the movement). It opens and closes with the tragic deaths of children, but is mostly a shapeless series of scenes that deliver an impression of madness rather than a story. Bits of it are undeniably irritating, just as mad people usually are, but there are lucid flashes where Korine gets his cast to focus on their characters and provide great scenes. --Kim Newman
Please wait. Loading...
This site uses cookies.
More details in our privacy policy