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This Danny Kaye swashbuckler spoof is driven by a complicated, yet ingenious, plot, highlighted by stellar dialogue.

King Roderick I (Cecil Parker, SWISS FAMILY ROBINSON) has usurped the throne of England from the rightful heir, an infant boy with the family birthmark of a purple pimpernel on his bottom. Hubert Hawkins (Kaye, THE SECRET LIFE OF WALTER MITTY) is part of the rebels trying to the get the true heir on the thrown. Disguised as the new court jester Giacomo, he infiltrates the palace to get the key to the secret passage into the castle.

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Like THE GODFATHER, BOOGIE NIGHTS brings a story of family into a sleazy world, but this time it’s the porn industry and not gangsters.

The most simple plot explanation is that the film follows the rise, fall and redemption of porn star Dirk Diggler (Mark Wahlberg, THE ITALIAN JOB). His real name is Eddie Adams and he comes from a family were his mother is verbally abusive. Rumors abound at the nightclub where he works that he has huge talent in his pants. Porn director Jack Horner (Burt Reynolds, DELIVERANCE) takes Eddie under his wing and turns him into Dirk. If Jack is Dirk’s mentor/father-figure than veteran porn star Amber Waves (Julianne Moore, FAR FROM HEAVEN) is his surrogate-mother/lover.

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This film has been on my list to see ever since it received such praise from Roger Ebert, who programmed it at his Overlooked Film Festival. It’s a wonderfully smart film filled with surprises throughout.

Didi (Lara Phillips, ROAD TO PERDITION) meets Mike aka Lucky (Michael Gilio, DON KING: ONLY IN AMERICA) at the Kwik Stop convenience store where she spots him shoplifting. She threatens to turn him in unless he gives her a ride home before he heads off to Los Angeles to start an acting career. Along the way, Didi convinces Mike to take her to LA with him.

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Silvia Broome (Nicole Kidman, THE HOURS) is an interpreter for the UN. One night she overhears a plot to assassinate a dictator named Zuwanie (Earl Cameron, THUNDERBALL), who will be visiting the UN for a speech. After she reports the incident, secret service agents Tobin Keller (Sean Penn, MYSTIC RIVER) and Dot Woods (Catherine Keener, BEING JOHN MALKOVICH) are assigned to the case. At first, Keller doesn’t believe Broome, because it seems kind of fishy that someone overhears an assassination plot in a language that she happens to know that most people in American couldn’t even understand a word of.

The film keeps the suspense level high throughout and the film is filled with strong central characters. The underlying message isn’t revolutionary, but it adds a topical intelligence to the film that has been lacking from thrillers since the 1970s.

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Based on a Nick Hornby book, this romantic comedy was directed by the Farrelly Brothers, who brought us THERE’S SOMETHING ABOUT MARY and SHALLOW HAL. The film is far more typical Hornby than Farrelly.

Ben (Jimmy Fallon, 2004’s TAXI) is a school teacher who meets Lindsey (Drew Barrymore, EVER AFTER) while he is taking his students on a field trip to where she works. She’s not really gung ho about the frumpish teacher at first but he wins her over with his charm and sweetness. Then he drops the big “relationship killer” on her. He’s a Red Sox fanatic, who has been religiously following the team since he was seven and has inherited season tickets from his uncle.
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From Ki-duk Kim, the director of SPRING, SUMMER, FALL, WINTER… AND SPRING, comes this haunting romance that plays like a silent film. It contains imagery that I will never forget. Or more accurately, never want to.

Tae-suk (Hyun-kyoon Lee) is a college grad who has disappeared into a simple existence of taping menus to doors and then breaking into the houses that don’t remove the menus when he returns later in the day. He’s not a criminal; he just needs a place to stay. He washes the clothes of the people who live there and often fixes or plays a trick with an item in the house. For instance, he changes a scale in one house to read weights much lower than they are.

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This film is definitely the most unique of the James Bond films. It was the first non-Sean Connery Bond film. Bond actually has a serious relationship in the film. For the most part the film plays the material straight. And the ending is quite unexpectedly sad.

George Lazenby (THE KENTUCKY FRIED MOVIE) plays James Bond and after a rough outing at the start of the film, he gets to utter the line, “This never happened to the other fella,” which has spurred fans to assume that James Bond is more of a persona that various spies don over the years. However, this reading of the line discounts his interaction with Miss Moneypenny (Lois Maxwell, THE HAUNTING), but I digress.
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As one of the most controversial films of all time, Martin Scorsese’s picture is a provocative study of the struggle between divinity and human nature within all of us.

In the film, Jesus (Willem Dafoe, THE ENGLISH PATIENT) is a carpenter, working on crosses, when he begins to hear the voice of God calling him. At first he is reluctant to believe that he is the messiah. His friend Judas (Harvey Keitel, THE PIANO) is part of a revolutionary movement against the Romans and when Jesus starts preaching peace to all, he is in conflict with his friend.

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This violent gangster/ Robin Hood story seems to have a point, but doesn’t want to make it clear to the audience. There’s nothing wrong with a film not wanting to be obvious, but this film is just thin.

Frank White (Christopher Walken, THE DEER HUNTER) is a drug kingpin who has just been released from prison. Prison seems to have changed him in various ways (which the film never makes clear). He sets out to take over all the crime operations in New York City and use the money to create a state-of-the-art hospital in a poor section of town. Good premise for a film, but this film doesn’t make it plausible.

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If you have not seen the original French version of this film then you might actually enjoy his remake. However, this film is a shining example of the bad Hollywood remake. It takes the original film’s premise removes the character moments, crams in a false love story and tacks on a happy ending.

The original was a character-based thriller — the remake is a serial killer cliché. The film begins with a brief introduction to Barney Cousins (Jeff Bridges, THE BIG LEBOWSKI), a frumpish science teacher who is meticulously planning a kidnapping and possible murder. Then we meet Jeff Harriman (Kiefer Sutherland, LOST BOYS) and Diane Shaver (Sandra Bullock, SPEED) as they are on the road on vacation.

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