Many of these films are also available in DVD format.
Reservoir Dogs
(1992) Violent, offbeat ensemble piece about aftermath of botched heist.
Critics raved about the taut, stylish direction and strong performances.
Exceedingly well acted and directed, but exceptionally violent.
Stars: Harvey Keitel, Tim Roth. Director: Quentin Tarantino. DVD Version
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Seven(1995) Police thriller. Detectives search for a serial killer who patterns his killing on the Seven Deadly Sins. Starring Brad Pitt, Morgan Freeman. DVD Version
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Shawshank Redemption
(1994) A prison film, albeit an unusual one. Strong acting and a twisting plot make this one worth seeing. Starring Tim Robbins, Morgan Freeman. DVD Version
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SlingBlade
(1996) Often dark character study about mentally impaired man's friendship
with troubled boy. Bittersweet film thrills fans of thought-provoking dramas seeking
moving, vivid characterizations, evocative atmospherics, good vs. evil morality tale. Stars: Dwight Yoakam, Billy Bob Thornton. Director:Billy Bob Thornton.
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Schindler's List (1993).Starring: Liam Neeson, Ralph Fiennes.
Director: Steven Spielberg.
Adapted from the best-selling book by Thomas Keneally and filmed in Poland with an emphasis on absolute authenticity, Spielberg's masterpiece ranks among the greatest films ever made about the Holocaust during World War II. It's a film about heroism with an unlikely hero at its center--Catholic war profiteer Oskar Schindler (Liam Neeson), who risked his life and went bankrupt to save more than 1,000 Jews from certain death in concentration camps.
By employing Jews in his crockery factory manufacturing goods for the German army, Schindler ensures their survival against terrifying odds. At the same time, he must remain solvent with the help of a Jewish accountant (Ben Kingsley) and negotiate business with a vicious, obstinate Nazi commandant (Ralph Fiennes) who enjoys shooting Jews as target practice from the balcony of his villa overlooking a prison camp.
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Taps
(1981).
Starring: George C. Scott, Timothy Hutton,Sean Penn, Tom Cruise.
Memorable mostly as the film that introduced filmgoers to Tom Cruise and Sean Penn, both of whom nearly steal the film from its nominal star, Timothy Hutton. Hutton, fresh from his Oscar for Ordinary People, plays the top cadet at a private military school run by George C. Scott. When the announcement is made that the school will be closed, the inmates take over the asylum with military precision. Hutton is caught among his sense of duty to mentor Scott, the rabid militarism of cadet Cruise, and the rational arguments of Penn, as Hutton's best friend. Then a cadet kills one of the cops responding to the crisis, and suddenly this game of playing soldiers takes on a warlike atmosphere. DVD Version
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The Silence of the Lambs(1991) Starring Anthony Hopkins and Jodie Foster. Anthony Hopkins sets new standards for the role of psychopathic serial killer in his role as Hannibal Lechter.
"Hannibal the Cannibal" and FBI agent Clarisa Starling (Foster) match wits in this dark psychological drama. DVD Version
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Taxi Driver (1976)
Starring: Robert De Niro, Jodie Foster.
Taxi Driver is the definitive cinematic portrait of loneliness and alienation manifested as violence. It is as if director Martin Scorsese and screenwriter Paul Schrader had tapped into precisely the same source of psychological inspiration ("I just knew I had to make this film," Scorsese would later say), combined with a perfectly timed post-Watergate expression of personal, political, and societal anxiety. Robert De Niro, as the tortured, ex-Marine cab driver Travis Bickle, made movie history with his chilling performance as one of the most memorably intense and vividly realized characters ever committed to film.
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Thelma & Louise
(1991) Two bored women take off on an adventure, and find themselves in deeper than they ever expected. Starring Susan Sarandon, Geena Davis. DVD Version
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The Usual Suspects(1995) Starring Stephen Baldwin, Gabriel Byrne and Kevin Spacey. A most intriguing plot which winds and twists to a surprising conclusion. You will never forget the name "Kaiser Soze" after seeing this movie.
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True Romance
(1993) Starring Christian Slater, Patricia Arquette. This cameo filled movie is fast moving, and exceptionally violent. Two young lovers steal a suitcase of cocaine owned by the mob and the chase is on. Cameos by Gary Oldman, Brad Pitt, Dennis Hopper, Christopher Walken, and incredibly, Val Kilmer as Elvis.
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Witness
(1985) A tense murder mystery set in Philadelphia and Amish Lancaster County Pennsylvania. An Amish child witnesses a murder and the murderers are out to get him. Starring Harrison Ford, Kelly McGillis, Danny Glover.
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Cool Hand Luke (1967)
Starring: Paul Newman, George Kennedy.
Director: Stuart Rosenberg
Paul Newman gives one of the defining performances of his career, and cemented his place as a beautiful-rebel screen icon playing the stubbornly tough and independent title character in Cool Hand Luke.
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The Killing Fields (1984)
Starring: Sam Waterston, Haing S. Ngor.
This harrowing but rewarding 1984 drama concerns the real-life relationship between New York Times reporter Sidney Schanberg and his Cambodian assistant Dith Pran (Haing S. Ngor), the latter left at the mercy of the Khmer Rouge after Schanberg--who chose to stay after American evacuation but was booted out--failed to get him safe passage.
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The Grifters (1991)
Starring: Anjelica Huston, John Cusack. Director: Stephen Frears.
Icy cold adaptation of Jim Thompson's novel about con artists, with steely ``working-woman'' Huston coming back into the life of her grown son after many years of estrangement... and finding that he's taken up with a woman much like herself. Bleak and fascinating, with three first-rate performances.
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L.A. Confidential (1997)
Starring: Kevin Spacey, Russell Crowe. Director: Curtis Hanson
In a time when it seems that every other movie makes some claim to being a film noir, L.A. Confidential is the real thing--a gritty, sordid tale of sex, scandal, betrayal, and corruption of all sorts (police, political, press--and, of course, very personal) in 1940s Hollywood.
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