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A Bug's Life
: :There was such a magic on the screen in 1995 when the people at Pixar came up with the first fully computer-animated film, Toy Story. Their second feature film, A Bug's Life, may miss the bull's-eye but Pixar's target is so lofty, it's hard to find the film anything less than irresistible. Brighter and more colorful than the other animated insect movie of 1998 (Antz), A Bug's Life is the sweetly told story of Flik (voiced by David Foley), an ant searching for better ways to be a bug. His colony ...
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Nixon
: essential video:Oliver Stone's controversial drama about the Nixon years in the White House stars Anthony Hopkins in a genuinely great performance as the scandal-plagued president. The film attempts to wed suggestions of Nixon's formative experiences as a boy to his political connections with shady movers and shakers and finally to his self-destructive tenure in the Oval Office. The Watergate scandal is revisited rather impressionistically--it may be hard for viewers who weren't alive then to get a sense of what the crisis was about. The parade of stars playing figures in ...
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Fisher King
: essential video:Arthurian mythology and modern day decay seem perfect complements to each other in this Terry Gilliam drama/comedy/fantasy. Shock jock Jack Lucas (Jeff Bridges) makes an off-handed radio remark that causes a man to go on a killing spree, leaving Lucas unhinged with guilt. Lucas's later, chance meeting with Parry (Robin Williams), a homeless man suffering from dementia, gets him involved in the unlikely quest for the Holy Grail. The rickety, and patently unrealistic stand that insanity is just a wonderful place to be, and that the homeless are all ...
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Sleepless in Seattle
: essential video:Arthurian mythology and modern day decay seem perfect complements to each other in this Terry Gilliam drama/comedy/fantasy. Shock jock Jack Lucas (Jeff Bridges) makes an off-handed radio remark that causes a man to go on a killing spree, leaving Lucas unhinged with guilt. Lucas's later, chance meeting with Parry (Robin Williams), a homeless man suffering from dementia, gets him involved in the unlikely quest for the Holy Grail. The rickety, and patently unrealistic stand that insanity is just a wonderful place to be, and that the homeless are all ...
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A Bug's Life
:Description:Journey inside the miniature world of bugs for bigger-than-life fun and adventure under every leaf! Crawling with imaginative characters, hilarious laughs, and colorful animation, Disney and Pixar's A BUG'S LIFE will 'delight everyone -- young, old, or six-legged' ('People' magazine). On behalf of 'oppressed bugs everywhere' an inventive ant named Flik hires 'warrior bugs' to defend his colony from a horde of freeloading grasshoppers, led by Hopper. But when Flik's cavalry turns out to be a ragtag group of flea circus performers, the stage is set for comic confusion ... as ...
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Osmosis Jones (Clam)
: :After the stiff attempts at realism in many recent features, it's a treat to see broad cartoon-style animation on the big screen in Osmosis Jones, a spoof of cop movies set inside the human body. The title character (voice by Chris Rock) is a street-smart white blood cell, working for Frank's immune system. He and Drix (David Hyde Pierce), an over-the-counter cold capsule, are reluctant partners fighting what appears to be a minor infection. Osmosis discovers Frank has really contracted a fatal virus, Thrax (Laurence Fishburne): he battles a corrupt body ...
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Crossing Delancey
: :A sweet tempered urban love story, Crossing Delancey argues that true love may be in the first place you look. Amy Irving is a single Jewish woman working at an upscale bookstore on the Upper West Side of New York. As much as she longs to be a part of the intellectual literary scene, she is tethered to her roots on the Lower East Side, where her old-fashioned grandmother is forever trying to fix her up. Irving has her eye on a handsome brooding author, but her grandmother enlists the help ...
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Little Man Tate
: :Jodie Foster and Dianne Wiest star in Foster's engaging directorial debut. Single mom Dede Tate is doing her best to raise her brilliant-but-lonely son Fred on a waitress's salary. Jane Grierson (Wiest), something of an expert on being brilliant but lonely, spots Fred's genius and wants to enroll him in her school for the gifted. It's a simple story, but it is very well told. Foster and Wiest both give excellent, sensitive performances, conveying the selfishness in each character's desire to have Fred to herself as well as the pain in ...
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Osmosis Jones
: :After the stiff attempts at realism in many recent features, it's a treat to see broad cartoon-style animation on the big screen in Osmosis Jones, a spoof of cop movies set inside the human body. The title character (voice by Chris Rock) is a street-smart white blood cell, working for Frank's immune system. He and Drix (David Hyde Pierce), an over-the-counter cold capsule, are reluctant partners fighting what appears to be a minor infection. Osmosis discovers Frank has really contracted a fatal virus, Thrax (Laurence Fishburne): he battles a corrupt body ...
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The Mating Habits of the Earthbound Human
: :This whimsical sex comedy presents itself as an alien documentary on the rituals and habits of terrestrial romance. Featuring Mackenzie Astin (The Last Days of Disco) and a tightly clad Carmen Electra (from the once-popular TV show Baywatch) as the Male and Female, the movie's at its best when the alien's commentary (voiced with supercilious aplomb by David Hyde Pierce, Wolf, Frasier) misinterprets flirting behavior at nightclubs. The jokes grow thinner as dating turns into a relationship (and the humor's perspective is decidedly male). Still, there are moments of wit, and ...
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