Total Recall 2070

This series for the Showtime premium cable network was based on the hit 1990 film starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sharon Stone. In the year 2070, David Hume (played by Michael Easton) is a futuristic law enforcement officer who discovers that the death of his partner was not accident — that it was the work of powerful men with a hidden agenda. Hume and his android partner, Ian Farve (Karl Pruner) are determined to find the truth, no matter the risk.

The Sixth Sense

In this tense tale of psychological terror, Dr. Malcolm Crowe (Bruce Willis) is a child psychologist whose new patient has a problem far outside his usual area of expertise. Cole Sear (Haley Joel Osment) is six-years-old and claims to see the spirits of dead people all around him. It seems that Cole has psychic powers and can channel the ghosts of those who were troubled. Cole doesn’t understand his powers, and he has little control over them; he’s constantly terrified by what he sees, and Dr. Crowe is the only one with whom he feels he can share this secret. However, as the doctor digs deeper into Cole’s strange powers, it leads to strange and unexpected consequences for both of them. M. Night Shyamalan, who wrote and directed the film, has a small role as Dr. Hill.

Hot Fuzz

A top London cop who is so good at his job that he makes his fellow officers look like slackers by comparison is “”promoted”" to serve in the sleepy village of Sandford in this contemporary action comedy from the creators of Shaun of the Dead. Police constable Nicholas Angel (Simon Pegg) always gets his man, but these days his impeccable record seems to be more indicative of his fellow officers’ shortcomings than his own formidable skills as a keeper of the peace. Loathe to stand idly by as their once respectable track record is steadily soiled by the hyper-competent actions of one lone overachiever, Sergeant Angel’s superiors at the Met soon determine to remedy their problem by relocating the decorated constable to the West Country village of Sanford — where tranquil garden parties and neighborhood watch meetings stand in stark contrast to the violent crime and heated gunplay of the city. As Sergeant Angel does his best to adjust to the relative calm of his new environment, his oafish new partner Danny Butterman (Nick Frost) strives to gain the respect of his fellow constables while sustaining himself on fantasies of his favorite action films and police shows. Later, just as it begins to appear as if Sergeant Angel has been relegated to an uneventful existence in the relative calm of the countryside, a series of horrific “”accidents”" lead him to suspect that the tranquil hamlet of Sanford has fallen prey to a sinister plot which reeks of foul play. Jim Broadbent, Timothy Dalton, Steve Coogan, and Martin Freeman co-star in the Edgar Wright film.

Apocalypto

As the foundation of the Mayan civilization begins to crumble, one man’s previously idyllic existence is forever changed when he is chosen as a sacrifice needed to appease the gods in director Mel Gibson’s mythic, end-times adventure. The Mayan kingdom is at the absolute height of opulence and power, but leaders are convinced that unless more temples are constructed and more human sacrifices made, the crops, and ultimately the people, will suffer. Jaguar Paw (Rudy Youngblood) is a peaceful hunter from a remote forest tribe whose life is about to be changed forever. When Jaguar Paw’s village is raided and he is prepared as a sacrifice that the Mayan deities have demanded, the brave young hunter is forced to navigate a horrific new world of fear and oppression. Fearlessly determined to escape his captors and save his family from a harrowing demise, Jaguar Paw prepares to risk it all in one final, desperate attempt to preserve his dying way of life. However, few who have seen the sacrificial alter of the Mayans have managed to live to see another day. Now, in order to rescue his pregnant wife and young son, Jaguar Paw will have to elude the most powerful warriors of the Mayan kingdom while using his vast knowledge of the forest to turn the tables on those who would rather see him dead than set free. Inspired by such ancient Mayan texts as the Popul Vuh, Apocalypto marks a comprehensive collaboration between director Gibson, Cambridge-educated screenwriter Farhad Safinia, and world-renowned archeologist and Mayan culture expert Dr. Richard D. Hansen — whose services as a special consultant on the film lent the production an unprecedented degree of historical accuracy.

300

Sin City author Frank Miller’s sweeping take on the historic Battle of Thermopylae comes to the screen courtesy of Dawn of the Dead director Zack Snyder. Gerard Butler stars as Spartan King Leonidas and Lena Headey plays Queen Gorgo. The massive army of the Persian Empire is sweeping across the globe, crushing every force that dares stand in its path. When a Persian envoy arrives in Sparta offering King Leonidas power over all of Greece if he will only bow to the will of the all powerful Xerxes (Rodrigo Santoro), the strong-willed leader assembles a small army comprised of his empire’s best fighters and marches off to battle. Though they have virtually no hope of defeating Xerxes’ intimidating battalion, Leonidas’ men soldier on, intent on letting it be known they will bow to no man but their king. Meanwhile, back in Sparta, the loyal Queen Gorgo attempts to convince both the skeptical council and the devious Theron (Dominic West) to send more troops despite the fact that many view Leonidas’ unsanctioned war march as a serious transgression. As Xerxes’ fearsome “”immortals”" draw near, a few noble Greeks vow to assist the Spartans on the battlefield. When King Leonidas and his 300 Spartan warriors fell to the overwhelming Persian army at the Battle of Thermopylae, the fearless actions of the noble fighters inspired all of Greece to stand up against their Persian enemy and wage the battle that would ultimately give birth to the modern concept of democracy.

Ghost Rider

When a motorcycle-riding stuntman offers his soul to Mephistopheles in order to save the life of the one he loves most, he is forced to play host to a powerful supernatural entity whose flaming skull visage strikes fear into the heart of his enemies in this feature-film version of the long-running comic series. By day, Johnny Blaze (actor and comic-book devotee Nicolas Cage) is one of the world’s best-known stuntmen, but when the sun goes down and he is in the presence of evil, the death-defying daredevil bursts into flames to become the indestructible, motorcycle-riding antihero known to the world as the Ghost Rider.

Wild Hogs

A mismatched group of bored suburbanites longing to escape the stress of their daily lives and embrace the freedom of the open road finds that it takes more than polished chrome and leather jackets to truly experience the biker lifestyle in this revved-up road comedy starring John Travolta, Tim Allen, Martin Lawrence, and William H. Macy. Upon trading the comfort of their couches for the thunderous rumble of two-wheeled street machines, these four adventurous riders cross paths with the notorious Del Fuegos — an authentic biker gang that doesn’t take kindly to the weekend warrior type.

Conspiracy Theory

Jerry Fletcher (Mel Gibson) is a New York City cab driver who seems to have absorbed every bit of crackpot information passed along as “”suppressed news”" that’s surfaced on talk radio or the Internet in the past 20 years. Anti-United Nations militia men who are actually U.N. operatives? NASA scientists engineering earthquakes? Oliver Stone’s secret life as a government agent discrediting conspiracy theorists? Jerry’s heard ‘em all and believes most of them, and even publishes his own journal of forbidden information, with a subscription list that now totals five people. In short, Jerry seems like just another New York City lunatic, and while he spends a fair amount of his spare time following Alice Sutton (Julia Roberts), a government attorney, Alice regards him as harmless; he once intervened while she was being mugged, and he’s been acting like her benign if whacked-out protector ever since. However, one day Jerry is kidnapped and worked over by CIA operatives; he is convinced that one of the theories he uncovered must be for real — but he has no idea which one. He tries to get Alice to help him, and before long both are drawn into a dangerous web that leads to a startling revelation of just how Jerry got this way. Mel Gibson gives a fine comic performance, and those with a taste for alternative media will have fun dissecting which of the theories Jerry spouts are “”real”" (or at least appeared before this film was made) and which were the invention of the screenwriters.

The Mask of Zorro

Director Martin Campbell, well-known to the action arena after 1995’s GoldenEye, teams up with executive producer Steven Spielberg to bring the first Hollywood production of creator Johnston McCulley’s Zorro in over four decades to the big screen. With scenic 18th century Mexico as a backdrop, Anthony Hopkins plays the original Zorro, a.k.a. Don Diego de la Vega, intent on revenge after rival enemy Don Raphael Montero (Stuart Wilson) murdered his wife and took his daughter, Elena. After being imprisoned for 20 years, the fabled hero removes his mask and takes on a tarnished young apprentice, Alejandro Murieta (Antonio Banderas), to infiltrate Montero’s plan to take control of California from Santa Anna. A boisterous outlaw with his own desire for revenge, Murieta works with Diego to avenge his brother’s death by the sword of Montero’s right-hand man, Captain Harrison Love (Matt Letscher, in his big screen debut). After Diego’s extensive training in swordfighting, discipline and manners, a new Zorro appears wreaking vengeance and stealing the heart of a now-grown Elena (Catherine Zeta-Jones). A sizable summer hit, the film served as Zeta-Jones’ stepping stone to leading lady status as the high-spirited heroine.

Traffic

Described by director Steven Soderbergh as “”Nashville meets The French Connection,”" this multi-character drama explores the effects of international drug trafficking on all fronts: from their source, to the U.S. border, to the federal government, to the private lives of users. Based upon a miniseries originally aired on Britain’s Channel 4, Traffic divides its time among three main storylines and almost a dozen locales. The first and primary plot thread, set in Ohio and Washington, D.C., concerns freshly-appointed drug czar Robert Wakefield (Michael Douglas), whose enthusiasm for his new prestige position is quickly offset when he realizes his 16-year-old daughter Caroline (Erika Christensen) is graduating from recreational drug use to habitual abuse — a secret that his wife, Barbara (Amy Irving), has kept from him. South of the border, Mexican cop Javier Rodriguez (Benicio Del Toro) attempts to wage his own war on drugs, heading off a cocaine shipment in the middle of the desert with his less-than-virtuous partner Manolo Sanchez (Jacob Vargas). Surrounded by corruption, Javier approaches the drug war with an attitude of patience and compromise, which opens him up to investigation from General Arturo Salazar (Tomas Milian), the country’s dubious drug-enforcement liaison to the U.S. Meanwhile, San Diego drug kingpin Carlos Alaya (Steven Bauer) is caught in a sting operation spearheaded by DEA agents Montel Gordon (Don Cheadle) and Ray Castro (Luis Guzman), leaving behind his very pregnant and very oblivious wife, Helena (Catharine Zeta-Jones). At the behest of Carlos’ lawyer and shady confidante, Arnie Metzger (Dennis Quaid), Helena decides to carry on the family business — with tragic consequences. Adapted by Rules of Engagement scribe Stephen Gaghan, Traffic marked Soderbergh’s second major release in 2000 after the critical and box-office success of Erin Brockovich, as well as his second feature as cinematographer (credited under the pseudonym Peter Andrews). A favorite with various guild and critics’ awards, Traffic won four Academy Awards in 2001, including statues for Best Supporting Actor (Del Toro) and Best Adapted Screenplay (Gaghan), and surprise wins for Steven Mirrone’s editing and Soderbergh’s direction.

A Beautiful Mind

The true story of prominent mathematician John Forbes Nash Jr. is the subject of this biographical drama from director Ron Howard. Russell Crowe stars as the brilliant but arrogant and conceited professor Nash. The prof seems guaranteed a rosy future in the early ’50s after he marries beautiful student Alicia (Jennifer Connelly) and makes a remarkable advancement in the foundations of “”game theory,”" which carries him to the brink of international acclaim. Soon after, John is visited by Agent William Parcher (Ed Harris), from the CIA, who wants to recruit him for code-breaking activities. But evidence suggests that Nash’s perceptions of reality are cloudy at best; he is struggling to maintain his tenuous hold on sanity, and Alicia suspects a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia. Battling decades of illness with the loyal Alicia by his side, Nash is ultimately able to gain some control over his mental state, and eventually goes on to triumphantly win the Nobel Prize. Based loosely on the book of the same name by Sylvia Nasar, A Beautiful Mind (2001) co-stars Paul Bettany, Adam Goldberg, Anthony Rapp, Christopher Plummer, and Judd Hirsch.

Knocked Up

When a one-night stand that should have stayed that way has unexpected consequences, the reluctant odd couple attempts to transform their tentative relationship into a lasting love in this conception comedy. Twenty-four-year-old entertainment journalist Allison Scott (Katherine Heigl) is on the fast track to the big time, but an alcohol-fueled hookup with responsibility-shirking slacker Ben Stone (Seth Rogen) finds her professional priorities taking a back seat to having a baby. Now, as overgrown kid Ben attempts to assume the responsibilities of fatherhood, he makes the brave decision to stand by Alison. In order to make things work between the pair, however, there’s going to have to be some compromise, and when Allison and Ben decide to take a shot at love, they quickly find that building a relationship from scratch isn’t nearly as easy as making a baby.

 

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