Nominated* for seven Oscars(r) and winner of two, this darkly amusing thriller combines a first-rate cast, "a dazzling mix of mirth and malice" (Rolling Stone) and a bizarre kidnapping plot that unravels the Midwest like never before. Starring Frances McDormand, William H. Macy and Steve Buscemi,...

Shane... oh, Shane... what have you done? "Conscience is a killer" is the catchphrase that made season 5 of The Shield the most intense season of the series to date. These 11 tightly scripted episodes comprise the first half of a 21-episode arc, with series creator Shawn Ryan referring to ...

Freely adapted from Robert Ludlum's 1980 bestseller, The Bourne Identity starts fast and never slows down. The twisting plot revs up in Zurich, where amnesiac CIA assassin Jason Bourne (Matt Damon), with no memory of his name, profession, or recent activities, recruits a penniless German t...

From a match made in heaven comes a movie spawned in hell! Young hotshot director Robert Rodriquez (El Mariachi, Desperado) teamed up with Pulp Fiction auteur Quentin Tarantino (offering his services as writer and co-star) to make this outrageous, no-holds-barred hybrid of hi...

Arguably the series' best season to date, season 5 of 24 literally starts with a bang and never lets up, with an intricate executive-level conspiracy to control Central Asia's oil supply. Piling crisis upon crisis in an escalating series of deceptions, twists, and deeply hidden agendas, t...

Jean-Jacques Annaud's The Name of the Rose is a flawed attempt to adapt Umberto Eco's highly convoluted medieval bestseller for the screen, necessarily excising much of the esoterica that made the book so compelling. Still, what's left is a riveting whodunit set in a grimly and grimily rea...

Foyle's War: Set 3, another great suite of mysteries largely written by series creator Anthony Horowitz, finds Detective Chief Superintendent Christopher Foyle (Michael Kitchen) presented with his best opportunity to do what he has wanted to do since the outbreak of World War II: take a hi...

Robert Redford and Sydney Pollack continued their longtime collaboration (the actor and director have worked together on Jeremiah Johnson, The Way We Were, The Electric Horseman, and Out of Africa, among other films) with this taut spy drama. Redford plays a reader for...

Twister was a mega-million-dollar blockbuster--helmed by a director (Dutchman Jan de Bont) hot off another scorcher hit (Speed)--that flaunted state-of-the-art digital effects and featured a popular leading actress (Helen Hunt) who would win an Academy Award for her next film (As...

After making her name in The Princess Diaries, Anne Hathaway takes a radical detour with this edgy independent drama. As Allie, a wealthy gangsta wannabe, she makes no excuses for her delinquent behavior: "We're just teenagers and we're bored." When her Pacific Palisades posse, including p...

A movie that would not have been out of place in the run of paranoid-political thrillers of the 1970s, Shooter works an entertaining variation on the assassination picture. Mark Wahlberg, carrying over good mojo from The Departed, slides neatly into the character of Bob Lee Swagger,...

Ever since this convoluted thriller dazzled audiences and critics in 1995 and won an Oscar for Christopher McQuarrie's twisting screenplay, The Usual Suspects has continued to divide movie lovers into opposite camps. While a lot of people take great pleasure from the movie's now-famous cen...

The critically acclaimed PBS series that weaves mystery with real historical events returns with four stories set in September and October 1940. Winner of the Audience Award at the British Academy of Film and Television Arts in 2003, the series stars Michael Kitchen (Proof of Life) as quietly eni...