Top Picks American Beauty Noted theater director Sam Mendes, who was responsible for the acclaimed 1998 revival of Cabaret and Nicole Kidman's turn in The Blue Room, made his motion picture debut with this film about the dark side of an American family, and about ... Read More 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 professor Nash, who seems guaranteed a rosy future in ... Read More The Empire Strikes Back The second entry in George Lucas's Star Wars trilogy finds Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill), the green-as-grass hero from the first film, now a seasoned space warrior. Luke's Star Wars cohorts Han Solo (Harrison Ford) and Princess Leia (... Read More The Godfather Popularly viewed as one of the best American films ever made, the multi-generational crime saga The Godfather (1972) is a touchstone of cinema: one of the most widely imitated, quoted and lampooned movies of all time. Marlon Brando and Al Pac... Read More The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring New Zealand filmmaker Peter Jackson fulfills his lifelong dream of transforming author J.R.R. Tolkien's best-selling fantasy-epic into a three-part motion picture that begins with this holiday 2001 release. Elijah Wood stars as Frodo... Read More The Matrix What if virtual reality wasn't just for fun, but was being used to imprison you? That's the dilemma that faces mild-mannered computer jockey Thomas Anderson (Keanu Reeves) in The Matrix. It's the year 1999, and Anderson (hacker alias: N... Read More Raiders of the Lost Ark Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford) is no ordinary archeologist. When we first see him, he is somewhere in the Peruvian jungle in 1936, running a booby-trapped gauntlet (complete with an over-sized rolling boulder) to fetch a solid gold idol. He loses t... Read More Return of the Jedi In the final episode of the Star Wars saga, Han Solo (Harrison Ford) emerges intact from the carbonite casing in which he'd been sealed in The Empire Strikes Back. The bad news is that Solo, together with Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill... Read More The Shawshank Redemption In 1946, a banker named Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins) is convicted of a double murder, even though he stubbornly proclaims his innocence. He's sentenced to a life term at the Shawshank State Prison in Maine, where another lifer, Ellis "Red" Redding ... Read More Star Wars George Lucas's mythological popcorn movie is a two-hour roller-coaster ride that has passed into movie legend. The story, for the tiny number of people not familiar with it, concerns a farmboy named Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) who discovers th... Read More