For all its light-hearted comic interludes, Bend it like Beckham tackles contemporary issues of cultural clashes, female independence and the importance of family. Director Gurinder Chaddha tells the story of Jess Bhamra (Parminder K Nagra), a young girl brought up within the traditional boundaries of a Sikh family who manages to live out her fantasies in an uproarious way. Despite her ...

Manufacturer: Lions Gate Home Entertainment
Starring: Parminder K. Nagra|Keira Knightley
Directed By: Gurinder Chadha

An irresistible, comic drama from director Alan Parker (Evita, Mississippi Burning), overflowing and alive with passion, humor and music, The Commitments showcases some old R&B standards in a new light. A headstrong, fast-talking, ambitious young Dubliner (Robert Arkins) fancies himself a promoter of talent, and sets about assembling and packaging a local Irish R&B band. His ...

Manufacturer: 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment
Starring: Robert Arkins, Michael Aherne, Angeline Ball, Maria Doyle Kennedy, Dave Finnegan
Directed By: Alan Parker

Like a pumpkin that transforms into a carriage, some very shrewd casting (and the charisma of Julia Roberts, in particular) morphed this story of a Hollywood whore into a Disneyfied Cinderella story--and a mainstream megahit. This is the movie that made Roberts a star, her charms helping tremendously to carry viewers over the rough spots in the script (which was originally to be a cynical tale ...

Manufacturer: Touchstone Home Video
Starring: Richard Gere, Julia Roberts, Ralph Bellamy, Jason Alexander, Laura San Giacomo
Directed By: Garry Marshall

Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, starring MGM soprano Jane Powell and handsome baritone Howard Keel, has retained a remarkably loyal following among fans of the musical film ever since its release in 1954. Although it was filmed in state-of-the-art CinemaScope, Stanley Donen was obliged to direct much of the film on Metro's sound stages, where the artificial sets and painted backdrops don't ...

Manufacturer: Warner Home Video
Starring: Jane Powell, Howard Keel, Jeff Richards, Russ Tamblyn, Tommy Rall
Directed By: Stanley Donen

The film that effectively launched the star careers of Robert Carlyle, Ewan McGregor and Jonny Lee Miller is a hard, barbed picaresque, culled from the bestseller by Irvine Welsh and thrown down against the heroin hinterlands of Edinburgh. Directed with abandon by Danny Boyle, Trainspotting conspires to be at once a hip youth flick and a grim cautionary fable. Released on an unsuspecting ...

Manufacturer: 4 Front Video
Starring: Ewan McGregor, Ewen Bremner, Jonny Lee Miller, Kevin McKidd, Robert Carlyle
Directed By: Danny Boyle

Coyote Ugly is either a girls' film for boys or a boys' film for girls. Either way, it's undemanding tosh that remixes 80s "classics" like Fame, Cocktail, Flashdance and Dirty Dancing for the turn of the century. The main attraction is Coyote Ugly itself, a raucous New York bar run by tough-on-the-outside softie Lil (Maria Bello) where the drinks and the ...

Manufacturer: Buena Vista
Starring: Piper Perabo, Adam Garcia, John Goodman, Maria Bello, Izabella Miko
Directed By: David McNally

Manufacturer: Digital Video Dreams
Starring: Sean Astin, Matthew Lillard, Brian Dennehy, Shannon Elizabeth, Maitland Ward
Directed By: Robert Kubilos

With the knockout one-two punch of 1992's Reservoir Dogs and 1994's Pulp Fiction writer-director Quentin Tarantino stunned the filmmaking world, exploding into prominence as a cinematic heavyweight contender. But Pulp Fiction was more than just the follow-up to an impressive first feature, or the winner of the Palme d'Or at Cannes Film Festival, or a script stuffed with the ...

Manufacturer: Touchstone Home Video
Starring: John Travolta, Bruce Willis, Samuel L. Jackson, Tim Roth, Amanda Plummer
Directed By: Quentin Tarantino

Featuring a blousy, winningly inept size-12 heroine, Bridget Jones's Diary is a fetching adaptation of Helen Fielding's runaway bestseller, grittier than Ally McBeal but sweeter than Sex and the City. The normally sylphlike Renée Zellweger (Nurse Betty, Me, Myself and Irene) wolfed pasta to gain poundage to play "singleton" Bridget, a London-based publicist who ...

Manufacturer: 4 Front Video
Starring: Renée Zellweger|Colin Firth
Directed By: Sharon Maguire

Based on Bret Easton Ellis's often-overlooked second novel, The Rules of Attraction works better as a film than the disastrous Less Than Zero, though not as well as the canny American Psycho. Writer-director Roger Avary--who lets slip a nasty Quentin Tarantino reference that feels like sour grapes--can't quite decide whether to ditch the novel's extremely 1980s cultural ...

Manufacturer: Icon Home Entertainment
Starring: James Van Der Beek|Shannyn Sossamon|Jessica Biel
Directed By: Roger Avary