Ever since this convoluted thriller dazzled audiences and critics in 1995 and won an Oscar for Christopher McQuarrie's twisting screenplay, The Usual Suspects has continued to divide movie lovers into opposite camps. While a lot of people take great pleasure from the movie's now-famous central mystery (namely, "Who is Keyser Söze?"), others aren't so easily impressed by a movie that's too ...
Manufacturer: MGM EntertainmentStarring: Kevin Spacey, Gabriel Byrne, Chazz Palminteri, Stephen Baldwin, Benicio Del ToroDirected By: Bryan Singer
Goldie Hawn, Bette Midler and Diane Keaton prove revenge is a dish best served cold. Former college buddies, they reunite at the funeral of a dear friend who took a swan dive onto Fifth Avenue. All three discover they share the same unhappy history of husbands who dove into middle-age by dumping them for trophy wives. Forming a warring triumvirate, they decide to get even, and along the way remind ...
Manufacturer: Paramount Home EntertainmentStarring: Goldie Hawn, Bette Midler, Diane Keaton, Maggie Smith, Dan HedayaDirected By: Hugh Wilson
Longing for a romantic Hollywood film that will make your heart leap but not have you reaching for the sick bucket? Try Benny & Joon. Few mainstream US films manage to walk the thin line between emotion and schmaltz, but here is one film that pulls it off admirably. In the wrong hands the concept of marrying love and mental illness could have been a disaster but, as with the low-budget ...
Manufacturer: MGM EntertainmentStarring: Johnny Depp, Mary Stuart Masterson, Aidan Quinn, Julianne Moore, Oliver PlattDirected By: Jeremiah S. Chechik
Manufacturer: Optimum Home EntertainmentStarring: Dan Hedaya, Laura Harring, Naomi Watts, Robert Forster, Justin TherouxDirected By: David Lynch
Manufacturer: Warner Home VideoStarring: Catherine Deneuve, David Bowie, Susan Sarandon, Cliff De Young, Beth EhlersDirected By: Tony Scott
The debut film of director Joel Coen and his brother-producer Ethan Coen, 1983's Blood Simple is grisly comic noir that marries the feverish toughness of pulp thrillers with the ghoulishness of even pulpier horror. (Imagine the novels of Jim Thompson somehow fused with the comic tabloid Weird Tales and you get the idea.) The story concerns a Texas bar owner (Dan Hedaya) who ...
Manufacturer: Universal Pictures UKStarring: John Getz, Frances McDormand, Dan Hedaya, M. Emmet Walsh, Samm-Art WilliamsDirected By: Ethan Coen, Joel Coen
A massively underrated action thriller which kept Schwarzenegger occupied between blockbusters, Commando may be one of the last shoot-out films ever to have real characters in it. Not, of course, that they're anything other than stereotypes, but they're painted with such detailed, positive strokes that it's impossible not to relate to them. Arnie plays a retired military special-ops officer ...
Manufacturer: 20th Century Fox Home EntertainmentStarring: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Rae Dawn Chong, Dan Hedaya, Vernon Wells, James OlsonDirected By: Mark L. Lester
The joined-at-the-hip team of director Richard Donner and star Mel Gibson (all the Lethal Weapon movies and Conspiracy Theory) had obvious fun resurrecting the Wild Western comedy television series about a roguish rambler-gambler. In Maverick, Gibson assumes the role of cardsharp Bret Maverick, equally quick with a pair of aces and a pair of guns. Good sport James Garner (who ...
Manufacturer: Warner Home VideoStarring: Mel Gibson, Jodie Foster, James Garner, Graham Greene, Alfred MolinaDirected By: Richard Donner
This echo of 1970s disaster films stars Sylvester Stallone as the disgraced former head of New York City's Emergency Medical Services, a loser who is nevertheless a compulsive rescuer of people in danger. When the Holland Tunnel is sealed off after a fiery explosion and car passengers are trapped within, he goes inside and leads a group of survivors (a mixed group allegorically representing ...
Manufacturer: 4 Front VideoStarring: Sylvester Stallone, Amy Brenneman, Viggo Mortensen, Dan Hedaya, Jay O. SandersDirected By: Rob Cohen
Scott McPherson's off-Broadway hit made a strong transition to the screen in Marvin's Room, a 1996 film by director Jerry Zaks. Diane Keaton stars as a woman who, while taking care of her vegetating father in Florida, discovers that she has leukaemia. Only her long-estranged sister (Meryl Streep) or the sister's children can provide a possible match for a bone-marrow transplant. But the ...
Manufacturer: Walt Disney Studios Home EntertainmStarring: Meryl Streep, Leonardo DiCaprio, Diane Keaton, Robert De Niro, Hume CronynDirected By: Jerry Zaks
