John Hurt

[7] In perhaps the grimmest animated movie ever made, two dogs escape certain death at a laboratory research facility only to find themselves forever on the run from the scientists and the local sheep farmers. Director Martin Rosen (Watership Down) spectacularly defies any and all expectations you might have about an animated movie with The Plague Dogs, his second Richard Adams adaptation. The two dogs, …

[5] A straight detective (Ryan O’Neal) and a closeted gay police clerk (John Hurt) are summoned by their police chief (Kenneth McMillan) to pose as an undercover gay couple to try and solve a series of murders in the gay community. Yes, Partners is a buddy-comedy version of Cruising, where the straight man overcomes a mild case of homophobia and the closeted gay man begins …

[7] Martin Rosen brings to life Richard Adams’ novel about a group of rabbits who leave their burrows and face a series of deadly hardships in search of a new home. Watership Down is one of the more serious animated films geared toward children. Under its episodic adventure narrative, it’s really a meditation on the ever-present risk and inevitability of death. Not all of the …

[8] Contact is a message-driven movie that may be too esoteric for a lot of mainstream moviegoers. It’s a character-driven drama with only a few moments of your typical blockbuster spectacle — but I applaud the movie for daring to tangle in an exploration of science vs theology. Jodie Foster gives an impassioned performance as Ellie Arroway, an astronomer (and atheist) who discovers a message …

[5] There was definitely potential. A dark Disney movie based on Lloyd Alexander’s Chronicles of Prydain, about a farm boy’s brave attempt to stop a demonic king from conquering the land with his army of skeletal warriors? Sign me up! Unfortunately, Disney wasn’t willing to go the full mile with PG content (even the current dvd is edited for violence). It didn’t help that their …

[4] I’d never seen Heaven’s Gate until recently. For decades, it has been the title synonymous with “flop” and studio bankruptcy, but it has also been picked back up, reexamined, and declared somewhat of an artistic treasure in recent years. The story centers around a bloody ongoing battle in 1890s Wyoming between rich cattle barons and struggling immigrant settlers. The settlers steal cattle to feed their …

[5] This belated sequel gets by, for the most part, on good will and fond memories of the previous three installments. It’s light on memorable action scenes and heavy on silliness (the CGI mokeys and gophers are really, really hard to shake). What I really wanted were more special moments between Harrison Ford and Karen Allen. I mean, who didn’t always want to see Indy …

[9] South Korean director Bong Joon-ho (Mother, The Host) directs this tale of class warfare set in an ice-age Armageddon wherein the last few living humans reside aboard a technologically advanced train that constantly circumnavigates the globe. Chris Evans (Captain America himself) stars as the working class hero who rises up against the train’s cold-hearted aristocracy, leading a revolt from the train’s back end slave …

[10] Ridley Scott’s sci-fi/horror opus Alien is really a haunted house movie set in outer space, where a ragtag team of “space truckers” do battle with one of the most fascinating monsters in movie history. Scott is one of the finest directors of our time, and this may be his best film — a taut thriller, designed and executed with tremendous attention to realism and …

[8] Brad Davis (Querelle, Chariots of Fire) stars in this true story about an American named Billy Hayes who was sent to a dehumanizing Turkish prison for trying to smuggle hash over the border. Originally sentenced to four years, Hayes learned just 53 days before his parole that the Turkish government upped his term to a minimum of 30 years. While his girlfriend and family …