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Welcome to Our Generation USA!

Below, we cover the Most Popular Movies of the
1990s (1990-1999)
that were not a Prequel or Sequel as covered under the Separate Web Page
"Popular Movie Franchises"
​

​Aladdin (1992)
​YouTube Video from Aladdin: Aladdin and Jasmine
Below: Collage of Images from Movie.
Aladdin is a 1992 American animated musical fantasy film produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation and released by Walt Disney Pictures. Aladdin is the 31st animated feature in the Walt Disney Animated Classics series, and was part of the Disney film era known as the Disney Renaissance.
 
The film was directed by John Musker and Ron Clements, and is based on the Arab-style folktale of Aladdin and the magic lamp from One Thousand and One Nights. The voice cast features Scott Weinger, Robin Williams, Linda Larkin, Jonathan Freeman, Frank Welker, Gilbert Gottfried, and Douglas Seale.
 
Lyricist Howard Ashman first pitched the idea, and the screenplay went through three drafts before then-Disney Studios president Jeffrey Katzenberg agreed to its production. The animators based their designs on the work of caricaturist Al Hirschfeld, and computers were used for both finishing the artwork and creating some animated elements. The musical score was written by Alan Menken and features six songs with lyrics written by both Ashman and Tim Rice, who took over after Ashman's death.
 
Aladdin was released on November 25, 1992 and was the most successful film of 1992, earning over $217 million in revenue in the United States, and over $504 million worldwide. The film also won many awards, most of them for its soundtrack.
 
Aladdin's success led to other material inspired by the film, including two direct-to-video sequels, The Return of Jafar and Aladdin and the King of Thieves; an animated television series; toys, video games, spin-offs, and Disney merchandise. A Broadway adaptation debuted in 2014.

Plot:
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Jafar, the Royal Vizier of the fictional city of Agrabah, placed near the Jordan River, and his parrot Iago seek a lamp hidden within the Cave of Wonders. They are told that only one person is worthy to enter: "the diamond in the rough", whom Jafar later identifies as Aladdin, an Agrabah street urchin.

Princess Jasmine of Agrabah, upset that the law requires her to marry a prince instead of one she loves, escapes the palace and meets Aladdin and his pet monkey, Abu. The palace guards capture Aladdin on Jafar's orders. Jasmine confronts Jafar to demand Aladdin's release, but he lies and says that Aladdin has been executed.

Disguised as an old man, Jafar frees Aladdin and Abu and brings them to the cave, ordering them to retrieve the lamp. Inside, Aladdin finds a magic carpet and obtains the lamp. Defying Aladdin's instruction to touch nothing but the lamp, Abu grabs a jewel. Aladdin, Abu, and the carpet rush to escape the cave as it collapses. Aladdin gives the lamp to Jafar, who throws both Aladdin and Abu back into the cave, though not before Abu steals the lamp back.

Trapped, Aladdin rubs the lamp and meets the Genie who lives inside it. The Genie grants Aladdin three wishes. Aladdin tricks the Genie into freeing them all from the cave without using a wish. He uses his first wish to assume the identity of a prince to woo Jasmine, and promises to use his third wish to free the Genie from servitude.

At Iago's suggestion, Jafar plots to become Sultan by marrying Jasmine. Aladdin, as "Prince Ali Ababwa", arrives in Agrabah with a large host, but Jasmine becomes angry when he discusses her fate with her father the Sultan and Jafar without her. As a means of apologizing, Aladdin takes Jasmine on a ride on the magic carpet. When she deduces his true identity, he convinces her that he only dresses as a peasant to escape the stresses of royal life.

After Aladdin brings Jasmine home, the palace guards capture Aladdin on Jafar's behest and throw him into the sea. The Genie appears, intuits that the unconscious Aladdin would want to use his second wish to be rescued, and saves him. Aladdin returns to the palace and exposes Jafar's evil plot. Jafar flees after spotting the lamp and thus discovering Aladdin's true identity.

Fearing that he will lose Jasmine if the truth is revealed, Aladdin breaks his promise and refuses to free the Genie. Iago steals the lamp, and Jafar becomes the Genie's new master. He uses his first two wishes to become Sultan and the world's most powerful sorcerer. He then exposes Aladdin's identity and exiles him, Abu, and the carpet to a frozen wasteland. They escape and return to the palace.

Jasmine tries to help Aladdin steal the lamp back, but Jafar notices and overpowers the heroes with his magic. Aladdin taunts Jafar for being less powerful than the Genie, tricking Jafar into using his last wish to become an all-powerful genie himself. Now bound to his new lamp, Jafar ends up trapped inside it, taking Iago with him.

With Agrabah returned to normal, the Genie banishes Jafar's lamp and advises Aladdin use his third wish to regain his royal title so the law will allow him to stay with Jasmine. Aladdin decides instead to keep his promise and free the Genie. Realizing Aladdin and Jasmine's love, the Sultan changes the law to allow Jasmine to marry whom she chooses. The Genie leaves to explore the world, while Aladdin and Jasmine start their new life together. 

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​Armageddon (1998)
YouTube Video from Armageddon
​Pictured from Left to Right: Steve Buscemi, Will Patton, Bruce Willis, Michael Clarke Duncan, Ben Affleck and Owen Wilson
Armageddon is a 1998 American science fiction disaster thriller film directed by Michael Bay, produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, and released by Touchstone Pictures. The film follows a group of blue-collar deep-core drillers sent by NASA to stop a gigantic asteroid on a collision course with Earth. It features an ensemble cast including Bruce Willis, Ben Affleck, Billy Bob Thornton, Liv Tyler, Owen Wilson, Will Patton, Peter Stormare, William Fichtner, Michael Clarke Duncan, Keith David, and Steve Buscemi.
 
Armageddon opened in theaters only two and a half months after the similar asteroid impact-based film Deep Impact, which starred Robert Duvall and Morgan Freeman. Armageddon fared better at the box office, while astronomers described Deep Impact as being more scientifically accurate. 
 
Armageddon was an international box-office success despite generally negative reviews from critics, becoming the highest-grossing film of 1998 worldwide, surpassing the Steven Spielberg war epic Saving Private Ryan.

Plot:
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A massive meteor shower destroys the orbiting Space Shuttle Atlantis, before entering the atmosphere and bombarding New York City, the East Coast, and Finland. NASA discovers that the meteoroids came from a rogue 6 mile wide asteroid with a Texas-sized surface when it passed through the asteroid belt, and the asteroid will impact Earth in 18 days, impacting into the Pacific Ocean, causing an extinction level event that will wipe out most life on the planet (same as when the 6 mile wide asteroid killed the dinosaurs).

NASA scientists, led by Dan Truman (Thornton) and with other space agencies, plan to drill a shaft into the asteroid of 800 ft., and then plant an H-bomb device into it that, when detonated, will split the asteroid in two, driving the halves apart so they both will fly safely past Earth.

NASA contacts Harry Stamper, considered the best deep sea oil driller in the world, for assistance and advice. Harry returns to NASA with his daughter Grace (Tyler) to keep her away from her new boyfriend, one of Harry's young and rebellious drillers, A.J. Frost (Affleck).

Harry and Grace learn about the asteroid and Harry agrees to do it, but explains he will need his team, including A.J., Charles "Chick" Chapel (Patton), Rockhound (Buscemi), Max Lennert (Campbell), Oscar Choice (Wilson), J. Otis "Bear" Curlene (Duncan) and Freddie Noonan (Brolly) to help carry out the mission. Once they have been rounded up and the situation is explained, they agree to help, but only after their list of unusual rewards and demands are met.

As NASA puts Harry and his crew through a short and rigorous 12-day astronaut training program at the Johnson Space Center, Harry and his team re-outfit the mobile drillers, named the "Armadillos", that will be used on the asteroid. When a meteorite from the asteroid wipes out the coastal area of Shanghai, NASA is forced to reveal their plans to the world before Harry and his crew go to Florida for training revisions and last-minute preparations.

Afterwards, two of the latest X-71 Space Shuttles, called the Freedom and the Independence, are launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral in Florida. Once in orbit, the shuttles dock with the 11-year old modified Russian space station Mir manned by Lev Andropov (Stormare) to refuel.

A fire breaks out during the transfer and the station is evacuated just before it explodes, with Lev and A. J. making a narrow escape. After 60 hours, the shuttles slingshot around the Moon in order to land on the backside of the asteroid. Traveling through the asteroid's debris field Independence's hull is punctured and crashes onto the rock and Oscar, Noonan, Air Force Colonel Davis, Air Force Captain Tucker and munitions specialist Lieutenant Halsey are killed during the crash. Grace, watching from NASA headquarters, is distraught by A.J.'s apparent death.

Freedom lands safely, but misses the target area, so the team must now drill through a 50 ft. thick crust of compressed iron ferrite rather than the planned softer stone, but still on the fault line parallel with the asteroids' course. When they fall behind schedule and communications are about to fail after one and a half hours, the military initiates "Secondary Protocol"; to remotely detonate the weapon on the asteroid's surface, which will not have any effect.

While Truman delays the military at Mission Control, Harry persuades the shuttle commander Colonel Willie Sharp to disarm the bomb so they can complete the drilling.

Distracted by Rockhound, who is having a mental breakdown, the Freedom’s Armadillo explodes when it strikes a methane gas pocket and is blown into space killing Max who was inside. Worldwide panic ensues as the mission is presumed lost and martial law is declared to evacuate people to underground shelters, just as another meteorite destroys most of Paris.

Suddenly, A.J., Lev, and Bear, having survived the Independence crash, arrive in the Independence's Armadillo in time to complete the drilling.

As the asteroid approaches Earth, it heats up, causing a dangerous rock storm that damages the bomb's remote trigger and kills munition specialist sergeant Gruber. They realize someone must stay behind to detonate it manually.

After all the non-flight crew volunteers, they draw straws, and A.J. is selected. As he and Harry exit the airlock, Harry rips off A.J.'s air hose and shoves him back inside, telling him he is the son he never had and would be proud to have him marry Grace. Harry prepares to detonate the bomb and contacts Grace to say his last goodbyes.

After the Freedom moves to a safe distance, Harry pushes the button at the last minute (after some difficulty) and his life passes before his eyes as he is killed and the asteroid is destroyed. It breaks in two and both halves fly past Earth. Freedom lands, and the surviving crew are treated as heroes. The film ends with A.J. and Grace's wedding, complete with photos of Harry and the other lost crew members present in memoriam. ​

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​Ghost (1990)
YouTube Video of the Best Scenes from Ghost
Pictured: Demi Moore and (as the ghost) Patrick Swayze
Ghost is a 1990 American romantic fantasy thriller film starring Patrick Swayze, Demi Moore, Tony Goldwyn, and Whoopi Goldberg. It was written by Bruce Joel Rubin and directed by Jerry Zucker.

The plot centers on a young woman in jeopardy (Moore), the ghost of her murdered lover (Swayze), and a reluctant psychic (Goldberg) who assists him in saving her although the psychic had previously been faking her powers.

The film was an outstanding commercial success, grossing over $505.7 million at the box office on a budget of $22 million. It was the highest-grossing film of 1990. Adjusted for inflation, as of 2015 Ghost was the 93rd-highest-grossing film of all time domestically.

The film was nominated for five Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Score and Best Film Editing. It won the awards for Best Supporting Actress for Goldberg and Best Original Screenplay. Swayze and Moore both received Golden Globe Award nominations for their performances, while Goldberg won the BAFTA, Golden Globe, and Saturn Awards in addition to the Oscar.

Plot:

Sam Wheat (Patrick Swayze), a banker, and Molly Jensen (Demi Moore), a potter, are a couple who renovate and move into an apartment in New York City with the help of Sam's friend and co-worker Carl Bruner (Tony Goldwyn).

One afternoon, Sam discovers unusually high balances in obscure bank accounts, but despite Carl's offer to help investigate, Sam decides to investigate on his own. That night while walking home together Sam and Molly are mugged by a street thug who pulls a gun and demand's Sam's wallet. Sam struggles with the attacker and is shot. After pursuing the street thug, Sam runs back to Molly and - seeing her crying over his dead body - discovers that he has died from the gunshot and has become a ghost.

Sam stays by the distraught Molly, trying to come to grips with his new condition, when Carl comes over and suggests Molly take a walk with him. Sam cannot bring himself to follow.
Moments later, the mugger enters the empty apartment and commences searching for something. When Molly returns, Sam scares their cat into attacking the thug, who flees. Sam follows the mugger to his apartment in Brooklyn and learns that the man's name is Willie Lopez and that Willie intends to return later to continue the search.

While walking back to the apartment, Sam happens upon the parlor of Oda Mae Brown (Whoopi Goldberg), a con artist posing as a medium. But when she can hear Sam, she realizes she has an actual gift. He convinces her of the danger that Molly is in and that Oda must warn her. Molly is skeptical about Oda until Oda relays information that only Sam could know.

After Molly tells Carl about Oda Mae, Carl - unaware that Sam is following - then goes to Willie's apartment. There, to Sam's surprise, he finds that Carl and Willie are working together, that Carl had a hand in Sam's death, and that he had needed to obtain Sam's book of passwords in order to access and launder the excess money from the bank accounts.

Molly goes to the police, who show her Oda Mae's record and convince her that Oda is a con artist.

Meeting a violent poltergeist in their ghostly realm, Sam learns from him how to manipulate physical objects from within the spirit realm. Sam then approaches Oda Mae and asks her not only to withdraw the money in the fake name that Carl had set up but then to give that $4 million to charity.

Sam tries to scare Carl away from Molly but she reveals to Carl that Oda Mae was at the bank withdrawing the money. Sam then prevents Oda Mae from being attacked by Willie, terrorizing the thug and then sending him into oncoming traffic where Willie is hit by a car and killed. As Willie's ghost is grabbed by creatures from the shadows that drag him to Hell, Sam and Oda Mae return to the apartment where - by levitating a penny into Molly's hand - he convinces Molly that Oda Mae is telling the truth about him.

Oda Mae allows Sam to possess her body so he and Molly can share a slow dance, but Carl interrupts them and Molly and Oda Mae flee onto the fire escape. Carl chases the women to a loft under construction and catches Oda Mae.

When Molly comes to save her, she is grabbed and held hostage. Sam disarms Carl and chases him toward a window. He throws a suspended hook at Sam; it misses, swings back, and shatters the glass.

As Carl tries to climb through the window a sharp shard of broken glass falls, impaling him through the chest. Carl's ghost rises from his body and, as Willie had been, he is grabbed by the creatures from the shadows and is carried to Hell.

Sam asks if the women are all right. Miraculously, Molly can now hear him. A heavenly light shines in the room, illuminating Sam in sight of both of them. Realizing that it is his time to go, he and Molly share tearful goodbyes. Oda Mae tells him that he is being called home, and he thanks her for her help.

Sam then walks into the light and onward to Heaven.

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​Independence Day (1996)
YouTube Video from the movie Independence Day
Independence Day is a 1996 American epic science fiction disaster film co-written and directed by Roland Emmerich.

The film stars Will Smith, Bill Pullman, Jeff Goldblum, Mary McDonnell, Judd Hirsch, Margaret Colin, Randy Quaid, Robert Loggia, James Rebhorn, Vivica A. Fox, and Harry Connick, Jr. 

The film focuses on a disparate group of people who converge in the Nevada desert in the aftermath of a destructive alien attack and, along with the rest of the human population, participate in a last-chance counterattack on July 4, the same date as the Independence Day holiday in the United States. The screenplay was written by Emmerich and producer Dean Devlin.

While promoting Stargate in Europe, Emmerich came up with the idea for the film when fielding a question about his own belief in the existence of alien life. He and Devlin decided to incorporate a large-scale attack when noticing that aliens in most invasion films travel long distances in outer space only to remain hidden when reaching Earth. Shooting began in July 1995 in New York City, and the film was officially completed on June 20, 1996.

The film was scheduled for release on July 3, 1996, but due to its high level of anticipation, many theaters began showing it on the evening of July 2, 1996, the same day the story of the film begins.

The film grossed over $817.4 million worldwide, becoming 1996's highest-grossing film and the second highest-grossing film of all time at that point. It is currently the 51st-highest-grossing film of all time and was at the forefront of the large-scale disaster film and science fiction resurgences of the mid-to-late-1990s.

The film received positive reviews upon its release, with critics mainly praising its groundbreaking special effects, musical score, and acting (particularly the performances of Smith and Goldblum), though some criticized its storyline and character development. It won the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects, while it was nominated for Best Sound Mixing.

Plot:

On July 2, 1996, an enormous alien mother ship one fourth the size of the Moon enters orbit around Earth, deploying 36 smaller spacecraft, each 15 miles (24 km) wide, that take positions over Earth's major cities, the White House, and other strategic locations. David Levinson (Goldblum), an MIT-trained satellite expert, intercepts a signal embedded in global satellite transmissions that he determines is a timer counting down to a coordinated attack.

With the help of his estranged wife, White House Communications Director Constance Spano (Colin), Levinson and his father Julius (Hirsch) gain access to the Oval Office and warn President Whitmore (Pullman) that the aliens are hostile.

Whitmore orders large-scale evacuations, but it is too late; the timer reaches zero and the ships activate devastating directed-energy weapons. Whitmore, the Levinsons, and a few others narrowly escape aboard Air Force One as the White House is destroyed along with cities and military installations around the world.

On July 3, a squadron of F/A-18 Hornets assaults a destroyer ship near the ruins of Los Angeles, but the craft is protected by a force field. Dozens of small "attacker" ships, also protected by force fields, are launched by the destroyer, and a dogfight ensues; the fighter squadron is wiped out.

Captain Steven Hiller (Smith) survives by luring his attacker to the Grand Canyon and sacrificing his plane, forcing the alien to crash-land. He subdues the injured alien pilot and flags down a convoy of mobile homes fleeing the devastation, hitching a ride with Vietnam War veteran and alien abduction victim Russell Casse (Quaid).

They transport the unconscious alien to nearby Area 51, where Whitmore and his people have landed. The government has known about these aliens since 1947, when one of their ships crashed in Roswell. Area 51 houses a refurbished attacker ship and three alien corpses recovered from that crash.

As eccentric scientist, Brackish Okun, examines the alien brought in by Hiller; it regains consciousness. After knocking Okun senseless, it invades his mind and uses his vocal cords to communicate with Whitmore. Whitmore asks what the aliens want humans to do, to which it replies "Die", launching a psychic attack against him.

As Whitmore thrashes in agony on the floor, Whitmore's security detail kills the alien. Whitmore says during the psychic attack, he saw that the aliens travel from planet to planet "like locusts", destroying all native life and stripping the planet's resources before moving on. Whitmore reluctantly authorizes a nuclear attack; a B-2 Spirit fires a nuclear cruise missile at a destroyer near Houston, but the destroyer's force field holds and the ship is undamaged.

Levinson realizes that the key to defeating the aliens is deactivating their force fields, and devises a way to do it using a computer virus, but to upload the virus, he must infiltrate the mothership.

He proposes using the captured attacker ship to gain entry, and once the force fields are disarmed, plant a nuclear bomb on board. Hiller volunteers to pilot the attacker. He and Levinson succeed in entering the mothership, uploading the virus, and then deploying the nuclear device, destroying the mothership as they narrowly escape.

With the alien force fields disabled, Whitmore orders an attack on a destroyer ship bearing down on Area 51. With available military pilots in short supply, Whitmore and Casse join the strike force. Although the alien ship is unprotected, the attacking fighters exhaust their missiles without disabling it.

The aliens prepare to fire their primary weapon. Casse has one missile left, but it jams; he flies his plane into the directed-energy weapon port, kamikaze-style. The resulting explosion destroys the alien ship. The Americans share this critical vulnerability with the rest of the world's countries, enabling them to defeat the other destroyer ships.

People around the world rejoice against a backdrop of the smoking wreckage of the alien destroyers, as the wreckage of the mothership, burning up as it enters the atmosphere, creates a spectacular "fireworks" display.

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​Dances with Wolves (1990)
YouTube Video: Dances with Wolves - Trailer
Pictured: Theatrical Poster
Dances with Wolves is a 1990 American epic Western film directed, produced by, and starring, Kevin Costner. It is a film adaptation of the 1988 book of the same name by Michael Blake and tells the story of a Union Army lieutenant who travels to the American frontier to find a military post, and his dealings with a group of Lakota Indians.

Costner developed the film with an initial budget of $15 million. Dances with Wolves had high production values and won seven Academy Awards including Best Picture and the Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture – Drama. Box office receipts amounted to   $424.2 million.

Much of the dialogue is spoken in Lakota with English subtitles. It was shot in South Dakota and Wyoming, and translated by Albert White Hat, the chair of the Lakota Studies Department at Sinte Gleska University.

The film is credited as a leading influence for the revitalization of the Western genre of film-making in Hollywood. In 2007, Dances with Wolves was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
​
Plot:

In 1863, fictional character First Lieutenant John J. Dunbar is wounded in the American Civil War at fictional St. David's field Tennessee. Choosing suicide in battle over amputation of his leg, he takes a horse and rides up to and along the Confederate front lines.

Despite numerous pot shots, the Confederates fail to shoot him, and while they are distracted, the Union army successfully attack the line. Dunbar survives, receives a citation for bravery, and proper medical care.

He recovers fully and is awarded Cisco, the horse who carried him, and his choice of posting. Dunbar requests a transfer to the western frontier so he can see it before it disappears. Dunbar is transferred to Fort Hays, a large fort presided over by a mentally ill and suicidal major who despises Dunbar's enthusiasm but agrees to post him to the furthest outpost they have, Fort Sedgewick, and kills himself shortly afterwards.

Dunbar travels with Timmons, a mule wagon provisioner; they arrive to find the fort deserted and in poor condition. Despite the threat of nearby Indian tribes, Dunbar elects to stay and man the post himself. He begins rebuilding and restocking the fort and prefers the solitude afforded him, recording many of his observations in his diary.

Timmons is killed by Pawnee Indians on the journey back to Ft. Hays; his death together with that of the major who had sent them there prevents other soldiers from knowing of Dunbar's assignment to Ft. Sedgewick, and no other soldiers arrive to reinforce the post.
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Dunbar initially encounters his Sioux neighbors when attempts are made to steal his horse and intimidate him. Deciding that being a target is a poor prospect, he decides to seek out the Sioux camp himself, and attempt dialogue, rather than wait.

On his way he comes across Stands With A Fist, the white adopted daughter of the tribe's medicine man Kicking Bird, who is attempting suicide in mourning for her husband. Dunbar brings her back to the Sioux to recover, and some of the tribe begin to respect him.

Eventually, Dunbar establishes a rapport with Kicking Bird and the warrior Wind In His Hair, initially visiting each other's camps. The language barrier frustrates them, and Stands With A Fist acts as interpreter, although only with difficulty remembering English from her early years before her family died during a Pawnee raid.

Dunbar finds that what he had been told of the tribe was generally untrue, and develops a growing respect and appreciation of their lifestyle and customs. Learning their language, he is accepted as an honored guest by the Sioux after he tells them of a migrating herd of buffalo and participates in the hunt.

When at Fort Sedgewick, Dunbar also befriends a wolf he dubs "Two Socks" for its white forepaws. Observing Dunbar and Two Socks chasing each other, the Sioux give him the name "Dances With Wolves." During this time, Dunbar also forges a romantic relationship with Stands With A Fist and helps defend the village from an attack by the rival Pawnee tribe. Dunbar eventually wins Kicking Bird's approval to marry Stands With A Fist, and abandons Fort Sedgewick.

Because of the growing Pawnee and white threat, Chief Ten Bears decides to move the tribe to its winter camp. Dunbar decides to accompany them but must first retrieve his diary from Fort Sedgewick as he realizes that it would provide the army with the means to find the tribe. However, when he arrives he finds the fort reoccupied by the U.S. Army.

Because of his Sioux clothing, the soldiers open fire, killing Cisco and capturing Dunbar, arresting him as a traitor. Senior officers interrogate him, but Dunbar cannot prove his story, as a corporal has found and discarded his diary. Having refused to serve as an interpreter to the tribes, Dunbar is charged with desertion and transported back east as a prisoner. Soldiers of the escort shoot Two Socks when the wolf attempts to follow Dunbar, despite Dunbar's attempts to intervene.

Eventually, the Sioux track the convoy, killing the soldiers and freeing Dunbar. They assert that they do not see him as a white man, but rather, as a Sioux called Dances With Wolves. At the winter camp, Dunbar decides to leave with Stands With A Fist, since his continuing presence will endanger the tribe. As they leave, Wind In His Hair shouts to Dunbar, reminding him that he is Dunbar's friend, a contrast to their original meeting where he shouted at Dunbar in hostility.

U.S. troops are seen searching the mountains but are unable to locate them, while a lone wolf howls in the distance. An epilogue states that thirteen years later the last remnants of the free Sioux were subjugated to the American government, ending the conquest of the Western frontier states and the livelihoods of the tribes on the Great Plains.

Cast:


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​Forrest Gump (1994) Pictured: Tom Hanks as Forrest Gump; RIGHT: running across America; and (superimposed through Computer-generated-Imagery or "CGI") with John F. Kennedy
Forrest Gump is a 1994 American epic romantic-comedy-drama film based on the 1986 novel of the same name by Winston Groom.

The film was directed by Robert Zemeckis and stars Tom Hanks, Robin Wright, Gary Sinise, Mykelti Williamson, and Sally Field.

The story depicts several decades in the life of Forrest Gump, a slow-witted but kind-hearted, good-natured and athletically prodigious man from Alabama who witnesses, and in some cases influences, some of the defining events of the latter half of the 20th century in the United States; more specifically, the period between Forrest's birth in 1944 and 1982.

The film differs substantially from Winston Groom's novel, including Gump's personality and several events that were depicted.

Principal photography took place in late 1993, mainly in Georgia, North Carolina, and South Carolina. Extensive visual effects were used to incorporate the protagonist into archived footage and to develop other scenes.

A comprehensive soundtrack was featured in the film, using music intended to pinpoint specific time periods portrayed on screen. Its commercial release made it a top-selling soundtrack, selling over twelve million copies worldwide.

Released in the United States on July 6, 1994, Forrest Gump became a commercial success as the top grossing film in North America released in that year, being the first major success for Paramount Pictures since the studio's sale to Viacom, earning over US$677 million worldwide during its theatrical run.

In 1995 it won the Academy Awards for, 
  • Best Picture, 
  • Best Director for Robert Zemeckis, 
  • Best Actor for Tom Hanks, 
  • Best Adapted Screenplay for Eric Roth, 
  • Best Visual Effects,
  • and Best Film Editing.

It also garnered multiple other awards and nominations, including Golden Globes, People's Choice Awards, and Young Artist Awards, among others.

Since the film's release varying interpretations have been made of the film's protagonist and its political symbolism. In 1996, a themed restaurant, Bubba Gump Shrimp Company, opened based on the film and has since expanded to multiple locations worldwide.

The scene of Gump running across the country (see above picture on left) is often referred to when real-life people attempt the feat. 

In 2011, the Library of Congress selected Forrest Gump for preservation in the United States National Film Registry as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

​Plot:

In 1981, Forrest Gump watches a feather fall from the sky at a bus stop in Savannah, Georgia.

He recounts his life story to strangers who sit next to him on the bench, recounting his childhood in the town of Greenbow, Alabama.

On his first day of school, Forrest meets a girl named Jenny Curran (Robin Wright), whose life is followed in parallel to Gump's at times. Despite his below average intelligence quotient, his ability to run at lightning speed (despite being a victim of polio as a young child) gets him into college on a football scholarship.

After his college graduation, he enlists in the army, where he makes friends with fellow recruit Bubba (Mykelti Williamson), who convinces Gump to go into the shrimping business with him when the war is over. Despite his low intelligence, Gump manages to excel at drill exercises. They are sent to Vietnam, and during an ambush, Bubba is killed in action.

Gump ends up saving much of his platoon, including his Lieutenant, Dan Taylor (Gary Sinise), who loses both his legs as a result of injuries. Gump is awarded the Medal of Honor for his heroism.

While Gump is in recovery for a shot to his buttocks, he discovers his uncanny ability for ping-pong, eventually gaining popularity and rising to celebrity status, later playing ping-pong competitively against Chinese teams in ping-pong diplomacy. At an anti-war rally in Washington, D.C., Gump reunites with Jenny, who has been living a counterculture lifestyle.

Returning home, Gump endorses a company that makes ping-pong paddles, earning himself US $25,000, which he uses to buy a shrimping boat, fulfilling his promise to Bubba.

Lieutenant Dan joins Gump, and although they initially have little success, after finding their boat the only surviving one in the area after Hurricane Carmen, they begin to pull in huge amounts of shrimp. They use their income to buy an entire fleet of shrimp boats. Lieutenant Dan invests the money in Apple and Gump is financially secure for the rest of his life. He returns home to see his mother's last days.

One day, Jenny returns to visit Gump and he proposes marriage to her. She declines, though feels obliged to prove her love to him by having sex with him. She leaves early the next morning. On a whim, Gump elects to go for a run. Seemingly capriciously, he decides to keep running across the country several times, over three and a half years, becoming famous in the process.

In present-day, Gump reveals that he is waiting at the bus stop because he received a letter from Jenny who, having seen him run on television, asks him to visit her. Once he is reunited with Jenny, she introduces him to his son, also named Forrest.

Jenny tells Gump she is suffering from an unknown virus (possibly HIV, though this is never specified). Together the three move back to Greenbow, Alabama. Jenny and Forrest finally marry but she dies soon afterward.

Father and son are waiting for the school bus on little Forrest's first day of school. Opening the book his son is taking to school, the white feather from the beginning of the film is caught on a breeze and drifts skyward.

Box office performance: 

Produced on a budget of $55 million, Forrest Gump opened in 1,595 theaters in its first weekend of domestic release, earning $24,450,602. 

The film placed first in the weekend's box office, narrowly beating The Lion King, which was in its fourth week of release.

For the first ten weeks of its release, the film held the number one position at the box office. The film remained in theaters for 42 weeks, earning $329.7 million in the United States and Canada, making it the fourth-highest grossing film at that time. 

The film took 66 days to surpass $250 million and was the fastest grossing Paramount film to pass $100 million, $200 million, and $300 million in box office receipts (at the time of its release).

The film had gross receipts of $329,694,499 in the U.S. and Canada and $347,693,217 in international markets for a total of $677,387,716 worldwide.

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The Big Lebowski (1998)
YouTube Video: "The Big Lebowski" Official Trailer
Pictured: Movie Theatrical Release Folder
The Big Lebowski is a 1998 American crime comedy film, written, produced, and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen. It stars Jeff Bridges as Jeffrey "The Dude" Lebowski, a Los Angeles slacker and avid bowler.

After he is assaulted as a result of mistaken identity, The Dude learns of a millionaire also named Jeffrey Lebowski who was the intended victim. When the millionaire Lebowski's trophy wife is kidnapped, he commissions The Dude to deliver the ransom to secure her release.

The plan goes awry when the Dude's friend Walter Sobchak (John Goodman) schemes to keep the full ransom. Julianne Moore and Steve Buscemi also star, with: Appearing in supporting roles.

The film is loosely inspired by the work of Raymond Chandler. Joel Coen stated: "We wanted to do a Chandler kind of story – how it moves episodically, and deals with the characters trying to unravel a mystery, as well as having a hopelessly complex plot that's ultimately unimportant."

The original score was composed by Carter Burwell, a longtime collaborator of the Coen Brothers.

The Big Lebowski was a disappointment at the U.S. box office and received mixed reviews at the time of its release. However, reviews have tended towards the positive over time and the film has become a cult favorite, noted for its idiosyncratic characters, dream sequences, unconventional dialogue, and eclectic soundtrack. 

In 2014, the Library of Congress added The Big Lebowski to the National Film Registry of films deemed to be of "cultural, historical, or aesthetic significance".

Plot:

In 1991 Los Angeles, slacker Jeff "the Dude" Lebowski (Jeff Bridges) is assaulted in his home by two hired goons (Mark Pellegrino and Philip Moon) who demand money that the wife of a Jeffrey Lebowski owes to a man named Jackie Treehorn (Ben Gazzara). The two soon realize they have attacked the wrong Jeffrey Lebowski and leave, but not before one of them urinates on the Dude's rug.

The Dude meets his bowling friends, the timid Donny (Steve Buscemi) and the temperamental Vietnam veteran Walter Sobchak (John Goodman). Encouraged by Walter, the Dude approaches the other Jeffrey Lebowski (David Huddleston), the eponymous "Big Lebowski", a cantankerous elderly millionaire in a wheelchair, to seek compensation for his ruined rug.

This request is promptly refused. He craftily steals one of Lebowski's rugs by telling Brandt (Philip Seymour Hoffman), Lebowski's sycophantic assistant, that his boss told him to take any rug in the house. The Dude subsequently meets Bunny (Tara Reid), Lebowski's young nymphomanic trophy wife.

Days later, Lebowski contacts the Dude stating that Bunny has been kidnapped. Lebowski wants the Dude to deliver a briefcase containing a million dollar ransom and see if he can recognize the culprits.

Later, a different pair of thugs appear in the Dude's apartment, knock him unconscious, and take Lebowski's rug. When Bunny's kidnappers call to arrange delivery of the ransom, Walter suggests they give the kidnappers a ringer instead, namely a briefcase filled with dirty laundry. The kidnappers grab the ringer and leave. Later that night, the Dude's car is stolen, with the real ransom briefcase still inside.

Jeffrey Lebowski's daughter Maude (Julianne Moore) contacts the Dude and reveals she hired the thugs who took the rug, explaining that Bunny is one of Jackie Treehorn's porn stars.

She reckons that Bunny "kidnapped" herself and asks the Dude to recover the ransom which Lebowski illegally withdrew from the family's foundation. Lebowski is angry that the Dude failed to deliver the ransom and shows him what is apparently Bunny's severed toe, delivered by the kidnappers.

Later, a gang of German nihilists (Peter Stormare, Torsten Voges, and Flea) invade the Dude's apartment and threaten him, identifying themselves as the kidnappers. Maude says the German nihilists are actually Bunny's friends.

The Dude is forcibly brought before Treehorn, who asks about the whereabouts of Bunny and says he wants the money she owes him. He drugs the Dude's White Russian cocktail, leading to an unconscious dream sequence involving Maude and bowling.

The Dude comes to in police custody, where he is verbally and physically assaulted by the Malibu police chief. During the cab ride home, the Dude gets thrown out after he asks the cab driver to simply change the radio station. A red sports car zooms past and the viewer sees that Bunny is driving, with all her toes intact.

The Dude finds his bungalow completely trashed and is greeted by Maude, who seduces him. He figures that Treehorn drugged him so that his goons could look for the ransom money at the Dude's home.

After Maude has sex with him, she says she hopes to conceive a child; the Dude is about to protest the idea of being a father but Maude tells him that he doesn't have to have a hand in the child's upbringing. Maude also explains that her father has no money: her mother was the wealthy one and she left her money exclusively to the family charity.

The Dude later tells Walter that he now understands the whole story: when Lebowski—who apparently hated his wife—heard that Bunny was kidnapped, he withdrew money from the foundation, kept it for himself, and gave the Dude a briefcase without any money in it, saying that it contained a million dollar ransom. The kidnapping was also a ruse: when Bunny took an unannounced trip, her friends—the nihilists—purported a kidnapping to be able to extort money from Lebowski.

They confront the Big Lebowski, who refuses to admit responsibility, but is thrown out of his wheelchair by Walter, who believes that he's faking his paralyses.

The affair apparently over, the Dude and his bowling teammates return to the bowling alley. When they leave, they are confronted in the parking lot by the nihilists who have set the Dude's car on fire. They once again demand the ransom money. After hearing what the Dude and Walter know, the nihilists try to mug them anyway.

Walter violently overcomes all three, biting the ear off one of them. However, in the excitement, Donny suffers a fatal heart attack.

Walter and the Dude go to the beach to scatter Donny's ashes. Walter turns an informal eulogy into a tribute to the Vietnam War. After accidentally covering the Dude with Donny's ashes, and after a brief argument, Walter hugs him and says, "Come on. [*?'*], man. Let's go bowling." At the bowling alley, the story's narrator (Sam Elliott) tells the viewer that Maude is pregnant with a "little Lebowski" and expresses his hope that the Dude and Walter will win the bowling tournament.

The Cast:
  • Jeff Bridges as Jeffrey "The Dude" Lebowski. Bridges had heard or was told by the Coen brothers that they had written a screenplay for him.
  • John Goodman as Walter Sobchak; a Vietnam veteran and bowling partner and friend of "The Dude." Walter was based, in part, on screenwriter and director John Milius.
  • Julianne Moore as Maude Lebowski; Jeffrey "The Big" Lebowski's daughter, a feminist and an avant-garde artist.
  • Steve Buscemi as Theodore Donald "Donny" Kerabatsos; a bowling partner and friend of "The Dude." Walter's repeated response, "Shut the fuck up, Donny!" is a reference to Fargo, in which Buscemi's character was constantly talking and interrupting conversations when he is not paying attention to the story.
  • David Huddleston as Jeffrey "The Big" Lebowski; a millionaire philanthropist whom "The Dude" is mistaken for
  • Philip Seymour Hoffman as Brandt; Jeffrey "The Big" Lebowski's executive assistant
  • Tara Reid as Bunny Lebowski; Jeffrey "The Big" Lebowski's blonde 20s-something trophy wife and former porn video performer (“Log Jammin’”) for Jackie Treehorn Productions. According to Reid, Charlize Theron also tried out for the role.
  • Philip Moon as Woo; a Jackie Treehorn thug
  • Mark Pellegrino as the Blonde Treehorn thug
  • Peter Stormare, Torsten Voges, and Flea as Uli Kunkel/Karl Hungus, Franz, and Kieffer, the German nihilists; Uli originated on the set of Fargo between Ethan Coen and Stormare, who often spoke in a mock German accent.
  • Jimmie Dale Gilmore as Smokey; a hippie bowler in the league whom Walter threatens at gun-point over an attempt to mark his frame an eight despite letting his foot move over the alley line
  • Jack Kehler as Marty; The Dude's landlord, who is also a performance artist
  • John Turturro as Jesus Quintana. The Coen brothers let Turturro come up with a lot of his own ideas for the character, like towel-shining the bowling ball and the scene where he dances backwards from his bowling alley line, which he says was inspired by Muhammad Ali.
  • David Thewlis as Knox Harrington, an avant garde videographer-friend of Maude Lebowski
  • Sam Elliott as The Stranger, a smooth-talking urban cowboy who also serves as the narrator of the film
  • Ben Gazzara as big time porn video producer Jackie Treehorn, whom Bunny Lebowski owes money
  • Jon Polito as Da Fino, a private dick who mistakes the Dude for a "brother shamus", hired by Bunny's family to return her to them
  • Aimee Mann as Nihilist Woman/Franz's Girlfriend who donates her amputated green nail-polished little toe (proof of Bunny Lebowski’s kidnapping). Mann is most well known as a singer/songwriter, and the creator of the soundtrack for PT Anderson's film Magnolia.

Reception:

The Big Lebowski received its world premiere at the 1998 Sundance Film Festival on January 18, 1998 at the 1,300-capacity Eccles Theater. It was also screened at the 48th Berlin International Film Festival before opening in North America on March 6, 1998 in 1,207 theaters.

It grossed USD $5.5 million on its opening weekend, grossing US$17 million in the United States, just above its US$15 million budget. The film's worldwide gross outside of the US was $28 million, bringing its worldwide gross to $46,189,568.
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Many critics and audiences have likened the film to a modern Western, while many others dispute this, or liken it to a crime novel that revolves around mistaken identity plot devices.

Peter Howell, in his review for the Toronto Star, wrote: "It's hard to believe that this is the work of a team that won an Oscar last year for the original screenplay of Fargo. There's a large amount of profanity in the movie, which seems a weak attempt to paper over dialogue gaps." Howell revised his opinion in a later review, and more recently stated that "it may just be my favourite Coen Bros. film."

Todd McCarthy in Variety magazine wrote: "One of the film's indisputable triumphs is its soundtrack, which mixes Carter Burwell's original score with classic pop tunes and some fabulous covers." USA Today gave the film three out of four stars and felt that the Dude was "too passive a hero to sustain interest", but that there was "enough startling brilliance here to suggest that, just like the Dude, those smarty-pants Coens will abide".

In his review for the Washington Post, Desson Howe praised the Coens and "their inspired, absurdist taste for weird, peculiar Americana – but a sort of neo-Americana that is entirely invented – the Coens have defined and mastered their own bizarre subgenre. No one does it like them and, it almost goes without saying, no one does it better."

Janet Maslin praised Bridges' performance in her review for The New York Times: "Mr. Bridges finds a role so right for him that he seems never to have been anywhere else. Watch this performance to see shambling executed with nonchalant grace and a seemingly out-to-lunch character played with fine comic flair." 

Andrew Sarris, in his review for the New York Observer, wrote: "The result is a lot of laughs and a feeling of awe toward the craftsmanship involved. I doubt that there'll be anything else like it the rest of this year." 

In a five star review for Empire Magazine, Ian Nathan wrote: "For those who delight in the Coens' divinely abstract take on reality, this is pure nirvana" and "In a perfect world all movies would be made by the Coen brothers." 

Roger Ebert gave the film three stars out of four, describing it as "weirdly engaging". In a 2010 review, Ebert gave The Big Lebowski four stars out of four and added the film to his "Great Movies" list.

However, Jonathan Rosenbaum wrote in the Chicago Reader: "To be sure, The Big Lebowski is packed with show-offy film-making and as a result is pretty entertaining. But insofar as it represents a moral position–and the Coens' relative styling of their figures invariably does–it's an elitist one, elevating salt-of-the-earth types like Bridges and Goodman ... over everyone else in the movie." 

Dave Kehr, in his review for the Daily News, criticized the film's premise as a "tired idea, and it produces an episodic, unstrung film".

The Guardian criticized the film as "a bunch of ideas shoveled into a bag and allowed to spill out at random. The film is infuriating, and will win no prizes. But it does have some terrific jokes."

The Big Lebowski currently holds an approval rating of 80% on Rotten Tomatoes, based on 87 reviews, with an average rating of 7.2/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Typically stunning visuals and sharp dialogue from the Coen Brothers, brought to life with strong performances from Goodman and Bridges."

Legacy:

Since its original release, The Big Lebowski has become a cult classic. Ardent fans of the film call themselves "achievers". Steve Palopoli wrote about the film's emerging cult status in July 2002. He first realized that the film had a cult following when he attended a midnight screening in 2000 at the New Beverly Cinema in Los Angeles and witnessed people quoting dialogue from the film to each other. 

Soon after the article appeared, the programmer for a local midnight film series in Santa Cruz decided to screen The Big Lebowski and on the first weekend they had to turn away several hundred people. The theater held the film over for six weeks, which had never happened before.

Stars Julianne Moore and Jeff Bridges at the 2011 Lebowski Fest:

An annual festival, Lebowski Fest, began in Louisville, Kentucky, United States in 2002 with 150 fans showing up, and has since expanded to several other cities. 

The festival's main event each year is a night of unlimited bowling with various contests including costume, trivia, hardest- and farthest-traveled contests. Held over a weekend, events typically include a pre-fest party with bands the night before the bowling event as well as a day-long outdoor party with bands, vendor booths and games.

Various celebrities from the film have even attended some of the events, including Jeff Bridges who attended the Los Angeles event. The British equivalent, inspired by Lebowski Fest, is known as The Dude Abides and is held in London.

​Dudeism, a religion devoted largely to spreading the philosophy and lifestyle of the film's main character, was founded in 2005. Also known as The Church of the Latter-Day Dude, the organization has ordained over 220,000 "Dudeist Priests" all over the world via its website.
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Two species of African spider are named after the film and main character: Anelosimus biglebowski and Anelosimus dude, both described in 2006. Additionally, an extinct Permian conifer genus is named after the film in honor of its creators. The first species described within this genus in 2007 is based on 270-million-year-old plant fossils from Texas, and is called Lebowskia grandifolia.

Entertainment Weekly ranked it 8th on their Funniest Movies of the Past 25 Years list. The film was also ranked No. 34 on their list of "The Top 50 Cult Films" and ranked No. 15 on the magazine's "The Cult 25: The Essential Left-Field Movie Hits Since '83" list. In addition, the magazine also ranked The Dude No. 14 in their "The 100 Greatest Characters of the Last 20 Years" poll.

The film was also nominated for the prestigious Grand Prix of the Belgian Film Critics Association.

The Big Lebowski was voted as the 10th best film set in Los Angeles in the last 25 years by a group of Los Angeles Times writers and editors with two criteria: "The movie had to communicate some inherent truth about the L.A. experience, and only one film per director was allowed on the list."

Empire magazine ranked Walter Sobchak No. 49 and the Dude No. 7 in their "The 100 Greatest Movie Characters" poll. Roger Ebert added The Big Lebowski to his list of "Great Movies" in March 2010.

John Turturro has suggested a number of times that he would be interested in doing a spin-off film using his character Jesus Quintana. If the project got off the ground, the Coens would not direct it but may have a part in writing it.

See also:






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​Fargo (1996)
Fargo is a 1996 American dark comedy crime thriller film written, produced, edited, and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen. It stars Frances McDormand as a pregnant Minnesota police chief investigating roadside homicides that ensue after a struggling car salesman (William H. Macy) hires two criminals (Steve Buscemi and Peter Stormare) to kidnap his wife in order to extort a hefty ransom from his wealthy father-in-law (Harve Presnell).

Fargo premiered at the 1996 Cannes Film Festival where Joel Coen won the festival's Prix de la mise en scène (Best Director Award) and the film was nominated for the Palme d'Or. 

A critical and commercial success,Fargo received seven nominations at the 69th Academy Awards, including Best Picture, and won two awards: McDormand won Best Actress and the Coens won Best Writing (Original Screenplay).

In 2006, the film was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the Library of Congress and inducted into the United States National Film Registry for preservation, making it one of six films to have been preserved in their first year of eligibility. The American Film Institute named it one of the 100 greatest American movies of all time in 1998.

Plot:

In 1987, Minneapolis car salesman Jerry Lundegaard (Macy) is desperate for money; repayment is due on a large GMAC loan that he fraudulently collateralized with nonexistent dealership vehicles.

Dealership mechanic Shep Proudfoot (Steve Reevis), an ex-convict, refers him to an old partner in crime, Gaear Grimsrud (Stormare). Lundegaard travels to Fargo, North Dakota, where he hires Grimsrud and Carl Showalter (Buscemi) to kidnap his wife, Jean (Kristin Rudrüd), and extort a ransom from his wealthy father-in-law and boss, Wade Gustafson (Presnell). He gives the men a new car from his dealership's lot, and promises to split the $80,000 ransom with them.

Lundegaard pitches Gustafson a lucrative real estate deal; when Gustafson agrees to front the money, Lundegaard attempts to call off the kidnapping, but it is already in motion.

Lundegaard then learns that Gustafson plans to take the deal solely for himself, leaving Lundegaard a paltry finder's fee. Showalter and Grimsrud kidnap Jean in Minneapolis as planned. While transporting her to their remote cabin hideout, a state trooper pulls them over outside Brainerd, Minnesota for driving without the required temporary tags over the dealership plates.

After Showalter tries (and fails) to bribe the trooper, Grimsrud kills him. When two passing eyewitnesses see Showalter disposing of the body, Grimsrud kills them as well.

The following morning, Brainerd police chief Marge Gunderson, who is seven months pregnant, initiates a homicide investigation. Records from the murdered trooper's last traffic stop, along with a phone call to Proudfoot, placed at a local truck stop by two suspicious men, lead her to Lundegaard's dealership, where she questions Lundegaard and Proudfoot. While in Minneapolis, Gunderson reconnects with Mike Yanagita (Steve Park), an old classmate who takes her to dinner, tells her that his wife (another classmate) has died, and attempts to seduce her.

Lundegaard informs Gustafson and his accountant, Stan Grossman (Larry Brandenburg), that the kidnappers have demanded $1 million, and will deal only through him. Meanwhile, Showalter, in light of the unanticipated complication of three murders, demands that Lundegaard hand over the entire ransom (which he still believes is $80,000); and GMAC gives Lundegaard 24 hours to repay their loan or face legal consequences.

When the time comes for the money drop, Gustafson decides to deal with the kidnappers himself. At the pre-arranged drop point in a parking garage, he refuses to hand over the cash-filled briefcase to Showalter until his daughter is returned.

Showalter kills Gustafson, takes the briefcase, and flees, but not before taking a bullet in the jaw from Gustafson. When he opens the briefcase, Showalter is astounded to discover far more than the anticipated $80,000. He removes that amount to split with Grimsrud, then stashes the rest, intending to return for it later and keep it for himself. At the hideout, he discovers that Grimsrud has killed Jean. After a heated argument, Grimsrud kills Showalter as well.

During a phone conversation with a mutual friend, Gunderson learns that Yanagita's dead wife was never his wife, nor is she dead, and that Yanagita is the perpetrator behind a long series of anonymous harassments. Reflecting on Yanagita's treachery and convincing lies, Gunderson returns to the car dealership and re-questions Lundegaard, who refuses to cooperate.

​When she asks to speak to Gustafson, Lundegaard panics and flees the dealership. After returning to Brainerd, Gunderson drives to Moose Lake, where she recognizes the dealership car from the dead trooper's description. She finds Grimsrud feeding the last of Showalter's body into a wood chipper. He tries to escape, but Gunderson shoots him in the leg and arrests him. Meanwhile, North Dakota police track Lundegaard to a motel outside Bismarck, where he is arrested while attempting to escape through a bathroom window.

That night, Gunderson and her husband, Norm (John Carroll Lynch), discuss Norm's mallard painting, which has been selected as the design for a US postage stamp. Marge is very proud of his achievement, and the two happily anticipate the birth of their child in two months' time.

Cast:
  • Frances McDormand as Marge Gunderson
  • William H. Macy as Jerry Lundegaard
  • Steve Buscemi as Carl Showalter
  • Peter Stormare as Gaear Grimsrud
  • Harve Presnell as Wade Gustafson
  • Kristin Rudrüd as Jean Lundegaard
  • Tony Denman as Scotty Lundegaard
  • Gary Houston as Irate Customer
  • Sally Wingert as Irate Customer's Wife
  • Steve Reevis as Shep Proudfoot
  • Warren Keith as Reilly Diefenbach (voice)
  • Larry Brandenburg as Stan Grossman
  • J. Todd Anderson as Victim in Field (credited as a modification of the Love Symbol character, the symbol used at that time by Prince)
  • John Carroll Lynch as Norm Gunderson
  • Bruce Bohne as Officer Lou
  • Melissa Peterman as Hooker #2
  • Steve Park as Mike Yanagita
  • Cliff Rakerd as Officer Gary Olson
  • José Feliciano as Himself
  • Bain Boehlke as Mr. Mohra

Reception:

Fargo holds a 94% approval rating and 8.7/10 average on Rotten Tomatoes based on 87 reviews. The site's critical consensus reads, "Violent, quirky, and darkly funny, Fargo delivers an original crime story and a wonderful performance by McDormand". The film also holds a score of 85 out of 100 on Metacritic, based on 24 reviews, indicating "universal acclaim".


Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert both named Fargo the best film of 1996. It was also Ebert's fourth favorite of the 1990s. In his original review, Ebert called it "one of the best films I've ever seen" and said that "films like Fargo are why I love the movies".

The film was ranked number 84 on the American Film Institute's "100 Years...100 Movies" list in 1998 (although it was removed from the 2007 version) and number 93 on "AFI's 100 Years...100 Laughs" list.

The character Marge Gunderson was ranked number 33 on AFI's 100 Years...100 Heroes & Villains. In 2006, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

Film festivals:

Fargo was screened at many film festivals. It was in the main competition at the 1996 Cannes Film Festival, where it won the Prix de la mise en scène (Best Director prize). Other festival screenings included the Pusan International Film Festival, the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival and the Naples Film Festival. On March 1, 2006, for the film's tenth anniversary, the first annual Fargo Film Festival screened Fargo by projecting the film onto the side of the Radisson Hotel (the city's tallest building) in downtown Fargo. The city repeated the event on September 29, 2011.

Awards and honors: Wins:
  • Academy Award for Best Actress – Frances McDormand
  • Academy Award for Writing Original Screenplay – Joel and Ethan Coen
  • BAFTA David Lean Award for Direction – Joel Coen
  • Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Director – Joel Coen
  • New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Film
  • National Board of Review Award for Best Actress – Frances McDormand
  • National Board of Review Award for Best Director – Joel Coen
  • Satellite Award for Best Film
  • Satellite Award for Best Director – Joel Coen
  • Satellite Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Drama – Frances McDormand
  • Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role – Frances McDormand
  • Writers Guild of America Award for Best Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen – Joel and Ethan Coen
  • Independent Spirit Award for Best Film
  • Independent Spirit Award for Best Director – Joel Coen
  • Independent Spirit Award for Best Male Lead – William H. Macy
  • Independent Spirit Award for Best Female Lead – Frances McDormand
  • Independent Spirit Award for Best Screenplay – Joel and Ethan Coen
  • 2006 National Film Registry

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Goodfellas (1990)
YouTube Video: Goodfellas Christmas Party Scene
Pictured: Theatrical Movie Poster
Goodfellas (stylized as GoodFellas) is a 1990 American biographical crime film directed by Martin Scorsese. It is a film adaptation of the 1986 non-fiction book Wiseguy by Nicholas Pileggi, who co-wrote the screenplay with Scorsese. The film narrates the rise and fall of mob associate Henry Hill (the first-person narrator in the film) and his friends over a period from 1955 to 1980.

Scorsese initially named the film Wise Guy and postponed making it; later, he and Pileggi changed the name to Goodfellas. To prepare for their roles in the film, Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci, and Ray Liotta often spoke with Pileggi, who shared research material left over from writing the book.

According to Pesci, improvisation and ad-libbing came out of rehearsals wherein Scorsese gave the actors freedom to do whatever they wanted. The director made transcripts of these sessions, took the lines he liked best, and put them into a revised script, which the cast worked from during principal photography.

Made on a budget of $25 million, Goodfellas grossed $46.8 million domestically. It received positive reviews from critics and was nominated for six Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director, and it won for Pesci in the Best Actor in a Supporting Role category. Scorsese's film won five awards from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts, including Best Film and Best Director. Additionally, Goodfellas was named Best Film of the year by various film critics groups.

Goodfellas is often regarded as one of the greatest films of all time, both in the crime genre and in general. The film ranks #6 on Empire magazine's 2008 list of the 500 greatest movies of all time. In 2000, the film was deemed "culturally, historically, and aesthetically significant" and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry by the United States Library of Congress. Its content and style have been emulated in numerous other films and television shows.

Scorsese followed this film with two more about organized crime: Casino (1995) and The Departed (2006).

Plot: 

Henry Hill says, "As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a gangster", referring to his idolization of gangsters in his 1950's blue-collar, predominantly Italian-American neighborhood in East New York, Brooklyn. Wanting to be part of something significant, Henry quits school and goes to work for them. He is able to make a living for himself and learns the two most important lessons in life: "Never rat on your friends, and always keep your mouth shut", the advice given to him after being acquitted of criminal charges early in his career.

Henry is taken under the wing of local mob leader, Paul "Paulie" Cicero and his associates: James "Jimmy the Gent" Conway, who loves hijacking trucks; and Tommy DeVito, an aggressive armed robber with a temper. In late 1967, they commit the Air France Robbery. Enjoying the perks of their criminal life, they spend most of their nights at the Copacabana carousing with women. Henry meets and later marries Karen, a Jewish woman from the Five Towns area of Long Island. Karen is initially troubled by Henry's criminal activities but is soon seduced by his glamorous lifestyle.

On June 11, 1970, Billy Batts, a mobster in the Gambino Crime Family, insults Tommy about being a shoeshine boy in his younger days. Enraged, Tommy and Jimmy attack and kill him. Realizing their murder of an official made member would mean retribution from the Gambinos, which could possibly include Paulie himself being ordered to kill them, Jimmy, Henry, and Tommy cover up the murder. They transport the body in the trunk of Henry's car and bury it upstate. Six months later, Jimmy learns the burial site will be developed, forcing them to exhume the decomposing corpse and move it.

Henry sets up his mistress, Janice Rossi, in an apartment. When Karen finds out about their relationship, she tries to confront Janice at the apartment building and then threatens Henry at gunpoint at home. Henry goes to live in the apartment with Janice, but Paulie mediates and directs him to return to Karen after completing a job for him; Henry and Jimmy are sent to collect from an indebted gambler in Florida, which they succeed at after beating him. However, they are arrested after being turned in by the gambler's sister, a typist for the FBI. Jimmy and Henry receive ten-year prison sentences.

In prison, Henry sells drugs to support his family on the outside. After his early release in 1978, Henry further establishes himself in the drug trade, ignoring Paulie's ban on drug trafficking, and convincing Tommy and Jimmy to join him. The crew commits the Lufthansa heist at John F. Kennedy International Airport, stealing $6 million. However, after many of the participants ignore Jimmy's command not to buy expensive luxuries with their share for fear of attracting police attention, he has them killed. Tommy is eventually killed in retribution for Batts' murder, having been fooled into thinking he would become a made man.

By May 11, 1980, Henry is a nervous wreck from cocaine use and insomnia. He tries to organize a drug deal with his associates in Pittsburgh, however he is arrested by narcotics agents and jailed. On his release, Karen tells him she flushed $60,000 worth of cocaine down the toilet to prevent FBI agents from finding it during their raid, leaving the family virtually penniless.

Feeling betrayed by Henry's dealing drugs, Paulie gives him $3,200 and ends his association with him. Facing federal charges, Henry decides to enroll in the Witness Protection Program after realizing Jimmy intends to have him killed, and gives sufficient testimony to have Paulie and Jimmy arrested and convicted. Forced out of his gangster life, Henry now has to face living in the real world. He narrates: "I'm an average nobody. I get to live the rest of my life like a schnook".

Subtitles explain that Henry was subsequently arrested on drug charges in Seattle, Washington but has been clean since 1987. He and Karen separated in 1989 after twenty five years of marriage. Paul Cicero died in Fort Worth Federal Prison of respiratory illness in 1988 at age 73. Jimmy, in 1990, was serving a twenty-year-to-life sentence in a New York State prison.

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Enemy of the State (1998)
YouTube Video: Enemy of the State Trailer
Pictured: Theatrical poster for Enemy of the State, Copyright © 1998 by Buena Vista Pictures. All Rights Reserved.
Enemy of the State is a 1998 American spy-thriller about a group of U.S. National Security Agency agents conspiring to kill a U.S. Congressman and the cover up that ensues after a tape of the murder is discovered.

It was written by David Marconi, directed by Tony Scott, and produced by Jerry Bruckheimer. It stars Will Smith and Gene Hackman, with Jon Voight, Lisa Bonet, and Regina King in supporting roles.

Plot:

In the 1990s, U.S. National Security Agency official Thomas Bryan Reynolds (Jon Voight) meets with U.S. Congressman Phil Hammersley (R-NY) (Jason Robards) in a public park to discuss support for new counter-terrorism legislation the U.S. Congress is pushing that dramatically expands the surveillance powers of intelligence agencies on individuals and groups.

Hammersley remains committed to blocking its passage, since he believes it would almost totally destroy the privacy of American citizens. Reynolds, determined to have the bill pass so as to gain a long-delayed and anticipated promotion, has his team murder Hammersley, spread heart pills over his car, place him in the car and push it in a lake to make it look like he had a heart attack.

In the aftermath, they discover too late that wildlife researcher Daniel Zavits (Jason Lee) had a camera aimed in the woods at their location. Zavits inspects the footage and, realizing he has captured the congressman's murder, calls a journalist he knows.

The call is monitored by Reynold's team who attempt to break into his apartment to retrieve the tape. Realizing he is in grave danger, he transfers the video to a ZIP disc and places it into an NEC Turbo handheld before fleeing the apartment ahead of Reynolds's men.

Zavits is eventually killed when he runs into the street in front of a fire truck but immediately prior, he bumped into an old college friend, labor lawyer Robert Clayton Dean (Will Smith), and slipped the disc into his shopping bag without his knowledge.

When the NSA discovers that Dean might have the video, Reynolds's team raids his house and plants surveillance devices, but the video does not turn up. The NSA then disseminates false evidence to implicate Dean of working with the mob family of Boss Paulie Pintero (Tom Sizemore) and seeing Rachel Banks (Lisa Bonet), an ex-girlfriend he had an affair with. The subterfuge destroys Dean's life: he is dismissed from his job, his bank accounts are frozen, and his wife Carla (Regina King) throws him out of the house.

Dean believes Pintero is behind the smear campaign as revenge because Dean blackmailed him into backing off his clients in a prior case, with help from Banks' secretive contact "Brill" (Gene Hackman).

Dean sets up a face-to-face meet with Brill and the NSA sends an impostor "Brill" to intercept him, but the real Brill rescues him. Brill explains that his pursuers are NSA agents and rids him of tracking devices hidden in his clothing. With Dean and Brill in hiding, the NSA agents kill Banks and frame Dean for the murder.

Dean obtains the disc and Brill identifies Reynolds in the recovered video, but the disc is destroyed during an escape from an NSA raid. Brill, whose real name is Edward Lyle, tells Dean of his past as a communications expert for the NSA; he was stationed in Iran in 1979 when the Iranian Revolution occurred; his partner, Rachel's father, was killed but Lyle made it out and has been in hiding since. Lyle tries to coax Dean into trying to run away, but Dean is adamant about clearing his name.

Dean and Lyle trail another supporter of the surveillance bill, U.S. Congressman Sam Albert (R-NH), by videotaping him having an affair with his aide. Dean and Lyle "hide" one of the NSA's bugs in Albert's room so Albert will find them and have the NSA start an investigation about Albert's tapping. Lyle also deposits into Reynolds's bank account to make it appear that he is taking bribes, putting enormous pressure on Reynolds.

Lyle contacts Reynolds to set up a meeting to exchange the video and get Reynolds to incriminate himself. Reynolds' men instead ambush the meeting and hold Lyle and Dean at gunpoint, demanding the tape. Dean tells them that the Hammersley murder footage is in the hands of Pintero, knowing Pintero's restaurant is under FBI surveillance.

Dean, Reynolds, and the NSA team head into Pintero's restaurant. Using ambiguous language, Dean convinces Pintero that Reynolds is after the incriminating video Dean blackmailed him with and the encounter devolves into a massive firefight that kills the mobsters, Reynolds, and several of his NSA team. Lyle escapes while the FBI rescues Dean and uncovers the entire conspiracy.

The U.S. Congress is forced to abandon the passage plan to avoid a national scandal, though they cover up the NSA's involvement to preserve the agency's reputation. Dean is cleared of all charges and is reunited with his wife. Lyle leaves Dean a "goodbye" message via his TV as he's watching, showing himself relaxing in a tropical location.

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​Titanic (1997)
YouTube Video: Paramount Pictures Trailer
Pictured: The film poster shows a man and a woman hugging over a picture of the Titanic's bow. In the background is a partly cloudy sky and at the top are the names of the two lead actors. The middle has the film's name and tagline, and the bottom contains a list of the director's previous works, as well as the film's credits, rating, and release date.
Titanic is a 1997 American epic romance-disaster film directed, written, co-produced, and co-edited by James Cameron.

A fictionalized account of the sinking of the RMS Titanic, it stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet as members of different social classes who fall in love aboard the ship during its ill-fated maiden voyage.

Cameron's inspiration for the film came from his fascination with shipwrecks; he felt a love story interspersed with the human loss would be essential to convey the emotional impact of the disaster. Production began in 1995, when Cameron shot footage of the actual Titanic wreck.

The modern scenes on the research vessel were shot on board the Akademik Mstislav Keldysh, which Cameron had used as a base when filming the wreck. Scale models, computer-generated imagery, and a reconstruction of the Titanic built at Playas de Rosarito in Baja California were used to re-create the sinking. The film was partially funded by Paramount Pictures and 20th Century Fox. It was the most expensive film made at that time, with an estimated budget of $200 million.

Upon its release on December 19, 1997, Titanic achieved critical and commercial success. Nominated for fourteen Academy Awards, it tied All About Eve (1950) for the most Oscar nominations, and won eleven, including the awards for Best Picture and Best Director, tying Ben Hur (1959) for the most Oscars won by a single film.

With an initial worldwide gross of over $1.84 billion, Titanic was the first film to reach the billion-dollar mark. It remained the highest-grossing film of all time until Cameron's 2009 film Avatar surpassed it in 2010.

A 3D version of Titanic, released on April 4, 2012 to commemorate the centennial of the sinking, earned it an additional $343.6 million worldwide, pushing the film's worldwide total to $2.18 billion. It became the second film to gross more than $2 billion worldwide (after Avatar).

Plot:

In 1996, treasure hunter Brock Lovett and his team aboard the research vessel Akademik Mstislav Keldysh search the wreck of RMS Titanic for a necklace with a rare diamond, the Heart of the Ocean. They recover a safe containing a drawing of a young woman wearing only the necklace dated April 14, 1912, the day the ship struck the iceberg. Rose Dawson Calvert, the woman in the drawing, is brought aboard Keldysh and tells Lovett of her experiences aboard Titanic.

In 1912 Southampton, 17-year-old first-class passenger Rose DeWitt Bukater, her fiancé Cal Hockley, and her mother Ruth board the luxurious Titanic. Ruth emphasizes that Rose's marriage will resolve their family's financial problems.

Distraught over the engagement, Rose considers suicide by jumping from the stern; Jack Dawson, a penniless artist, intervenes and discourages her. Discovered with Jack, Rose tells a concerned Cal that she was peering over the edge and Jack saved her from falling.

When Cal becomes indifferent, she suggests to him that Jack deserves a reward. He invites Jack to dine with them in first class the following night. Jack and Rose develop a tentative friendship, despite Cal and Ruth being wary of him. Following dinner, Rose secretly joins Jack at a party in third class.

Aware of Cal and Ruth's disapproval, Rose rebuffs Jack's advances, but realizes she prefers him over Cal. After rendezvousing on the bow at sunset, Rose takes Jack to her state room; at her request, Jack sketches Rose posing nude wearing Cal's engagement present, the Heart of the Ocean necklace.

They evade Cal's bodyguard and have sex in an automobile inside the cargo hold. On the forward deck, they witness a collision with an iceberg and overhear the officers and designer discussing its seriousness.

Cal discovers Jack's sketch of Rose and an insulting note from her in his safe along with the necklace. When Jack and Rose attempt to inform Cal of the collision, he has his bodyguard slip the necklace into Jack's pocket and accuses him of theft. Jack is arrested, taken to the master-at-arms' office, and handcuffed to a pipe. Cal puts the necklace in his own coat pocket.

With the ship sinking, Rose flees Cal and her mother, who has boarded a lifeboat, and frees Jack. On the boat deck, Cal and Jack encourage her to board a lifeboat; Cal claims he can get himself and Jack off safely. After Rose boards one, Cal tells Jack the arrangement is only for himself.

As her boat lowers, Rose decides that she cannot leave Jack and jumps back on board. Cal takes his bodyguard's pistol and chases Rose and Jack into the flooding first-class dining saloon. After using up his ammunition, Cal realizes he gave his coat and consequently the necklace to Rose. He later boards a collapsible lifeboat by carrying a lost child.

After braving several obstacles, Jack and Rose return to the boat deck. The lifeboats have departed and passengers are falling to their deaths as the stern rises out of the water. The ship breaks in half, lifting the stern into the air. Jack and Rose ride it into the ocean and he helps her onto a wooden panel only buoyant enough for one person. He assures her that she will die an old woman, warm in her bed. Jack dies of hypothermia but Rose is saved.

With Rose hiding from Cal en route, the RMS Carpathia takes the survivors to New York City where Rose gives her name as Rose Dawson. She later finds out Cal committed suicide after losing all his money in the 1929 Wall Street crash.

Back in the present, Lovett decides to abandon his search after hearing Rose's story. Alone on the stern of Keldysh, Rose takes out the Heart of the Ocean — in her possession all along — and drops it into the sea over the wreck site.

While she is seemingly asleep or has died in her bed, photos on her dresser depict a life of freedom and adventure inspired by the life she wanted to live with Jack. A young Rose reunites with Jack at the Titanic's Grand Staircase, applauded by those who died.

The movie went on to take in $2.187 billion in box office receipts against a budget of $200 million.

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As Good as it Gets (1997)
YouTube Video of the Trailer for As Good as it Gets
Pictured: Jack Nicholson
As Good as It Gets is a 1997 American romantic comedy film directed by James L. Brooks and produced by Laura Ziskin. It stars Jack Nicholson as a misanthropic, racist, obsessive-compulsive novelist, Helen Hunt as a single mother with a chronically ill son, and Greg Kinnear as a gay artist.

The screenplay was written by Mark Andrus and James L. Brooks. The paintings were created for the film by New York artist Billy Sullivan, whose work is part of the modern art collection at NYC's Metropolitan Museum of Art and the New Orleans Museum of Art.

Nicholson and Hunt won the Academy Award for Best Actor and Best Actress, respectively, making As Good As It Gets the most-recent film to win both of the lead acting awards, and the first since 1991's The Silence of the Lambs. It is ranked 140th on Empire magazine's "The 500 Greatest Movies of All Time" list.

Plot:

Melvin Udall is a misanthrope who works at home as a best-selling novelist in New York City. He suffers from obsessive-compulsive disorder which, paired with his misanthropy, alienates nearly everyone with whom he interacts.

He avoids stepping on sidewalk cracks while walking through the city due to a superstition of bad luck, and eats breakfast at the same table in the same restaurant every day using disposable plastic utensils he brings with him due to his pathological fear of germs. He takes an interest in his waitress, Carol Connelly, the only server at the restaurant who can tolerate his behavior.

One day, Melvin's apartment neighbor, a gay artist named Simon Bishop, is assaulted and nearly killed during a robbery. Melvin is intimidated by Simon's agent, Frank Sachs, into caring for Simon's dog, Verdell, while Simon is hospitalized.

Although he initially does not enjoy caring for the dog, Melvin becomes emotionally attached to it. He simultaneously receives more attention from Carol. When Simon is released from the hospital, Melvin is unable to cope emotionally with returning the dog.

Melvin's life is further altered when Carol decides to work closer to her home in Brooklyn so she can care for her acutely asthmatic son Spencer ("Spence"). Unable to adjust to another waitress, Melvin arranges through his publisher, whose husband is a doctor, to pay for her son's considerable medical expenses as long as Carol agrees to return to work. She is overwhelmed at his generosity, and they agree there will be no physical relationship.

Meanwhile, Simon's assault and rehabilitation, coupled with Verdell's preference for Melvin, causes Simon to lose his creative muse. Simon is approaching bankruptcy due to his medical bills. Frank convinces him to go to Baltimore to ask his estranged parents for money.

Because Frank is too busy to take the injured Simon to Baltimore himself, Melvin reluctantly agrees to do so – Frank lends Melvin the use of his Saab 900 convertible for the trip. Melvin invites Carol to accompany them on the trip to lessen the awkwardness. She reluctantly accepts the invitation, and relationships among the three develop.

Once in Baltimore, Carol persuades Melvin to take her out to have dinner. Melvin's comments during the dinner greatly flatter—and subsequently upset—Carol, and she abruptly leaves. Upon seeing the frustrated Carol, Simon begins to sketch her semi-nude in his hotel room and rekindles his creativity, once more feeling a desire to paint. He briefly reconnects with his parents, but is able to tell them that he'll be fine.

After returning to New York, Carol tells Melvin that she does not want him in her life anymore. She later regrets her statement and calls him to apologize. The relationship between Melvin and Carol remains complicated until Simon (whom Melvin has allowed to move in with him until he can fully heal from his injuries and get a new apartment) convinces Melvin to declare his love for her. Melvin goes to see Carol, who is hesitant, but agrees to try and establish a relationship with him.

The film ends with Melvin and Carol walking together. As he opens the door at an early morning pastry shop for Carol, he realizes that he has stepped on a crack in the pavement, but doesn't seem to mind.

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​Conspiracy Theory (1997)
YouTube Video of the Movie Trailer for Conspiracy Theory Movie
Conspiracy Theory is a 1997 American political action thriller film directed by Richard Donner.

The original screenplay by Brian Helgeland centers on an eccentric taxi driver (Mel Gibson) who believes many world events are triggered by government conspiracies, and the Justice Department attorney (Julia Roberts) who becomes involved in his life. The movie was a financial success, but critical reviews were mixed.

Box Office Receipts = $137 million

Plot:

​​Conspiracy-theorist New York City taxi driver Jerry Fletcher continually expounds his ideas to his friend Alice Sutton, a lawyer at the Justice Department. She humors him because he once saved her from a mugging, but does not know he has been spying on her at home. Her own work is to solve the mystery of her father's murder.

Seeing suspicious activity everywhere, Jerry identifies some men as CIA workers, follows them into a building, and is captured. A doctor injects a wheelchair-bound Jerry with LSD and interrogates him using torture. Jerry experiences terrifying hallucinations and flashbacks, panics, and manages to escape, incapacitating the doctor by biting his nose.

Handcuffed to the hospital bed and forced into a drug-induced sleep, Jerry persuades Alice to switch his chart with that of a criminal in the next bed or he will be dead by morning. When Alice visits the next day, the criminal is dead, allegedly from a mysterious heart attack.

The CIA, FBI and other agencies are there, led by CIA psychiatrist Dr. Jonas, whose nose is bandaged. Meanwhile, with Alice's help, Jerry fakes a heart attack and escapes again. The pair go to Alice's apartment and Jerry accidentally reveals he's been watching her. Jerry confronts FBI agent Lowry and his partner staking out her place, and he warns them at gunpoint not to hurt her. Jerry sees their operatives rappelling down from black helicopters and hides in a theater, escaping by causing a panic.

Alice calls each person on the newsletter mail-list and finds that all have recently died, except one. Jerry uses a ruse to get her out of the office, and then immobilizes the operatives watching her. During their escape, he tells her that he loves her, then flees on a subway train when she brushes off his feelings.

She goes to see the last surviving person on the subscription list, and finds it is Jonas. He explains that Jerry was brainwashed during Dr. Jonas' time with Project MKUltra to become an assassin and claims that Jerry killed her father. She agrees to help find Jerry, who sends her a message to meet him.

They ditch the agents following them and he drives her to her father's private horse stables in Connecticut, but Alice secretly calls her office so that Jonas can track her. At the stables, Jerry remembers that he was sent to kill her father but found he could not. Jerry instead promised to watch over Alice before the judge was killed by another assassin. Jonas' men capture Jerry, and a sniper tries to get Alice, but she escapes.

Meanwhile, Alice finds Lowry and forces him at gunpoint to admit that he is not FBI, but from a "secret agency that watches the other agencies" and has been using the unwitting Jerry to uncover and stop Jonas. Alice goes to the site of the smokestacks from Jerry's mural and sees a mental hospital next door.

There she bribes an attendant to show her an unused wing, breaks in, and finds Jerry. As Jonas catches them, Lowry arrives with his men and attacks Jonas' men. Jerry attempts to drown Jonas, but is shot. After killing Jonas, Alice finally tells Jerry she loves him before he is taken away in an ambulance.

Some time later, Alice visits Jerry's grave, leaving a pin he gave her upon it, before returning to horse riding. While watching from a car with Lowry, Jerry agrees not to contact Alice until all of Jonas' other subjects are caught, but she finds the pin attached to her saddle.

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​Good Will Hunting (1997)
YouTube Video: Good Will Hunting | Official Trailer (HD) Robin Williams, Matt Damon, Ben Affleck | MIRAMAX
Pictured: L-R: Robin Williams, Matt Damon, Minnie Driver and Ben Affleck
Good Will Hunting is a 1997 American drama film, directed by Gus Van Sant, and starring Robin Williams, Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, Minnie Driver and Stellan Skarsgård.

Written by Affleck and Damon (and with Damon in the title role), the film follows 20-year-old South Boston laborer Will Hunting, an unrecognized genius who, as part of a deferred prosecution agreement after assaulting a police officer, becomes a client of a therapist and studies advanced mathematics with a renowned professor. Through his therapy sessions, Will re-evaluates his relationships with his best friend, his girlfriend and himself, facing the significant task of confronting his past and thinking about his future.

The film received positive reviews and was a financial success. It grossed over US$225 million during its theatrical run with only a modest $10 million budget. It was nominated for nine Academy Awards, including the Academy Award for Best Picture, and won two: Best Supporting Actor for Williams and Best Original Screenplay for Affleck and Damon.

After Williams' death in 2014, it was ranked at number 53 in The Hollywood Reporter's "100 Favorite Films" list.

Plot:

​Twenty-year-old Will Hunting (Matt Damon) of South Boston is a genius-level intellect autodidact, though he works as a janitor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and spends his free time drinking with his friends, Chuckie (Ben Affleck), Billy (Cole Hauser) and Morgan (Casey Affleck).

When Professor Gerald Lambeau (Stellan Skarsgård) posts a difficult mathematics problem as a challenge for his graduate students, Will solves the problem anonymously, stunning both the graduate students and Lambeau. As a challenge to the unknown genius, Lambeau posts an even more difficult problem. Will solves the problem, but then flees the scene when Lambeau catches him. At the bar, Will meets Skylar (Minnie Driver), a British student about to graduate from Harvard, who plans on attending medical school at Stanford.

The next day, as Will and his friends fight a gang at the basketball court, police arrive and arrest Will when he assaults one of the officers. Lambeau visits his court appearance and notices Will's intellect in defending himself. He arranges for him to forgo jail time if he agrees to study mathematics under Lambeau's supervision and participate in therapy sessions.

Will tentatively agrees, but treats his first few therapists with mockery. In desperation, Lambeau calls on Dr. Sean Maguire (Robin Williams), his estranged college roommate, who now teaches psychology at Bunker Hill Community College. Unlike other therapists, Sean actually challenges Will's defense mechanisms, and after a few unproductive sessions, Will begins to open up.

Will is particularly struck by Sean's story of how he met his wife by giving up his ticket to the historic game six of the 1975 World Series, after falling in love at first sight. Sean neither regrets his decision, nor does he regret the final years of his marriage, after which his wife died of cancer. This encourages Will to build a relationship with Skylar, though he lies to her about his past and is reluctant to introduce her to his friends or show her his rundown neighborhood. Will also challenges Sean to take an objective look at his own life, since Sean cannot move on from his wife's death.

Lambeau sets up a number of job interviews for Will, but Will scorns them by sending Chuckie as his "chief negotiator," and by turning down a position at the National Security Agency with a scathing critique of the agency's moral position. Skylar asks Will to move to California with her, but he refuses and tells her he is an orphan, and that his foster father physically abused him.

Will breaks up with Skylar and later storms out on Lambeau, dismissing the mathematical research he has been doing. Sean points out that Will is so adept at anticipating future failure in his interpersonal relationships that he deliberately sabotages them in order to avoid emotional pain. Chuckie tells Will that he disapproves of Will laying bricks for a living like the rest of his friends, because Will has talent that none of them have.

Will walks in on a heated argument between Sean and Lambeau over his potential. Sean and Will share and find out that they were both victims of child abuse. Sean helps Will to see that he is a victim of his own inner demons and to accept that it is not his fault, causing him to break down in tears.

Will accepts one of the job offers arranged by Lambeau. Having helped Will overcome his problems, Sean reconciles with Lambeau and takes a sabbatical to travel the world. When Will's friends present him with a rebuilt Chevrolet Nova for his twenty-first birthday, he decides to pass on his job offers and drive to California to reunite with Skylar.

Sometime later, Chuckie goes to Will's house to pick him up, only to find that he is not there; and Sean finds a letter from Will in his mailbox, which tells him that Will is going to see Skylar. Both Sean and Chuckie are pleased by Will's decision.

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​Philadelphia (1993)
YouTube Video of the Movie Trailer for "Philadelphia"
Philadelphia is a 1993 American drama film and one of the first mainstream Hollywood films to acknowledge HIV/AIDS, homosexuality, and homophobia. It was written by Ron Nyswaner, directed by Jonathan Demme and stars Tom Hanks and Denzel Washington.

Hanks won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his role as Andrew Beckett in the film, while the song "Streets of Philadelphia" by Bruce Springsteen won the Academy Award for Best Original Song. Nyswaner was also nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay, but lost to Jane Campion for The Piano.

Plot:
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Andrew Beckett (Hanks) is a senior associate at the largest corporate law firm in Philadelphia. He hides his homosexuality and his status as an AIDS patient from the other members of the firm. A partner in the firm notices a lesion on Beckett's forehead. Although Beckett attributes the lesion to a racquetball injury, it indicates Kaposi's sarcoma, a form of cancer.

Shortly thereafter, Beckett stays home from work for several days to try to find a way to hide his lesions. While at home, he finishes the paperwork for a case he has been assigned and then brings it to his office, leaving instructions for his assistants to file the paperwork the following day, which marks the end of the statute of limitations for the case.

Later that morning, he receives a call asking for the paperwork, as the paper copy cannot be found and there are no copies on the computer's hard drive. The paperwork is finally discovered in an alternate location and is filed with the court at the last possible moment. The following day, Beckett is dismissed by the firm's partners.

Beckett believes that someone deliberately hid his paperwork to give the firm an excuse to fire him, and that the dismissal is actually as a result of his diagnosis with AIDS. He asks several attorneys to take his case, including personal injury lawyer Joe Miller (Washington). The homophobic Miller appears to be worried that he could contract Beckett's illness. After declining to take the case, Miller immediately visits his doctor to find out if he could have contracted the disease. The doctor explains that the routes of HIV infection do not include casual contact.

Unable to find a lawyer willing to represent him, Beckett is compelled to act as his own attorney. While researching a case at a law library, Miller sees Beckett at a nearby table. After a library employee stares down Miller, presumably because Miller is black, a librarian approaches Beckett and announces that he has found a book on AIDS discrimination for him.

As others in the library begin to first stare uneasily, the librarian suggests Beckett to go to a private room. Feeling discouraged by the other people's behavior and seeing the parallels in how he, himself has been unfairly treated, Miller approaches Beckett, reviews the material he has gathered, and takes the case.

As the case goes before the court, the partners of the firm take the stand, each claiming that Beckett was incompetent and that he had deliberately tried to hide his condition. The defense repeatedly suggests that Beckett brought AIDS upon himself by having gay sex, and is therefore not a victim.

In the course of testimony, it is revealed that the partner who had noticed Beckett's lesion, Walter Kenton, had previously worked with a woman who had contracted AIDS after a blood transfusion and so should have recognized the lesion as relating to AIDS. According to that partner, the woman was an innocent victim, unlike Beckett, and further testified that he did not recognize Beckett's lesions. To prove that the lesions would have been visible, Miller asks Beckett to unbutton his shirt while on the witness stand, revealing that his lesions are indeed visible and recognizable as such.

Beckett eventually collapses during the trial. After Beckett is hospitalized, another partner, Bob Seidman, who noticed Beckett's lesions confesses that he suspected Beckett had AIDS but never told anyone and never gave him the opportunity to explain himself, which he regretted very much. During his hospitalization, the jury votes in his favor, awarding him back pay, damages for pain and suffering, and punitive damages.

Miller visits the visibly failing Beckett in the hospital after the verdict and overcomes his fear enough to touch Beckett's face. After Beckett's family leaves the room, he tells his partner Miguel that he is ready to die. At the Miller home, Joe and his wife are awakened by a phone call from Miguel, who tells them that Beckett has died. A reception is held at Beckett's home following the funeral, where many mourners, including Miller, view home movies of Beckett as a happy child.

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​Scent of a Woman (1992)
YouTube Video of the movie trailer for "Scent of a Woman"
Scent of a Woman is a 1992 American drama film produced and directed by Martin Brest that tells the story of a preparatory school student who takes a job as an assistant to an irascible, blind, medically retired Army officer. The film is a remake of Dino Risi's 1974 Italian film Profumo di donna, adapted by Bo Goldman from the novel Il buio e il miele (Italian: Darkness and Honey) by Giovanni Arpino and from the 1974 screenplay by Ruggero Maccari and Dino Risi.

The film stars Al Pacino and Chris O'Donnell, with James Rebhorn, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Gabrielle Anwar.

Pacino won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance and the film was nominated for Best Director, Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay. The film won three major awards at the Golden Globe Awards: Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Actor and Best Motion Picture – Drama.

The film was shot primarily around New York state, and also on location at Princeton University, at the Emma Willard School, an all-girls school in Troy, New York, and at the Ethical Culture Fieldston School in New York City.

Plot:
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Charlie Simms (O'Donnell) is a student at an exclusive New England prep school. He is on scholarship. Unlike most of his peers, Charlie was not born to a wealthy family. To pay for a flight home to Oregon for Christmas, Charlie accepts a temporary job over Thanksgiving weekend looking after retired Army Ranger Lieutenant Colonel Frank Slade (Pacino), whom Charlie discovers to be a cantankerous, blind alcoholic.

Charlie and George Willis, Jr. (Hoffman), another student at the preparatory school, witness three students setting up a prank for the school's headmaster, Mr. Trask (Rebhorn). Following the prank, Trask presses Charlie and George to divulge the names of the perpetrators. Trask offers Charlie a bribe, a letter of recommendation that would virtually guarantee his acceptance to Harvard. Charlie continues to remain silent but appears conflicted.

Shortly after Charlie arrives, Frank unexpectedly whisks Charlie off on a trip to New York City. Frank reserves a room at the Waldorf-Astoria. During dinner at the Oak Room, Frank glibly states the goals of the trip, which involve enjoying luxurious accommodations in New York before committing suicide. Charlie is taken aback and does not know if Frank is serious.

They pay an uninvited surprise visit to Frank's brother's home in White Plains for Thanksgiving dinner. Frank is an unpleasant surprise for the family, as he deliberately provokes everyone and the night ends in acrimony. During this time, the cause of Frank's blindness is also revealed as a drunken trainee mishap with a grenade.

As they return to New York, Charlie tells Frank about his complications at school. Frank advises Charlie to inform on his classmates and go to Harvard, warning him that George will probably be pressured into not maintaining his silence. Later at a restaurant, Frank is aware of Donna (Anwar), a young woman waiting for her date.

Although blind, Frank leads Donna in a spectacular tango ("Por una Cabeza") on the dance floor. That night, he hires a female escort.

Deeply despondent the next morning, Frank responds to Charlie's suggestion that they test drive a Ferrari Mondial t. Charlie lets Frank drive the car and he begins speeding, attracting the attention of a police officer, whom Frank manages to appease without giving away his blindness.

When they return to the hotel, Frank sends Charlie out on a list of errands. Charlie initially leaves the room but quickly becomes suspicious. Charlie returns to find Frank in his full-dress military uniform, preparing to commit suicide with a gun from which Charlie had made Frank promise to remove the bullets earlier, regarding which Frank states he lied.

Charlie intervenes and attempts to grab Frank's gun. Frank, however, easily overpowers him, threatening to shoot Charlie before himself. They enter a tense fight, with both grappling for the gun; however, Frank backs down after Charlie bravely calms him. The two return to New England.

At school, Charlie and George are subjected to a formal inquiry in front of the entire student body and the student/faculty disciplinary committee. As headmaster Trask is opening the proceedings, Frank unexpectedly returns to the school, joining Charlie on the auditorium stage for support. For his defense, George has enlisted the help of his wealthy father, using his poor vision as an excuse before being convinced by his father into naming all three of the perpetrators. When pressed for more details, George passes the burden to Charlie. Although struggling with his decision, Charlie gives no information, so Trask recommends Charlie's expulsion.

Frank cannot contain himself and launches into a passionate speech defending Charlie and questioning the integrity of a school that rewards students for snitching on their classmates.

Frank reveals that there was an attempt to buy Charlie's testimony and that regardless of whether his silence is right or wrong, Charlie refuses to sell anybody out to advance his future. He tells them that Charlie has shown integrity in his actions and insists the committee not expel him because this is what great leaders are made of, and promises he will make them proud in the future.

The disciplinary committee decides to place the students named by George on probation, and to give George neither recognition nor commendation for his testimony. They excuse Charlie from any punishment and allow him to have no further involvement in the inquiries, to thunderous applause from the student body.

As Charlie escorts Frank to his limo, a female political science teacher, Christine Downes, who was part of the disciplinary committee, approaches him, commending him for his speech. Seeing a spark between them, Charlie tells Downes that Frank served on President Lyndon Johnson's staff. In their brief encounter, Frank deftly establishes Downes is single and surprises her by correctly identifying her perfume scent as Fleurs de Rocaille; they agree to get together sometime and "talk politics".

Charlie takes Frank home. The colonel walks towards his house and greets his niece's young children happily as Charlie watches by the limo.

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​Apollo 13 (1995)
YouTube Video of the Movie Trailer for Apollo 13
Apollo 13 is a 1995 American space adventure docudrama film directed by Ron Howard and starring Tom Hanks, Kevin Bacon, Bill Paxton, Gary Sinise, and Ed Harris.

The screenplay by William Broyles, Jr., and Al Reinert, that dramatizes the aborted 1970 Apollo 13 lunar mission, is an adaptation of the book Lost Moon: The Perilous Voyage of Apollo 13 by astronaut Jim Lovell and Jeffrey Kluger.

The film depicts astronauts Lovell, Jack Swigert, and Fred Haise aboard Apollo 13 for America's third Moon landing mission. En route, an on-board explosion deprives their spacecraft of most of its oxygen supply and electric power, forcing NASA's flight controllers to abort the Moon landing, and turning the mission into a struggle to get the three men home safely.

Howard went to great lengths to create a technically accurate movie, employing NASA's technical assistance in astronaut and flight controller training for his cast, and obtaining permission to film scenes aboard a reduced gravity aircraft for realistic depiction of the "weightlessness" experienced by the astronauts in space.

Released to cinemas in the United States on June 30, 1995, Apollo 13 was nominated for nine Academy Awards, including Best Picture (winning for Best Film Editing and Best Sound). In total, the film grossed over $355 million worldwide during its theatrical releases. The film was very positively received by critics.

Plot:

Astronaut Jim Lovell (Hanks) hosts a house party where guests watch Neil Armstrong's televised first human steps on the Moon. Afterwards Lovell, who had orbited the Moon on Apollo 8, tells his wife Marilyn (Kathleen Quinlan) that he intends to return to the Moon to walk on its surface.

Three months later, as Lovell conducts a VIP tour of NASA's Vertical Assembly Building, his boss Deke Slayton (Chris Ellis) informs him that his crew will fly Apollo 13 instead of 14. Lovell, Ken Mattingly (Gary Sinise), and Fred Haise (Bill Paxton) train for their new mission.

A few days before launch, Mattingly is exposed to the measles, and the flight surgeon demands his replacement with Mattingly's backup, Jack Swigert (Kevin Bacon). Lovell resists breaking up his team, but relents when Slayton threatens to bump his crew to a later mission. As the launch date approaches, Marilyn has a nightmare about her husband's safety, but goes to the Kennedy Space Center the night before launch to see him off.

On April 11, 1970, Flight Director Gene Kranz (Ed Harris) gives the go-ahead from Houston's Mission Control Center for the Apollo 13 launch. As the Saturn V rocket climbs through the atmosphere, a second stage engine cuts off prematurely, but the craft reaches its Earth parking orbit. After the third stage fires to send Apollo 13 to the Moon, Swigert performs the maneuver to connect the Command/Service Module Odyssey to the Lunar Module Aquarius and pull it away from the spent rocket.

Three days into the mission, the crew makes a television transmission, which the networks decline to broadcast live. After Swigert turns on the liquid oxygen tank stirring fans as requested, one of the tanks explodes, emptying its contents into space and sending the craft tumbling. The other tank is soon found to be leaking.

Mission Control aborts the Moon landing, and Lovell and Haise must hurriedly power up Aquarius to use as a "lifeboat" for the return home, as Swigert shuts down Odyssey before its battery power runs out. In Houston, Kranz rallies his team to come up with a plan to bring the astronauts home safely, declaring "failure is not an option". Controller John Aaron (Loren Dean) recruits Mattingly to help him invent a procedure to restart Odyssey for the landing on Earth.

As Swigert and Haise watch the Moon pass beneath them, Lovell laments his lost chance of walking on its surface, then turns their attention to the business of getting home. With Aquarius running on minimal electrical power, the crew suffers freezing conditions, and Haise contracts a urinary infection and a fever.

Swigert suspects Mission Control is withholding their inability to get them home; Haise angrily blames Swigert's inexperience for the accident; and Lovell quickly squelches the argument. When carbon dioxide approaches dangerous levels, ground control must quickly invent a way to make the Command Module's square filters work in the Lunar Module's round receptacles.

With the guidance systems on Aquarius shut down, the crew must make a difficult but vital course correction by manually igniting the Lunar Module's engine.

Mattingly and Aaron struggle to find a way to turn on the Command Module systems without drawing too much power, and finally transmit the procedure to Swigert, who restarts Odyssey by transferring extra power from Aquarius. When the crew jettisons the Service Module, they are surprised to see the extent of the damage.

As they release Aquarius and re-enter the Earth's atmosphere, no one is sure that Odyssey's heat shield is intact. The tense period of radio silence due to ionization blackout is longer than normal, but the astronauts report all is well and splash down in the Pacific Ocean.

As helicopters bring the three men aboard the recovery ship USS Iwo Jima for a hero's welcome, Lovell's voice-over describes the subsequent investigation into the explosion, and the careers of Haise, Swigert, Mattingly, and Kranz. He wonders if and when mankind will return to the Moon.

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​Saving Private Ryan (1998)
YouTube Video of the Movie Trailer for "Saving Private Ryan"
Saving Private Ryan is a 1998 American epic war drama film set during the Invasion of Normandy in World War II. Directed by Steven Spielberg and written by Robert Rodat, the film is notable for its graphic portrayal of war, and for the intensity of its opening 27 minutes, which includes a depiction of the Omaha Beach assault during the Normandy landings.

The movie follows United States Army Rangers Captain John H. Miller (Tom Hanks) and a squad (portrayed by Tom Sizemore, Edward Burns, Barry Pepper, Giovanni Ribisi, Vin Diesel, Adam Goldberg, and Jeremy Davies) as they search for a paratrooper, Private First Class James Francis Ryan (Matt Damon), who is the last-surviving brother of four servicemen.

The film received critical acclaim, winning several awards for film, cast, and crew, as well as earning significant returns at the box office. The film grossed US$481.8 million worldwide, making it the second-highest-grossing film of the year.

The film was nominated for 11 Academy Awards; Spielberg's direction won his second Academy Award for Best Director, with four more awards going to the film. Saving Private Ryan was released on home video in May 1999, earning another $44 million from sales.

In 2014, the film was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress, being deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."

Plot:

​In the late 1990s, an elderly American World War II veteran visits the Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial in Normandy, France; with him are his wife, children and grandchildren. He sees a particular grave marker and, overwhelmed, falls to his knees.

On the morning of June 6, 1944, American soldiers land on Omaha Beach as part of the Normandy Invasion. They suffer heavy losses in assaulting German positions defended by artillery and machine guns.

Captain John H. Miller of the 2nd Ranger Battalion assembles a group to penetrate the German defenses, leading to a breakout from the beach. We then see a dead soldier face down in the bloody surf; his pack is stenciled Ryan, S.

In a Washington, D.C. office, a battalion of women type death notifications; in voice-over we hear officers' condolences to families: "Our outfit has felt his loss tremendously ... He was a fine soldier ..." A clerk pulls a letter from a pile, then pages through another stack for another letter, glancing between them.

She locates a third letter at another desk, then hurries to show them to a young lieutenant, who leads her across the hall to a captain. Soon the lieutenant and captain are explaining to a colonel that three brothers from the same family‍—‌Sean, Peter, and Daniel Ryan‍—‌have been killed within the past week and that their mother is about to be notified. In addition a fourth brother, paratrooper Private First Class James Francis Ryan, is somewhere in Normandy.

A wordless sequence begins with Mrs. Ryan washing dishes in the family farmhouse. A car approaches bearing the white five-pointed star of the United States Army. Mrs. Ryan braces herself and goes to meet it. As an Army officer, then a priest, emerge from the car her legs go weak and she collapses to the porch.

General George Marshall learns of the case. After reading Abraham Lincoln's Bixby letter aloud for his staff, he orders that James Ryan be found and removed from harm's way.
Three days after D-Day, Miller receives orders to find Ryan and bring him back from the front. He assembles six men from his company—T/Sgt. Mike Horvath, Privates First Class Richard Reiben and Adrian Caparzo, Privates Stanley Mellish and Danny Jackson, medic Irwin Wade—plus T/5 Timothy Upham, a cartographer and interpreter borrowed from another unit. They move out to Neuville, where they meet a squad from the 101st Airborne Division. Caparzo is killed by a German sniper.

They locate a Private James Ryan, but he is not their man. They eventually encounter a friend of James Francis Ryan, who tells them that Ryan is defending an important bridge in the fictional town of Ramelle.

On the way to Ramelle, Miller decides to neutralize a German machine gun position, despite his men's misgivings; Wade is killed in the skirmish. Miller, at Upham's urging, declines to execute a surviving German (nicknamed "Steamboat Willie") and sets him free on condition that he surrender to the first Allied unit he encounters.

Losing confidence in Miller's leadership, Reiben declares his intention to desert, prompting a confrontation with Horvath, which Miller defuses by disclosing his civilian background (schoolteaching) about which his men had set up a betting pool. Reiben reluctantly decides to stay.

At Ramelle, Miller and the squad find a small group of paratroopers preparing to defend the bridge; one is Ryan. Miller tells Ryan about his brothers and their orders to bring him home and that two men had been lost in finding him. He is distressed at the loss of his brothers, but asks Miller to tell his mother that he intends to stay "with the only brothers [he has] left."

Miller decides to join his unit with the paratroopers in defense of the bridge against the imminent German attack. Miller forms ambush positions throughout the ruined town, preparing to attack arriving tanks with Molotov cocktails, detonation cords and "sticky bombs" made from socks filled with Composition B.

Elements of the 2nd SS Panzer Division arrive with infantry and armor. Although they inflict heavy casualties on the Germans, most of the paratroopers, along with Jackson, Mellish, and Horvath are killed.

While attempting to blow the bridge, Miller is shot and mortally wounded by Steamboat Willie, who has rejoined the Germans. Just before a Tiger tank reaches the bridge, an American P-51 Mustang flies overhead and destroys the tank, followed by American armored units which rout the remaining Germans.

Upham surprises a group of German soldiers as they attempt to retreat. Steamboat Willie raises his hands in surrender, believing that Upham will accept because of their earlier encounter. Having witnessed Miller being killed by Steamboat Willie, Upham shoots him, but lets the other Germans flee.

Reiben and Ryan are with Miller as he dies and says his last words, "James ... earn this. Earn it."

Returning to the present day, we learn that the veteran visiting the Normandy Memorial is Ryan and the grave he is standing at is Miller's. The elderly Ryan expresses his appreciation for what Miller and the others did for him. He then says to his wife: "Tell me I have led a good life. Tell me I'm a good man." His wife says that he is. Ryan comes to attention and salutes Miller's grave.

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​You've Got Mail (1998)
YouTube Video of the Movie Trailer for "You've Got Mail"
You've Got Mail is a 1998 American romantic comedy-drama film directed by Nora Ephron, co-written by Nora and Delia Ephron, and starring Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan.

The film is about two people in an online romance who are unaware that they are also business rivals. It marks the third coupling of stars Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan, who had previously appeared together in Joe Versus the Volcano (1990) and Sleepless in Seattle (1993).

Plot:

Kathleen Kelly (Ryan) is involved with Frank Navasky (Greg Kinnear), a leftist newspaper writer for The New York Observer who is always in search of an opportunity to root for the underdog. While Frank is devoted to his typewriter, Kathleen prefers her laptop and logging into her AOL email account.

Using the screen name "Shopgirl", she reads an email from "NY152", the screen name of Joe Fox (Hanks) whom she first met in an "over-30s" chatroom. As her voice narrates her reading of the email, she reveals the boundaries of the online relationship; no specifics, including no names, career or class information, or family connections.

Joe belongs to the Fox family which runs Fox Books—a chain of mega bookstores. Kathleen runs the independent bookstore The Shop Around The Corner that her mother ran before her.

The two are shown passing each other on their respective ways to work, revealing that they frequent the same neighborhoods in upper west Manhattan. Joe arrives at work, overseeing the opening of a new Fox Books in New York City with the help of his best friend, branch manager Kevin. Kathleen and her three store assistants, George, Aunt Birdie, and Christina, open up her small shop that morning.

Following a day with his eleven-year-old aunt Annabel and four-year-old half-brother Matthew, Joe enters Kathleen's store to let his younger relatives experience story time. Joe and Kathleen have a conversation that reveals Kathleen's fears about the Fox Books store opening around the corner. He omits his last name and makes an abrupt exit with the children.

At a publishing party for New York book business people later that week, Joe and Kathleen meet again, where Kathleen discovers Joe's true identity. She accuses him of deception and spying, while he responds by belittling her store.

The Shop Around the Corner slowly goes under. Kathleen enters Fox Books to discover the true nature of the store is one of friendliness and relaxation, yet without the same dedication to children's books as her shop. Her employees move on to other jobs; as Christina goes job hunting, George gets a job at the children's department at a Fox Books store and Birdie retires.

When the two finally decide to meet, Joe discovers who he has been corresponding with. At first he decides not to meet with Kathleen, but then to meet with her without revealing his on-line identity, leading them to clash once more. Joe later resumes the correspondence, apologizes, and promises to eventually tell her why he stood her up.

After both break up with their significant others, Joe realizes his feelings towards Kathleen and begins building a face-to-face relationship, still keeping his on-line identity a secret. He arranges a meeting between Kathleen and his on-line persona (along with his dog Brinkley), but just before she is to meet this on-line friend, he reveals his feelings for her.

Upon arriving at the agreed meeting place, she hears Fox calling to Brinkley, who has run ahead, and sees that her on-line friend is really Fox, and that she loves him, too.

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​The Green Mile (1999)
YouTube Video of the Trailer for the Movie "The Green Mile"
The Green Mile is a 1999 American fantasy crime drama film written and directed by Frank Darabont and adapted from the 1996 Stephen King novel of the same name.

The film is told in a flashback format and stars Tom Hanks as Paul Edgecomb, and Michael Clarke Duncan as John Coffey, with supporting roles by David Morse, Bonnie Hunt, and James Cromwell. The film also features Dabbs Greer in his final film, as the older Paul Edgecomb.

The movie tells the story of Paul's life as a death row corrections officer during the U.S. Great Depression, and the supernatural events he witnessed.

The film was nominated for four Academy Awards: Best Picture, Best Supporting Actor for Michael Clarke Duncan, Best Sound Mixing, and Best Adapted Screenplay.

Plot: 
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In a Louisiana assisted-living home in 1999, Paul Edgecomb begins to cry while watching the film Top Hat. His companion Elaine becomes concerned, and Paul explains to her that the film reminded him of the events of 1935, which took place when he was a prison officer, in charge of death row, what they refer to as the "Green Mile".

In 1935, Paul supervises officers Brutus Howell, Dean Stanton, Harry Terwilliger, and Percy Wetmore at Cold Mountain Penitentiary. Paul is suffering from a severe bladder infection and receives John Coffey, a physically imposing but mentally challenged black man, into his custody.

John had been sentenced to death after being convicted of raping and murdering two white girls. One of the other inmates is a Native-American named Arlen Bitterbuck, who is charged with murder and is the first to be executed. Percy demonstrates a severe sadistic streak, but, as the nephew of Louisiana's First Lady, he is beyond reproach.

He is particularly abusive with inmate Eduard Delacroix; he breaks Del's fingers with his baton, steps on a pet mouse named Mr. Jingles, which Del had adopted, repeatedly calls him by a gay slur, and ultimately sabotages his execution by failing to soak the sponge used to conduct electricity to Del's head; Del dies screaming in pain.

John begins to demonstrate supernatural powers; he cures Paul's bladder infection, resurrects Mr. Jingles, and heals Melinda Moores, wife of the prison's chief warden, of a brain tumor. This last affliction he releases into Percy, who under its influence shoots another prisoner, mass murderer William Wharton, dead.

Wharton had from the moment of his arrival been a troublemaker; he assaulted the guards as he was being escorted into the block, made mischief on two occasions later which caused Paul to order him restrained in the block's padded cell, groped Percy, racially insulted John, and revealed psychically to John that he is, in fact, responsible for the crime for which John was condemned. John then reveals the story psychically to Paul, and, when doing so, he also releases his supernatural energy into Paul. Meanwhile, Percy is committed to the insane asylum.

Although distraught over the notion of being executed while innocent, John tells Paul that he does, in fact, wish to die, as he views the world as a cruel place. Mentioning that he had never seen a movie before, John watches Top Hat with the other guards as a last request. John is executed that night but refuses the customary hood as he is afraid of the dark. Paul concludes his story by telling Elaine that John's was the last execution that he and Brutus supervised; following Coffey's execution, they both took jobs in the juvenile system.

Elaine realizes that, since he had a grown son in 1935, Paul must be much older than he looks. Paul reveals that he is, in fact, 108 years of age. Not only is he still alive, so is Del's mouse, Mr. Jingles. Paul then muses that if John's power could make a mouse live for as long as Mr. Jingles has, how much longer does he himself have left?

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​A Few Good Men (1992)
A Few Good Men is a 1992 American legal drama film directed by Rob Reiner and starring Tom Cruise, Jack Nicholson, and Demi Moore.

Actors in Supporting Roles include:
The movie was adapted for the screen by Aaron Sorkin from his play of the same name but includes contributions by William Goldman. The film revolves around the court-martial of two U.S. Marines charged with the murder of a fellow Marine and the tribulations of their lawyers as they prepare a case to defend their clients.​


Plot:

​U.S. Marines Lance Corporal Harold Dawson and Private Louden Downey are facing a court-martial, accused of killing fellow Marine Private William Santiago at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba.

Santiago compared unfavorably to his fellow Marines, had poor relations with them, and failed to respect the chain of command in attempts at being transferred to another base. An argument evolves between base commander Colonel Nathan Jessup and his officers: while Jessup's executive officer, Lieutenant Colonel Matthew Markinson, advocates that Santiago be transferred immediately, Jessup regards this as akin to surrender and orders Santiago's commanding officer, Lieutenant Jonathan James Kendrick, to train Santiago to become a better Marine.

When Dawson and Downey are later arrested for Santiago's murder, naval investigator and lawyer Lieutenant commander JoAnne Galloway suspects they carried out a "code red" order, a violent extrajudicial punishment. Galloway asks to defend them, but instead, the case is given to Lieutenant Daniel Kaffee, an inexperienced and unenthusiastic U.S. Navy lawyer.

Initially, friction exists between Galloway, who resents Kaffee's tendency to plea bargain, and Kaffee, who resents Galloway's interference. Kaffee and the prosecutor, his friend Captain Jack Ross (USMC), negotiate a bargain, but Dawson and Downey refuse to go along.

They insist they were ordered by Kendrick to shave Santiago's head, minutes after Kendrick publicly ordered the platoon not to touch the would-be victim, and did not intend their victim to die. Kaffee is finally won over by Galloway and takes the case to court.

In the course of the trial, the defense manages to establish the existence of "code red" orders at Guantanamo and that Dawson specifically had learned not to disobey any order, having been denied a promotion after helping out a fellow Marine who was under what could be seen as a "code red".

However, the defense also suffers setbacks when a cross-examination reveals Downey was not actually present when Dawson and he supposedly received the "code red" order. Markinson reveals to Kaffee that Jessup never intended to transfer Santiago off the base, but commits suicide rather than testify in court because he feels that he had failed to do the right thing by protecting a Marine under his command.

Without Markinson's testimony, Kaffee believes the case lost and returns home in a drunken stupor, having come to regret he fought the case instead of arranging a plea bargain. Galloway, however, convinces Kaffee to call Jessup as a witness despite the risk of being court-martialled for smearing a high-ranking officer.

Jessup initially outsmarts Kaffee's questioning, but is unnerved when the lawyer points out a contradiction in his testimony: Jessup had stated he wanted to transfer Santiago off the base for his own safety and that Marines never disobeyed orders. But, if he ordered his men to leave Santiago alone and if Marines always obey orders, then Santiago would not have been in danger.

Unnerved by being caught in one of his own lies and disgusted by Kaffee's questioning of the imperative to impose discipline within his unit, an enraged Jessup extols his and the military's importance to national security, and when asked point-blank if he ordered the "code red" he bellows with contempt that he did. As he justifies his actions, an exasperated Jessup is arrested; Kendrick is later arrested for his actions, too.

Soon afterwards, Dawson and Downey are cleared of the murder charge, but found guilty of "conduct unbecoming a United States Marine" and dishonorably discharged. Dawson accepts the verdict, but Downey does not understand what they had done wrong. Dawson explains they had failed to stand up for those too weak to fight for themselves, like Santiago.

As the two prepare to leave, Kaffee tells Dawson he does not need a patch on his arm to have honor. Dawson, who had previously shown contempt for Kaffee for not understanding the Marine ethos, recognizes him as an officer and renders a salute.

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Twister (1996)
Twister is a 1996 American disaster adventure film starring Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt as storm chasers researching tornadoes. It was directed by Jan de Bont from a screenplay by Michael Crichton and Anne-Marie Martin. Its executive producers were Steven Spielberg, Walter Parkes, Laurie MacDonald and Gerald R. Molen. Twister was the second-highest-grossing film of 1996 domestically, with an estimated 54,688,100 tickets sold in the US.

In the film, a team of storm chasers tries to perfect a data-gathering instrument, designed to be released into the funnel of a tornado, while competing with another better-funded team with a similar device during a tornado outbreak across Oklahoma. The plot is a dramatized view of research projects like VORTEX of the NOAA. The device used in the movie, called "Dorothy", is copied from the real-life TOTO, used in the 1980s by NSSL.

Plot:

In June 1969, 5-year-old Jo Thornton, her parents and their dog Toby seek shelter in their storm cellar from an F5 tornado in Oklahoma. The tornado ends up ripping the cellar door off, and pulling Jo's father into the storm to his death. Jo, her mother and Toby survive.

In the spring of 1996, 32-year-old Jo, now a meteorologist, is reunited with her estranged husband, Bill "The Extreme" Harding, a former weather researcher and storm chaser who has accepted a job as a TV meteorologist. Bill and his fiancee, reproductive psychiatrist Melissa Reeves, have tracked down Jo during an active bout of stormy weather to obtain her signature on divorce papers.

Jo has built four identical tornado research devices called DOROTHY (a reference to the tornado in The Wizard of Oz), based on Bill's designs. Each device is designed to release hundreds of sensors into a tornado to study its interior structure and help develop an advanced storm-warning system. Bill and Melissa join Jo and her storm chaser team.

They encounter Dr. Jonas Miller, a smug, corporate-funded meteorologist and storm chaser. While at a truck stop, Bill discovers that Jonas has created a device based on DOROTHY, called DOT-3, and agrees to help Jo deploy DOROTHY before Miller can deploy DOT-3 and claim credit for the idea. They set out in their storm-chasing vehicles to find the first tornado.

Bill and Jo head into the path of an increasingly powerful F1 tornado while riding Jo's truck. On their way, the truck reaches at a high speed. Moments later, the radio warns that the funnel is becoming thick and moving faster. When the dirt road they are on suddenly becomes a mud bank, Bill loses control of the truck and they crash into a small bridge. They scramble to take shelter under the bridge as the tornado passes over them, destroying the truck and DOROTHY I before dissipating.

By the time the F1 dissipates, Jo's truck lands upside-down, barely missing Melissa who is driving Bill's new truck. Bill and Jo continue storm chasing in Bill's truck, with Melissa riding in the back. The team locates a second tornado, a confirmed F2. When it shifts course, Bill, Jo and Melissa drive through heavy rain and collide with two violent waterspouts. They see some cows flying and the truck spins around until the waterspouts dissipate. No one is hurt, but Melissa, who has never experienced anything remotely similar, is hysterical.

The team visits Jo's Aunt Meg in Wakita, Oklahoma, a small town south of the Kansas border. Inside Meg's house, they take a break and enjoy a homemade meal. Bill tells Melissa about his relationship with Jo and reflects on her father's death. After the storm chasers finish their break, they say goodbye to Meg and they are on their way to their next twister.

An F3 tornado has formed near some hills, but the team has trouble finding it. Jo drives ahead to intercept it, but a telephone pole falls on the back of the truck and knocks DOROTHY II out of it, scattering its mini-sensors. As Jo scrambles to collect the sensors, the tornado lifts and touches down closer. Bill forces her back into the truck and drives them to safety. They confront each other over their marriage and Jo's obsession with tornadoes, which stems from her lingering grief over her father's death.

In Wakita the following night, an F4 tornado demolishes a drive-in movie theater during the showing the 1980 horror film The Shining that Jo and Bill are watching, forcing the other storm chasers to take shelter in a garage warehouse pit. First, Bill yells at the other people to get underground. Then, Jo yells at the snack shack employees to get to the garage. The storm chasers and the people run away from the deadly tornado to get to the garage. The garage is severely damaged and several people are injured.

A car is tossed through a building and the drive-in movie theater sign comes down. Later, Emergency services arrive at the scene of the F4 to assist the injured. The injured are brought to nearby medical centers for treatment.

After the ordeal, Melissa recognizes Jo's and Bill's unresolved feelings for one another and amicably ends her engagement to Bill. The team learns that the tornado is on its way toward Wakita. They rush into town, where they find many of the buildings devastated. Some people lost their homes from the horrific twister. The storm chasers continue their investigation until they see Aunt Meg's house destroyed. Bill and Jo rescue Aunt Meg and her dog Mose from her collapsed house.

Meg is taken to the nearest hospital with minor injuries while Mose stays with the group. They learn that a maximum-force tornado, an F5, is forming 25 miles to the south. They have two more DOROTHYs to deploy. After completing the twister, they will no longer have more. Jo notices some of Meg's kinetic sculptures revolving in the breeze, and realizes that if they added wind flaps to DOROTHY's sensors, their increased buoyancy would make them more likely to be carried up into a tornado.

While the team is on their way to the F5, they gather empty soft-drink cans, cut them into aluminum sheets, and make spinning fins that they attach to each small sensor sphere so that they look like a helicopter. Reaching the tornado, Bill and Jo drive toward its funnel, but as they near it, a tree trunk drops out of the sky, destroys DOROTHY III, and wedges itself under the truck.

With the twister bearing down on them, Bill manages to drive clear of the tree just as a flying fuel tanker hits the ground and explodes near it. Meanwhile, Jonas attempts to deploy DOT-3 by driving ahead of the storm, ignoring Bill's repeated warnings that it is about to shift direction, but it occurs, killing Jonas and his driver instantly and destroying truck and DOT-3.

Bill and Jo drive past the last tornado and a shed when DOROTHY IV is loaded onto the back of Bill's truck and is tightly secured onto its bed. Bill and Jo doggedly pursue the storm, dodging flying farm vehicles, and crashing through part of a farmhouse that tumbles into the road. While barreling on a cornfield, Bill's truck aims at the twister.

Doing a countdown, Jo and Bill are able to deploy the last DOROTHY into the final tornado successfully, using Bill's truck as an anchor before leaping onto the cornfield. After DOROTHY's sensors are released and dispersed into the F5, transmitting copious data is sent to the research team's computers.

But then, the tornado shifts course toward Bill and Jo, so they duck and crawl underneath the cornfields. They stand up and run to shelter. A horse runs away from the deadly twister, so Bill and Jo run to a barn. But, they find the barn filled with sinister-like impelvements including knives, saws and pickaxes. The barn that Jo and Bill are in reminds them of a haunted house.

Moments Later, the barn takes damage and Bill and Jo avoid derbis. As they escape the barn, the twister destroys it and sends the sharp things at Jo and Bill. However, they are not impaled by the knives. They climb up a hill and enter a pump house and strap themselves to the deeply-anchored pipes. They hold on tight to their harnesses to avoid death.

The tornado destroys the building around them and lifts Jo and Bill off of their feet, but they remain securely lashed to the pipes due to their heavy weight. Despite their peril, their faces show wonder as they witness the terrible beauty of the storm's monumental heart and experience the wind that is forceful as a roller coaster. The storm passes over them, then begins to dissipate, and they survive the last twister.

As the F5 dissipates, a family exits their storm cellar. Bill notices the twister did not destroy the house and the horses survive. The team celebrates their accomplishment and Jo and Bill decide to form their own lab to analyze the new data, and to give their marriage another try.

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​







​The Silence of the Lambs (1991)
YouTube Video of the Movie Trailer for "The Silence of the Lambs"
Pictured below: Jody Foster as  Clarice Starling and Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal Lecter
The Silence of the Lambs is a 1991 American horror-thriller film directed by Jonathan Demme and starring Jodie Foster, Anthony Hopkins, and Scott Glenn. It was adapted by Ted Tally from Thomas Harris's 1988 novel of the same name.

The novel was Harris's second to feature the character of Dr. Hannibal Lecter, a brilliant psychiatrist and cannibalistic serial killer. The film was the second adaptation of a Harris novel to feature Lecter, preceded by the Michael Mann-directed Manhunter in 1986.

In the film, Clarice Starling, a young U.S. FBI trainee, seeks the advice of the imprisoned Dr. Lecter to apprehend another serial killer, known only as "Buffalo Bill".

The Silence of the Lambs was released on February 14, 1991, and grossed $272.7 million worldwide against its $19 million budget. It was only the third film, the other two being It Happened One Night and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, to win Academy Awards in all the top five categories: Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Director, and Adapted Screenplay.

It is also the first (and so far only) Best Picture winner widely considered to be a horror film, and only the third such film to be nominated in the category, after The Exorcist in 1973 and Jaws in 1975.

The film is considered "culturally, historically or aesthetically" significant by the U.S. Library of Congress and was selected to be preserved in the National Film Registry in 2011.

A sequel titled Hannibal was released in 2001, in which Hopkins reprised his role. It was followed by two prequels: Red Dragon (2002) and Hannibal Rising (2007).

Plot:

FBI trainee and UVA graduate, Clarice Starling, is pulled from her training at the FBI Academy at Quantico, Virginia by Jack Crawford of the Bureau's Behavioral Science Unit.

He assigns her to interview Hannibal Lecter, a former psychiatrist and incarcerated cannibalistic serial killer, whose insight might prove useful in the pursuit of a serial killer nicknamed "Buffalo Bill", who skins his female victims' corpses.

Starling travels to the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane, where she is led by Dr. Frederick Chilton to Lecter's solitary quarters. Although initially pleasant and courteous, Lecter grows impatient with Starling's attempts at "dissecting" him and rebuffs her.

As she is leaving, one of the prisoners flicks semen at her. Lecter, who considers this act "unspeakably ugly", calls Starling back and tells her to seek out an old patient of his. This leads her to a storage shed, where she discovers a man's severed head with a sphinx moth lodged in its throat. She returns to Lecter, who tells her that the man is linked to Buffalo Bill. He offers to profile Buffalo Bill on the condition that he may be transferred away from Chilton, whom he detests.

Buffalo Bill abducts a Senator's daughter, Catherine Martin. Crawford authorizes Starling to offer Lecter a fake deal, promising a prison transfer if he provides information that helps them find Buffalo Bill and rescue Catherine. Instead, Lecter demands a quid pro quo from Starling, offering clues about Buffalo Bill in exchange for personal information.

Starling tells Lecter about the murder of her father when she was ten years old. Chilton secretly records the conversation and reveals Starling's deceit before offering Lecter a deal of Chilton's own making. Lecter agrees and is flown to Memphis, Tennessee, where he verbally torments Senator Ruth Martin, and gives her misleading information on Buffalo Bill, including the name "Louis Friend".

Starling notices that "Louis Friend" is an anagram of "iron sulfide" — fool's gold. She visits Lecter, who is now being held in a cage-like cell in a Tennessee courthouse, and asks for the truth. Lecter tells her that all the information she needs is contained in the case file.

Rather than give her the real name, he insists that they continue their quid pro quo and she recounts a traumatic childhood incident where she was awakened by the sound of spring lambs being slaughtered on a relative's farm in Montana.

Starling admits that she still sometimes wakes thinking she can hear lambs screaming, and Lecter speculates that she is motivated to save Catherine in the hope that it will end the nightmares. Lecter gives her back the case files on Buffalo Bill after their conversation is interrupted by Chilton and the police, who escort her from the building. Later that evening, Lecter kills his guards, escapes from his cell, and disappears.

Starling analyzes Lecter's annotations to the case files and realizes that Buffalo Bill knew his first victim personally. Starling travels to the victim's hometown and discovers that Buffalo Bill was a tailor, with dresses and dress patterns identical to the patches of skin removed from each of his victims.

She telephones Crawford to inform him that Buffalo Bill is trying to form a "woman suit" out of real skin, but Crawford is already en route to make an arrest, having cross-referenced Lecter's notes with hospital archives and finding a transsexual man named Jame Gumb, who once applied unsuccessfully for a sex-change operation.

Starling continues interviewing friends of Buffalo Bill's first victim in Ohio, while Crawford leads an FBI HRT team to Gumb's address in Illinois. The house in Illinois is empty, and Starling is led to the house of "Jack Gordon", whom she realizes is actually Jame Gumb, again by finding a sphinx moth.

She pursues him into his multi-room basement, where she discovers that Catherine is still alive, but trapped in a dry well. After turning off the basement lights, Gumb stalks Starling in the dark with night-vision goggles, but gives his position away when he cocks his revolver.

Starling reacts just in time and fires all of her rounds at Gumb, killing him.

Sometime later, at the FBI Academy graduation party, Starling receives a phone call from Lecter, who is at an airport in Bimini. He assures her that he does not plan to pursue her and asks her to return the favor, which she says she cannot do. Lecter then hangs up the phone, saying that he is "having an old friend for dinner", and starts following a newly arrived Chilton before disappearing into the crowd.

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​
Fried Green Tomatoes (1991)
YouTube Video of the Movie Trailer for Fried Green Tomatoes
Fried Green Tomatoes is a 1991 comedy-drama film based on the novel Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe by Fannie Flagg. Directed by Jon Avnet and written by Flagg and Carol Sobieski, it stars Kathy Bates, Jessica Tandy, Mary Stuart Masterson, and Mary-Louise Parker.

It tells the story of a Depression-era friendship between two women, Ruth and Idgie, and a 1980s friendship between Evelyn, a middle-aged housewife, and Ninny, an elderly woman. The centerpiece and parallel story concerns the murder of Ruth's abusive husband, Frank, and the accusations that follow. It received a generally positive reception from film critics and was nominated for two Academy Awards.

Plot:

Evelyn Couch, a timid, unhappy housewife in her 40s, meets elderly Ninny Threadgoode in an Anderson, Alabama, nursing home. Over several encounters with Evelyn, Ninny tells her the story of the now abandoned town of Whistle Stop, and the people who lived there. The film's subplot concerns Evelyn's dissatisfaction with her marriage, her life, her growing confidence, and her developing friendship with Ninny. The narrative switches several times between Ninny's story, which is set between World War I and World War II, and Evelyn's life in 1980s Birmingham.

Ninny's story begins with tomboy Idgie Threadgoode, the youngest of the Threadgoode children, whom Ninny describes as her sister-in-law. Idgie's close relationship with her charming older brother, Buddy, is cut short when he is hit by a train and killed. Devastated, she recedes from formal society for much of her childhood and adolescence until Buddy's former girlfriend, the straitlaced Ruth Jamison, intervenes at the request of the concerned Threadgoode family.

Idgie initially resists Ruth's attempts at friendship, but gradually a deep attachment develops between them. Ruth leaves Whistle Stop to marry Frank Bennett and moves to Valdosta, Georgia.

Idgie tries to forget her but later visits her house to find her pregnant and subject to physical abuse from Frank. Against his wishes and violent attempts to stop her, she returns to Whistle Stop with Idgie, where her baby, a boy whom she names Buddy, Jr., is born. Papa Threadgoode gives Idgie money to start a business so she can care for Ruth and Buddy, Jr.

She and Ruth open the Whistle Stop Cafe, employing the family cook, Sipsey, and her son, Big George, who excels with a barbecue that becomes popular with their patrons.

Frank eventually returns to Whistle Stop to kidnap Buddy, Jr., but his attempt is thwarted by an unseen assailant, and he is later reported missing. Once his truck appears at the bottom of a nearby drying lake without its owner, Idgie is immediately a suspect, as she had publicly threatened violence against him for beating Ruth.

She is detained along with Big George for his murder by Grady Kilgore, the local sheriff, who offers to release her and pin the crime solely on Big George; she refuses to sacrifice him. During the subsequent trial, the local minister, Reverend Scroggins, has no problem lying, providing Idgie and Big George with sound alibis for the time of Frank's disappearance.

Taking into account his reputation for getting drunk, the judge rules his death an accident and dismisses the case. Idgie and Big George are cleared of all charges.

After the trial, Ruth is diagnosed with cancer, becomes very ill, and eventually dies. Following her death, the café closes. Over time, many Whistle Stop residents eventually move away, bringing Ninny to the end of her story, but not before the revelation of what really happened to Frank.

Sipsey killed him with a blow to the head with a heavy cast iron frying pan while trying to prevent him from kidnapping Buddy, Jr. Idgie got Big George to barbecue Frank's body, which was later served to an investigator from Georgia searching for him. The investigator ate with gusto, proclaiming his meal the best pork barbecue he'd ever tasted.

Evelyn discovers that during Ninny's temporary stay at the nursing home, her house was condemned and torn down. Evelyn, having become friends with her, offers her a room in her house which she accepts.

As they walk away from the empty lot where her house used to be, they pass Ruth's grave, freshly adorned with a jar of honey, a honeycomb, and a card which reads, "I'll always love you, the Bee Charmer". The Bee Charmer is Ruth's old nickname for Idgie, and the note reveals that she is still alive.

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​
A Bronx Tale (1993)
YouTube Video of the Movie Trailer for A Bronx Tale
A Bronx Tale is a 1993 American crime drama film, adapted from Chazz Palminteri's 1989 play of the same name. It tells the coming of age story of an Italian-American boy, Calogero Anello, who, after encountering a local mafia boss, is torn between the temptations of organized crime and the values of his honest, hardworking father. The Broadway production was converted to film with limited changes, and starred Palminteri and Robert De Niro.

De Niro, who first viewed the play in Los Angeles in 1990, acquired the rights from Palminteri, intent on making the play his directorial debut. The duo then worked heavily together on the screenplay, with Palminteri aiming to retain many of the aspects of the original script, as it was based largely on his own childhood.

Production began in 1991, and was funded in collaboration with De Niro's TriBeCa Productions and Savoy Pictures, as the first film released by each studio.

Upon its release on September 29, A Bronx Tale achieved limited commercial success, grossing over $17 million domestically. However, it fared much better with critics, who praised the performances of the leads, and launched Palminteri's acting career, while also helping De Niro gain acceptance as a director. A Bronx Taleis considered to be one of the greatest gangster films ever made, and was ranked in the top-ten in the genre by the American Film Institute in 2008.

The Plot:

In 1960, Lorenzo Anello lives in Belmont, an Italian-American neighborhood in The Bronx, with his wife Rosina and his 9-year old young son Calogero, who is fascinated by the local mobsters led by Sonny LoSpecchio. One day, Calogero witnesses a murder committed by Sonny in defense of an assaulted friend in his neighborhood.

When Calogero chooses to keep quiet when questioned by NYPD detectives, Sonny takes a liking to him and gives him the nickname "C". Sonny's men offer Lorenzo a better paying job, but Lorenzo, preferring a law-abiding life as an MTA bus driver, politely declines. Sonny befriends Calogero and introduces him to his crew. Calogero earns tips amounting to $600 working in the Mafia bar and throwing dice, and is admonished harshly by Lorenzo when he discovers it. Lorenzo speaks severely to Sonny, returns the money, and angrily warns him to keep away from Calogero.

Eight years later, Calogero has grown into a young man who has been visiting Sonny regularly without his father's knowledge. Calogero is also part of a gang of local Italian-American boys, which concerns Sonny, who warns Calogero to keep away from them and focus more on his schoolwork.

Later on, Calogero meets an African American girl, Jane Williams, and is smitten with her. Despite the high level of racial tension and dislike between Italian Americans and African Americans, Calogero arranges a date with Jane. He asks for advice from both his father and Sonny, with the latter lending Calogero his car.

Later, Calogero's friends beat up the black cyclists who ride through their neighborhood, despite Calogero's attempts to defend them. One of the cyclists turns out to be Jane's brother, Willie. Willie mistakes Calogero for one of the assailants and accuses "C" of beating him up when Calogero and Jane meet for their date. Calogero loses his temper over the accusation and Willie's lack of gratitude, responding by accidentally addressing him with a racial slur, which he instantly regrets. Jane leaves with Willie.

At home, Calogero is confronted by his father who just saw him driving Sonny's car. An argument ensues and Calogero storms out. Shortly thereafter, Calogero is confronted by Sonny and his crew, who found a bomb in Sonny's car and suspected Calogero of planning to assassinate him. Calogero tearfully proclaims his love for and dedication to Sonny. Sonny recognizes Calogero's innocence and allows him to leave.

Lorenzo emerges to defend his son, but is held back by Sonny's men. The African-American boys egg the Italian-American boys' usual spot in retaliation for the previous beating, and Calogero's friends make a plan to strike back using Molotov cocktails. They try to force Calogero to participate, but Sonny stops the car and orders Calogero out. Calogero catches up with Jane, who tells him that Willie had since admitted that the boy who beat him up was not Calogero.

Jane and Calogero make amends, but Calogero suddenly remembers his friends' plans to attack Jane's neighborhood, and the two rush to stop them. Calogero and Jane arrive to find the Italian-American boys' car in flames. During the attack, someone threw one of the Molotov cocktails back into the car window, igniting the remaining bottles. The resulting crash and explosion killed everyone in the vehicle.

Calogero rushes into the crowded bar to thank Sonny for saving his life, but an unnamed assailant shoots Sonny in the back of the head before Calogero can warn him. Calogero later learns that the assailant was the son of the man Sonny killed in front of Calogero's house eight years earlier.

At Sonny's funeral, countless people come to pay their respects. When the crowd disperses, a lone man, Carmine, visits the funeral, claiming that Sonny once saved his life as well.

Calogero does not recognize Carmine until he sees a scar on his forehead and realizes he was the assaulted man whom Sonny had defended eight years ago. Carmine tells Calogero that he will be taking care of the neighborhood for the time being, and promises Calogero help should he ever need anything.

Carmine leaves just as Calogero's father unexpectedly arrives to pay his respects to Sonny, thanking him for saving his son's life and admitting that he had never hated Sonny, but merely resented him for making Calogero grow up so quickly. Calogero makes peace with his father, and the two walk home together as Calogero narrates the lessons he learned from his two mentors.

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​
JFK (1991)
YouTube of the Movie Trailer for JFK (1991)
JFK is a 1991 American conspiracy-thriller film directed by Oliver Stone. It examines the events leading to the assassination of John F. Kennedy and alleged cover-up through the eyes of former New Orleans district attorney Jim Garrison (Kevin Costner). Garrison filed charges against New Orleans businessman Clay Shaw (Tommy Lee Jones) for his alleged participation in a conspiracy to assassinate the President, for which Lee Harvey Oswald (Gary Oldman) was found responsible by the Warren Commission.

The film was adapted by Stone and Zachary Sklar from the books On the Trail of the Assassins by Jim Garrison and Crossfire: The Plot That Killed Kennedy by Jim Marrs. Stone described this account as a "counter-myth" to the Warren Commission's "fictional myth."

The film became embroiled in controversy. Upon its theatrical release, many major American newspapers ran editorials accusing Stone of taking liberties with historical facts, including the film's implication that President Lyndon B. Johnson was part of a coup d'état to kill Kennedy.

After a slow start at the box office, the film gradually picked up momentum, earning over $205 million in worldwide gross. JFK was nominated for eight Academy Awards (including Best Picture) and won two for Best Cinematography and Best Film Editing. It was the most successful of three films Stone made about American presidents, followed by Nixon with Anthony Hopkins in the title role and W. with Josh Brolin as George W. Bush.

Plot:

The film opens with newsreel footage, including the farewell address in 1961 of outgoing President Dwight D. Eisenhower, warning about the build-up of the "military-industrial complex". This is followed by a summary of John F. Kennedy's years as president, emphasizing the events that, in Stone's thesis, would lead to his assassination. This builds to a reconstruction of the assassination on November 22, 1963. New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison subsequently learns about potential links to the assassination in New Orleans.

Garrison and his team investigate several possible conspirators, including private pilot David Ferrie (Joe Pesci), but are forced to let them go after their investigation is publicly rebuked by the federal government. Kennedy's suspected assassin Lee Harvey Oswald is killed by Jack Ruby, and Garrison closes the investigation.

The investigation is reopened in 1966 after Garrison reads the Warren Report and notices what he believes to be multiple inaccuracies. Garrison and his staff interrogate several witnesses to the Kennedy assassination, and others involved with Oswald, Ruby, and Ferrie.

One such witness is Willie O'Keefe (Kevin Bacon), a male prostitute serving five years in prison for soliciting, who reveals he witnessed Ferrie discussing a coup d'état. As well as briefly meeting Oswald, O'Keefe was romantically involved with a man called "Clay Bertrand". Jean Hill (Ellen McElduff), a teacher who says she witnessed shots fired from the grassy knoll, tells the investigators that Secret Service threatened her into saying three shots came from the book depository, revealing changes that were made to her testimony by the Warren Commission.

Garrison's staff also test the single bullet theory by aiming an empty rifle from the window through which Oswald was alleged to have shot Kennedy. They conclude that Oswald was too poor a marksman to make the shots, indicating someone else, or multiple marksmen, were involved.

In 1968, Garrison meets a high-level figure in Washington D.C. who identifies himself as "X" (Donald Sutherland). He suggests a conspiracy at the highest levels of government, implicating members of the CIA, the Mafia, the military-industrial complex, Secret Service, FBI, and Kennedy's vice-president and then president Lyndon Baines Johnson as either co-conspirators or as having motives to cover up the truth of the assassination. X explains that the President was killed because he wanted to pull the United States out of the Vietnam War and dismantle the CIA.

X encourages Garrison to keep digging and prosecute New Orleans-based international businessman Clay Shaw for his alleged involvement. When Shaw is interrogated, the businessman denies any knowledge of meeting Ferrie, O'Keefe or Oswald, but he is soon charged with conspiring to murder the President.

Some of Garrison's staff begin to doubt his motives and disagree with his methods, and leave the investigation. Garrison's marriage is strained when his wife Liz (Sissy Spacek) complains that he is spending more time on the case than with his own family.

After a sinister phone call is made to their daughter, Liz accuses Garrison of being selfish and attacking Shaw only because of his homosexuality. In addition, the media launches attacks on television and in newspapers attacking Garrison's character and criticizing the way his office is spending taxpayers' money.

Some key witnesses become scared and refuse to testify while others, such as Ferrie, are killed in suspicious circumstances. Before his death, Ferrie tells Garrison that he believes people are after him, and reveals there was a conspiracy around Kennedy's death.

The trial of Clay Shaw takes place in 1969. Garrison presents the court with further evidence of multiple killers and dismissing the single bullet theory, and proposes a Dealey Plaza shots scenario involving three assassins who fired six total shots and framing Oswald for the murders of Kennedy and officer J. D. Tippit but the jury acquits Shaw after less than one hour of deliberation.

The film reflects that members of that jury stated publicly that they believed there was a conspiracy behind the assassination, but not enough evidence to link Shaw to that conspiracy.

​Shaw died of lung cancer in 1974, but in 1979 Richard Helms testified that Clay Shaw had been a part-time contact of the Domestic Contacts Division of the CIA. The end credits claim that records related to the assassination will be released to the public in 2029.
​
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​
​The Bodyguard (1992)
YouTube of the Movie Trailer for "The Bodyguard" (1992)
​The Bodyguard is a 1992 American romantic thriller film directed by Mick Jackson, written by Lawrence Kasdan, and starring Kevin Costner and Whitney Houston. Costner stars as a former Secret Service agent-turned-bodyguard who is hired to protect Houston's character, a music star, from an unknown stalker.

Kasdan wrote the film in the mid-1970s, originally as a vehicle for Ryan O'Neal and Diana Ross.

The film was Houston's acting debut and was the second-highest-grossing film worldwide in 1992, making $411 million worldwide. The soundtrack became the best-selling soundtrack of all time, selling more than 45 million copies worldwide.

Plot:
​
Rachel Marron (Whitney Houston) is an Academy Award-nominated music superstar who is being stalked and sent death threats. Things get dangerously out of hand when a bomb disguised as a doll explodes in her dressing room.

Rachel's manager, Bill Devaney (Bill Cobbs), seeks the services of a professional bodyguard, Frank Farmer (Kevin Costner), to protect her. He is a highly successful private bodyguard, mostly protecting corporate VIPs.

Formerly Farmer was a Secret Service agent who served as part of the presidential protection detail during two presidencies. Frank is reluctant to accept the offer to guard Rachel as he sees her as a spoiled diva who is oblivious to the threats against her life.

Frank's concerns are quickly realized when Rachel looks upon Frank as being paranoid and his extensive protection techniques as intrusive. Rachel's existing bodyguard Tony (Mike Starr) resents Frank's presence. But at a concert where Rachel is performing, a riot breaks out and Frank rescues her from danger. As a result, the two develop a closer relationship.

Frank tries to remain professional, but the two sleep together. However, recognizing that this compromises his ability to protect his client, Frank breaks off their affair. Hurt, Rachel begins to defy Frank's painstaking security measures.

She even goes as far as attempting to sleep with his former Secret Service colleague Greg Portman (Tomas Arana). But after she has personal contact with her stalker via a threatening phone call, Rachel realizes that she must put her trust in Frank ahead of her own desire for personal gratification. She finally recognizes the seriousness of the situation and cancels the rest of her tour.

Frank, Rachel, Rachel's driver Henry (Christopher Birt), Rachel's son Fletcher (DeVaughn Nixon), and her sister Nicki (Michele Lamar Richards) then travel to a large lakefront cabin in the mountains, the home of Frank’s father, Herb (Ralph Waite). The next day, Fletcher is almost killed when a bomb explodes inside the boat he rode moments before.

After finding footprints around the cabin and sabotaged automobiles, Frank realizes that Rachel's stalker has followed them. After securing the house for the night, Frank learns that Rachel's obsessive stalker and the person trying to kill her are not the same person. Angry and drunk, Nicki admits that during a drug-induced fit of jealousy she hired a hitman to kill Rachel, but that the letters from the stalker came before that. However, she cannot call it off because she does not know the killer's identity.

Abruptly, the hitman breaks into the house and fatally shoots Nicki. Frank, who is armed with a semi-automatic pistol, ensures that his father has secured the rest of the group on the second floor. Upon tracking the killer and then pursuing him into the woods, Frank shoots but misses, allowing the shooter to escape capture. Frank learns the next day, from his Secret Service contacts, that they have apprehended the stalker and were interviewing him when Nicki was shot.

​Frank and Rachel attend Nicki's funeral and then the Academy Awards ceremony, where Frank gives Rachel a panic button in the shape of a cross to immediately alert him to any trouble. A host of backstage technical issues hamper Frank's efforts to monitor the proceedings closely.

During the actual show, Rachel freezes and runs offstage, angry at Frank for embarrassing her with overprotective measures. However, Rachel returns to the audience and is present when announced as the winner for Best Actress. As she comes toward the stage to accept the award, the hitman is revealed to be Portman.

Frank notices Portman pointing a gun disguised as a camera at Rachel. As Portman prepares for the fatal shot, Frank runs on stage and leaps in front of Rachel, intercepting the shot.

Once regaining his balance, Frank shoots Portman through his camera-gun, killing him. Frank is left wounded and Rachel calls for help—all the while urging him to stay with her.

Frank recovers from the shooting and goes to say goodbye to Rachel at the airport. After the plane starts to taxi, Rachel suddenly jumps out and runs to Frank for one last passionate kiss.

The film ends with a scene from Frank's next assignment—protecting a mob-fighting U.S. congressman—where a priest, using the emergency cross earlier given to Rachel, provides a solemn benediction as the lawmaker's new bodyguard keeps a watchful eye.

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