Starring: Sean Penn, Michelle Pfeiffer, Dakota Fanning, Dianne Wiest, Loretta Devine

Summary: I Am Sam makes you laugh, cry, and recoil all at the same time. Perhaps no other film of recent memory has epitomized the shameless sentimentality of Hollywood as succinctly as director and screenwriter Jessie Nelson's story of a mentally challenged man fighting to retain custody of his 7-year-old daughter. Sam (Sean Penn), who has the mental age of 7, wipes down tables at a Los Angeles Starbucks and takes good care of his daughter Lucy, who was left with him shortly after birth by a homeless woman. Sam has gotten by just fine with a little help from his friends, including his eccentric neighbor (Diane Wiest) and a lovable group of similarly challenged friends, but a series of misunderstandings leaves Sam fighting to get Lucy back from the state. Sam's lawyer, Rita Harrison (Michelle Pfeiffer), is an overly ambitious woman whose life is soon transformed by proximity to Sam's brimming humanity. Sean Penn is, as usual, wholeheartedly committed to his role and turns in an admirable, if overtly affected performance. However, I Am Sam, with all its earnest charm, reaches an emblematic low when Sam, a character apparently devoid of any authentic sentiment, delivers a courtroom speech memorized from Kramer vs. Kramer as the film's finale. --Fionn Meade

Starring: Jason Schwartzman, Isabelle Huppert, Dustin Hoffman, Lily Tomlin, Jude Law, Mark Wahlberg, Naomi Watts, Angela Grillo, Ger Duany, Darlene Hunt, Kevin Dunn, Benny Hernandez, Richard Appel, Benjamin Nurick, Jake Muxworthy, Pablo Davanzo, Matthew Muzio, Shawn Patrick, Patrick M. Walsh, Tippi Hedren

Summary: Dustin Hoffman and Lily Tomlin lead an all-star cast including Jude Law, Naomi Watts and Mark Walhberg in this outrageous comedy from director/co-writer David O. Russell (Three Kings). Kindhearted but confused activist Andrew Markovski hires a pair of screwball "existential detectives" (Hoffman and Tomlin) to help him find the meaning of life. All the while, a sexy, French author (Isabelle Huppert) is trying to throw a wrench in their plan by seducing andrew's mind and body.

System Requirements:

Running Time 107 Min

Format: DVD MOVIE

Starring: Omondi: Collins Otieno

Summary: "I Want To Be A Pilot" is an incredible film and work of art, which deserves all of the awards it has already received. When we look at our world today; often cruel and filled with extreme suffering, this exquisite film helps point the way. The director and writer, Diego Quemada-Diez delivers an exceptionally moving and poetic vision. The viewer is swept up in the moment as the camera follows Omondi through the slums of Kibera in Nairobi, Kenya. Poignantly, we hear the child's voice, clear and honest as he speaks the words of a poem, which narrates his world for us. A stark and almost unbearable reality is juxtaposed with the child's resilent dream of hope and possibility. The choice of music is brillant as the words of "Sweet Honey in The Rock" hauntingly inspires us, "...by your life be you spirit; by your heart be you woman; by your eyes be you open..." "I Want To Be A Pilot" is more than a superb work of art and filmmaking. It is an inspiration. It will speak to you through it's beauty, artistry and the dignity of the human spirit it conveys. Ultimately, it offers us a chance to respond. As it presents a picture of the many faces of our humanity, it does so with a gentle and captivating touch. This is a film which has the potential to heal.

Starring: Denis Leary, John Leguizamo, Ray Romano, Goran Visnjic, Jack Black

Summary: Just as "A Bug's Life" was a computer-animated comedy inspired by Akira Kurosawa's "The Seven Samurai", the funny and often enthralling "Ice Age" is a digital re-imagining of the Western "Three Godfathers". The heroes of this unofficial remake (set 20,000 years ago, during the titular Paleolithic era) are a taciturn mastodon named Manfred (voiced by Ray Romano), an annoying sloth named Sid (John Leguizamo), and a duplicitous saber-toothed tiger, Diego (Denis Leary). The unlikely team encounters a dying, human mother who relinquishes her chirpy toddler to the care of these critters. Hoping, against all odds, to return the little guy to his migrating tribe, Manfred and his associates need to establish trust among themselves, not an easy thing in a harsh world of predators, prey, and pushy glaciers. Audiences that have become accustomed to the rounded, polished, storybook look of Pixar's house brand of computer animation ("Monsters, Inc.") will find the blunt edges and chilly brilliance of "Ice Age"--evoking the harsh, dangerous environment of a frozen world--a wholly different, and equally pleasing, trip. Recommended for ages 4 and up. "--Tom Keogh"

Starring: Tom Wilkinson, Sissy Spacek, Nick Stahl, Marisa Tomei, William Mapother, William Wise, Celia Weston, Karen Allen, Frank T. Wells, W. Clapham Murray, Justin Ashforth, Terry A. Burgess, Jonathan Walsh, Diane E. Hamlin, Camden Munson, Christopher Adams (IV), Henry Field, Deborah Derecktor, Harriet Dawkins, Bill Dawkins

Summary: When a film with such emotional resonance and visual poise as In the Bedroom makes it to the screen, it seems an unexpected gift meant to remind us of the medium's possibility for sensitivity and epiphany. First-time director Todd Field, who adapted the film from a story by Andre Dubus with screenwriter Rob Festinger, quietly observes the loss, rage, and inexorable desire for revenge that follows the murder of a 21-year-old son. The film opens with Frank (Nick Stahl), back from college for the summer, taking up with Natalie (Marisa Tomei), a slightly older, sexually alluring woman with two boys and an estranged husband prone to violence. It is the tender portrayal of love between Frank and his parents, even as Frank and Natalie's relationship reveals the prejudices of all involved, that makes the subsequent anguish of the film so acute. Matt and Ruth Fowler (Tom Wilkinson and Sissy Spacek), middle-class denizens of a Maine lobster town where everyone knows each other, toil through weeks of devastation and blame following Frank's murder before their outrage obliterates all else. Field's exact handling of jealousy, class division, and grief is abetted by career-highlight performances from Wilkinson and Spacek. In the Bedroom is, along with You Can Count On Me, one of the best American dramas to grace the new millennium so far. --Fionn Meade

Starring: Harrison Ford

Summary: As with Star Wars, the George Lucas-produced Indiana Jones trilogy was not just a plaything for kids but an act of nostalgic affection toward a lost phenomenon: the cliffhanging movie serials of the past. Episodic in structure and with fate hanging in the balance about every 10 minutes, the Jones features tapped into Lucas's extremely profitable Star Wars formula of modernizing the look and feel of an old, but popular, story model. Steven Spielberg directed all three films, which are set in the late 1930s and early '40s: the comic book-like Raiders of the Lost Ark, the spooky, Gunga Din-inspired Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, and the cautious but entertaining Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Fans and critics disagree over the order of preference, some even finding the middle movie nearly repugnant in its violence. (Pro-Temple of Doom people, on the other hand, believe that film to be the most disarmingly creative and emotionally effective of the trio.) One thing's for sure: Harrison Ford's swaggering, two-fisted, self-effacing performance worked like a charm, and the art of cracking bullwhips was probably never quite the iconic activity it soon became after Raiders. Supporting players and costars were very much a part of the series, too--Karen Allen, Sean Connery (as Indy's dad), Kate Capshaw, Ke Huy Quan, Amrish Puri, Denholm Elliot, River Phoenix, and John Rhys-Davies among them. Years have passed since the last film (another is supposedly in the works), but emerging film buffs can have the same fun their predecessors did picking out numerous references to Hollywood classics and B-movies of the past. --Tom Keogh

Starring: Brad Pitt, Mike Myers, Cristoph Waltz, Michael Bacall, Bo Svenson

Summary: Although Quentin Tarantino has cherished Enzo G. Castellari's 1978 "macaroni" war flick "The Inglorious Bastards" for most of his film-geek life, his own "Inglourious Basterds" is no remake. Instead, as hinted by the Tarantino-esque misspelling, this is a lunatic fantasia of WWII, a brazen re-imagining of both history and the behind-enemy-lines war film subgenre. There's a Dirty Not-Quite-Dozen of mostly Jewish commandos, led by a Tennessee good ol' boy named Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt) who reckons each warrior owes him one hundred Nazi scalps--and he means that literally. Even as Raine's band strikes terror into the Nazi occupiers of France, a diabolically smart and self-assured German officer named Landa (Christoph Waltz) is busy validating his own legend as "The Jew Hunter." Along the way, he wipes out the rural family of a grave young girl (Melanie Laurent) who will reappear years later in Paris, dreaming of vengeance on an epic scale.
Now, this isn't one more big-screen comic book. As the masterly opening sequence reaffirms, Tarantino is a true "filmmaker", with a deep respect for the integrity of screen space and the tension that can accumulate in contemplating two men seated at a table having a polite conversation. "IB" reunites QT with cinematographer Robert Richardson (who shot "Kill Bill"), and the colors and textures they serve up can be riveting, from the eerie red-hot glow of a tabletop in Adolf Hitler's den, to the creamy swirl of a Parisian pastry in which Landa parks his cigarette. The action has been divided, "Pulp Fiction"-like, into five chapters, each featuring at least one spellbinding set-piece. It's testimony to the integrity we mentioned that Tarantino can lock in the ferocious suspense of a scene for minutes on end, then explode the situation almost faster than the eye and ear can register, and "then" take the rest of the sequence to a new, wholly unanticipated level within seconds.
Again, be warned: This is not your "Greatest Generation," "Saving Private Ryan" WWII. The sadism of Raine and his boys can be as unsavory as the Nazi variety; Tarantino's latest cinematic protégé, Eli (director of "Hostel") Roth, is aptly cast as a self-styled "golem" fond of pulping Nazis with a baseball bat. But get past that, and the sometimes disconcerting shifts to another location and another set of characters, and the movie should gather you up like a growing floodtide. Tarantino told the Cannes Film Festival audience that he wanted to show "Adolf Hitler defeated by cinema." Cinema wins. "--Richard T. Jameson"

Starring: Laura Dern, Jeremy Irons, Justin Theroux

Summary: Though "Inland Empire"'s three hours of befuddling abstraction could try the patience of the most devoted David Lynch fan, its aim to reinvigorate the Lynch-ian symbolic order is ambitious, not to mention visually arresting. The director's archetypes recognizable from previous movies once again construct the film's inherent logic, but with a new twist. Sets vibrate between the contemporary and a 1950s alternate universe crammed with dim lamps, long hallways, mysterious doors, sparsely furnished rooms and, this time, a vortex/apartment/sitcom set where rabbit-masked humans dwell, and a Polish town where women are abused and killed. Instead of speaking backwards, mystic soothsayers and criminals speak Polish. Filmed on video, the film's look has the sinister, frightening feel of a Mark Savage film or a bootlegged snuff movie. Constant close-ups, both in and out of focus, make Inland Empire feel as if a stalker covertly filmed it. A straightforward, hokey plot unravels during the first third of Inland Empire to ground the viewer before a dive off the deep end. Actor Nikki Grace (Laura Dern) is cast as Susan Blue, an adulterous white trash Southerner, in a film that mimics too closely her actual life with an overbearingly jealous and dangerous husband. When Nikki and co-star Devon (Justin Theroux) learn that the cursed film project was earlier abandoned when its stars were murdered, the pair lose their grasp of reality. Nikki suffers a schizophrenic identity switch to Sue that lasts until nearly the film's end. Suspense builds as Nikki's alter ego sleuths her way through surreal situations to discover her killer, culminating in Sue's gnarly death on set. Sue's actions drag on because any sign of a narrative thread disappears due to idiosyncratic editing. Nonsensical scenes still captivate, however, such as when Sue stumbles onto the soundstage where she finds Nikki (herself) rehearsing for Sue's part. In this meta-film about identity slippage, Dern's multiple characters remind one of how a victim can become the hunter in their fight for survival. Lynch's portrayal of Nikki/Sue's increasing paranoia is, in its own confusion, utterly realistic. Laura Dern has created her own Lady Macbeth, undone by her guilt over infidelity. Even though "Inland Empire" is too long and too random, Laura Dern's performance coupled with Lynch's video experiments make it magical. "--Trinie Dalton"

More Films from David Lynch
Wild At Heart
Mulholland Drive
Blue Velvet
Stills from "Inland Empire" (click for larger image)

Starring: Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt, Kirsten Dunst, Stephen Rea, Antonio Banderas

Summary: When it was announced that Tom Cruise would play the vampire Lestat in this adaptation of Anne Rice's bestselling novel, even Rice chimed in with a highly publicized objection. The author wisely and justifiably recanted her negative opinion when she saw Cruise's excellent performance, which perceptively addresses the pain and chronic melancholy that plagues anyone cursed with immortal bloodlust. Brad Pitt and Kirsten Dunst are equally good at maintaining the dark and brooding tone of Rice's novel. And in this rare mainstream project for a major studio, director Neil Jordan compensates for a lumbering plot by honoring the literate, Romantic qualities of Rice's screenplay. Considered a disappointment while being embraced by Rice's loyal followers, the movie is too slow to be a satisfying thriller, but it is definitely one of the most lavish, intelligent horror films ever made. --Jeff Shannon

Starring: Jack Lemmon, Shirley MacLaine, Lou Jacobi, Bruce Yarnell, Herschel Bernardi, Hope Holiday, Joan Shawlee, Grace Lee Whitney, Paul Dubov, Howard McNear, Cliff Osmond, Diki Lerner, Herb Jones, Ruth Earl, Jane Earl, Tura Satana, Lou Krugman, James Brown (II), Bill Bixby, John Alvin

Summary: In 1963, Billy Wilder's Irma La Douce was one of the biggest box-office hits of the year, grossing twice as much as The Great Escape and The Birds. Yet this popular movie has been almost completely forgotten by film history, even to fans of Wilder or stars Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine (the same trio had made a masterpiece, The Apartment, three years earlier). It doesn't represent the best work of those legends, but Irma provides tart entertainment. At least some of the movie's popularity can be chalked up to its subject, which was pretty risqué for the time: Lemmon plays a Paris policeman who falls in love with a prostitute (MacLaine). The script was adapted from a stage musical, but Wilder decided to cut the songs, instead developing the humor and romance into his own blend of bittersweet perversity; this Technicolor-fantasy Paris is kind of a dark cousin to Gigi. Lemmon is in his prime period of hand-wringing self-doubt, and MacLaine is perfectly in tune with his rhythms, especially in scenes that add tenderness to the sometimes queasy mix of moods. Ironically--given the nixing of the songs--the film won its only Oscar for André Previn's adaptation of the stage play's music into a wordless orchestral score. --Robert Horton

Starring: Monica Bellucci, Vincent Cassel, Jean-Louis Costes, Stéphane Derdérian, Stéphane Drouot

Summary: IRREVERSIBLE (DVD MOVIE)