Mary McDonnell

[7] Robert Redford leads an all-star ensemble cast under the direction of Phil Alden Robinson (Field of Dreams). Redford plays a high-tech security professional who works with a team of specialists to test security systems. When government agents blackmail him into stealing a mysterious new piece of technology from the Russians, Redford and his team find themselves in over their heads — especially when he …

[8] This ensemble drama from Big Chill director Lawrence Kasdan is perhaps the most metaphor-laden movie I’ve ever seen. The screenplay (cowritten by Kasdan and his wife, Meg) gets pretentious and overreaching at times, but a well-meaning message and a strong cast do a lot to compensate for it. Kevin Kline, Danny Glover, Mary McDonnell, Steve Martin, Alfre Woodard, Mary-Louise Parker, and Jeremy Sisto are …

[7] Writer/director John Sayles serves up this intimate character drama about a TV soap star who has to learn to find new purpose in life after a car accident leaves her permanently wheelchair-bound. A live-in nurse becomes her lifeline, which makes Passion Fish a female buddy movie of sorts. Mary McDonnell (Dances With Wolves, Battlestar Galactica) plays the actress and Alfre Woodard (Cross Creek, Primal …

[7] The Irwin Allen disaster epic is alive and well in this 1996 summer blockbuster in which evil aliens threaten to destroy Earth, leaving it up to a rag-tag team of politicians, soldiers, and scientists (plus a drunken crop-duster and a pole dancer!), to save humanity. The writing and directing team of Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin (Stargate, Godzilla) almost strike the perfect tone for …

[9] Donnie Darko stands alone:  an edgy, sophisticated science-fiction movie that mixes time travel and nightmarish visions with family drama and ’80s nostalgia. The tangled narrative revolves around the emotionally disturbed Donnie (Jake Gyllenhaal), a teenager who strikes up a relationship with a hallucination — a man in a horrid rabbit costume (James Duvall). The rabbit tells him what to do and Donnie does it …

[10] Kevin Costner’s ambitious ode to the American frontier is grand, romantic storytelling at its best. And talk about an underdog. People were calling it ‘Kevin’s Gate’ months prior to release — and why shouldn’t they? A three-hour long western with most of its dialogue in Lakota Sioux? How could such a movie find an audience, much less sweep the Academy Awards?