A gangster is looking to get away from crooked deals and double-crossing people but ends up in the movie business anyway in this comic crime story. Chili Palmer (John Travolta) is a Miami-based loan collector for the mob trying to collect a... more »

Ran is Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa's reinterpretation of William Shakespeare's +King Lear. The Lear counterpart is an elderly 16th-century warlord (Tatsuya Nakadai), who announces that he's about to divide his kingdom equally among his three... more »

Peter Fonda received a richly deserved Oscar nomination for his superb performance as Ulysses "Ulee" Jackson, a Florida beekeeper forced to put his splintered family back together. Ulee is a Vietnam veteran whose wife died several years ago, a... more »

Within the scope of Asian history, few events carry the ugly and sickening connotations of the Rape of Nanking. Japanese forces invaded that Chinese city on December 9, 1937, and in the six weeks to follow, soldiers raped thousands of women and... more »

Stanley Kubrick's return to filmmaking after a seven-year hiatus, this film crystallizes the experience of the Vietnam War by concentrating on a group of raw Marine volunteers. Based on Gustav Hasford's novel The Short Timers, the film's first... more »

British filmmaker Terence Davies pays homage to the city of his birth in this visual essay on the seaside town of Liverpool. Described by Davies as "a love song and a eulogy," Of Time and the City uses vintage home movies and newsreel footage to... more »

In 2000, director Michael Almereyda brought his film crew to San Francisco to document the rehearsal process for the Magic Theater's production of Sam Shepard's play +The Late Henry Moss, as directed by the playwright himself. The resulting film,... more »

From its opening multi-language titles (that sure looks like Swedish) to the closing arrest of the entire Dark Ages cast by modern-day bobbies, Monty Python and the Holy Grail helped to define "irreverence" and became an instant cult classic. This... more »

Adapted by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala from the novel by E.M. Forster, A Room with a View is a shining example of Merchant-Ivory's ability to achieve maximum quality and opulence at minimum cost. Set during the Edwardian Era, the film stars Helena Bonham... more »

This feel-good ensemble comedy tracks a quartet of suburban siblings and their families over the course of a single summer. Hardworking Gil Buckman (Steve Martin) and his stay-at-home wife, Karen (Mary Steeenburgen), have just a few months to help... more »

On November 9, 1938, Adolph Hitler's ugly war against the Jews began in earnest with the "Kristallnacht," in which Nazi troops joined with angry mobs to attack synagogues, Jewish-owned businesses, and residents of predominantly Jewish... more »

A young pig fights convention to become a sheep dog -- or, rather, sheep pig -- in this charming Australian family film, which became an unexpected international success due to superior special effects and an intelligent script. The title refers... more »

Wim Wenders' documentary Buena Vista Social Club is about the adventures of Ry Cooder in Cuba. Cooder, best remembered by film fans for the wailing slide guitar theme of Wenders' Paris, Texas, went to Cuba in 1996 to meet with some legendary... more »

So well-regarded was the documentary Crumb (1994) that the failure of it and of the same year's equally acclaimed Hoop Dreams (1994) to result in Oscar nominations caused a media furor which forced the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences... more »

more »

Before his commercial breakthrough with Boogie Nights (1997), writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson made this low-key drama. John (John C. Reilly), a half-bright loser stranded in Reno, is down to his last few bucks when Sydney (Phillip Baker... more »

Mike Figgis' grim drama documents a romantic triangle of sorts involving prostitute Sera (Elisabeth Shue), failed Hollywood screenwriter Ben (Oscar-winner Nicolas Cage), and the constant flow of booze which he loves more dearly than life itself.... more »

The sale of a family home causes some ugly truths to be uncovered in this drama from writer and director Joachim Lafosse. Pascale (Isabelle Huppert) is a middle-aged divorcée living in a restored farmhouse in the countryside with her twin sons,... more »

Based on William Goldman's novel of the same name, The Princess Bride is staged as a book read by grandfather (Peter Falk) to his ill grandson (Fred Savage). Falk's character assures a romance-weary Savage that the book has much more to deliver... more »

Martin Scorsese explores the life of organized crime with his gritty, kinetic adaptation of Nicolas Pileggi's best-selling Wiseguy, the true-life account of mobster and FBI informant Henry Hill. Set to a true-to-period rock soundtrack, the story... more »