Actors do movies because you want to make a connection, you want an audience to recognise themselves in what it is that you're depicting. The portrait, you want it to be a reflection of some aspect of humanity that people understand, that they see in their own lives. And so, when a movie makes a connection like that, there's simply nothing better. And in some ways, an Academy Award does validate that actual hook-up.
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Announced her separation from husband, Janusz Kaminski. They have had been apart since Halloween. [December 2001]
Sydney Pollack directs Tom Cruise in this fast-paced legal thriller based on John Grisham’s best-selling novel. Lured by extraordinary financial perks, Mitch McDeere, a young and hungry Harvard Law student, turns down offers at the top law firms to take a position at a small but wealthy Memphis firm. Mitch, a boy from the wrong side of the tracks fueled by ambition and greed, ignores his wife Abby's initial misgivings about the suspiciously paternalistic practices of his new employers. It's only when two of his fellow lawyers die in a mysterious accident that Mitch begins to share her apprehensions. He then launches an investigation into the true nature of the firm and discovers that it is a front for a complex and sinister web of organized crime, one from which no lawyer has managed to escape alive. Solid storytelling and fine performances bring this seemingly improbable situation straight into reality.
This controversially erotic film from New Zealand established screenwriter-director Jane Campion as a universally recognized talent. Holly Hunter stars as Ada, a mute 19th-century woman sent to New Zealand in an arranged marriage with a patriarchal landowner (Sam Neill). She brings along her daughter, Flora (Anna Paquin), and tries to also bring her beloved piano, much to the consternation of her new husband, who abandons the piano on a beach. Artistically and emotionally frustrated, Ada finds herself experiencing an erotic awakening when Baines (Harvey Keitel), an illiterate settler covered with Maori tattoos, rescues her piano, buys it from her husband, then strikes a strange bargain with Ada that gradually leads to her sexual awakening--and to an explosive confrontation.
This remake of the 1943 film A GUY NAMED JOE stars Richard Dreyfuss as Pete Sandich, a daredevil pilot who specializes in putting out forest fires. Pete promises his girlfriend, Dorinda (Holly Hunter), that he will stop flying, but when his best friend, Al (John Goodman), gets into engine trouble while fighting a blaze, Pete attempts a daring rescue--saving his friend but killing himself. Waking up in the afterlife, Pete meets an angel, Hap (Audrey Hepburn), who sends him back to earth as a ghost no one can see or hear. When Dorinda flies into a fire to save trapped smoke jumpers, Pete telepathically talks her through the dangerous mission. Hap tells Pete he must help Dorinda overcome her grief and lead her to a new love with a novice pilot (Brad Johnson). While Pete watches the two start their romance, he battles feelings of jealousy and sadness at giving her up. Steven Spielberg and Richard Dreyfuss, while working together on JAWS in 1975, found that they shared an affinity for the 1943 film A GUY NAMED JOE. They managed to come together years later to make their own version of it in ALWAYS.
A satiric look at the inner workings of the Washington news bureau of a major TV network and the romantic triangle between the feisty young female producer, the vain male news anchor, and the good-hearted male reporter.
