Griffin Dunne directs Matthew Broderick, Tchey Karo, Kelly Preston, and Meg
Ryan in ADDICTED TO LOVE, a romance in which two spurned lovers team up to spy
on their exes… Leo Tolstoy’s classic ANNA KARENINA was shot on location in
St. Petersburg with Sophie Marceau, Alfred Molina, and Sean Bean… Michael
Myers stars as AUSTIN POWERS: INTERNATIONAL MAN OF MYSTERY, a secret agent from
the swinging Sixties who pursues his nemesis 30 years into the future, in this
spy spoof that also features Elizabeth Hurley, Michael York, Mimi Rogers,
Robert Wagner, Rob Lowe, Christian Slater, Tom Arnold, and Carrie Fisher…
TV’s Nanny, Fran Drescher, applies her shtick to film in THE BEAUTICIAN AND THE
BEAST, an Anna and the King of Siam story starring a modern-day Material Girl
and the comic ghost of Joe Stalin… Chris Farley revives John Belushi’s old
samurai routine for BEVERLY HILLS NINJA… Stylish Hong Kong action director
Tsui Hark directs THE BLADE, a radical reworking of the 1967 revenge saga
One-Armed Swordsman… BOYS LIFE II is a collection of four gay-themed
short films, including the 1995 Oscar winner “Trevor”…
In the comedy COMMANDMENTS, with Aidan Quinn, Courteney Cox, and Anthony
LaPaglia, an unlucky man tries to win God’s attention by breaking all 10
Commandments… A college dropout decides to stage the opera Cosi Fan
Tutte in an Australian mental hospital and use the patients as the cast in
COSI, which features Toni Collette of Muriel’s Wedding… Hong Kong
action hero Jet Li restores order to early 19th-century Shanghai in FIST OF
LEGEND… A Manhattan yuppie (Matthew Perry) and a Mexican spitfire (Salma
Hayek) are the mismatched lovers in the romantic comedy FOOLS RUSH IN…
GUIMBA, THE TYRANT is a 1995, award-winning satire (internationally co-produced
by Mali, Burkina Faso, and Germany) that skewers political and sexual power
struggles in pre-colonial Africa… THE HIGH ROAD is Austin filmmaker Thomas
Pallotta’s portrait of a road trip into drug-induced oblivion… Two brothers
vie for the love of a long-adored woman, who has chosen to marry another in
this Australian romantic comedy HOTEL DE LOVE, which is the name of the tacky
lovers’ resort where the story is set…
Chris O’Donnell plays the young, war-wounded Ernest Hemingway to Sandra
Bullock’s Agnes Von Kurowsky, the Red Cross nurse who tended his injuries and
broke his heart in Richard Attenborough’s unrequited love story IN LOVE AND
WAR, based on Von Kurowsky’s recently discovered diaries… The
American-financed JACKIE CHAN’S FIRST STRIKE furthers the Hong Kong action
superhero’s bid for international dominance… In the widely praised KOLYA, a
Czechoslovakian cellist finds his personal life revolutionized by a Russian
woman and her son while the Velvet Revolution stirs everything around them…
The Japanese LETTERS OF LOVE tells the story of two women whose friendship
develops from their correspondence… In MABOROSI (which translates from the
Japanese as “Illusion”), a woman confronts mortality against an exquisitely
composed backdrop of light and shadow…
Rodney Dangerfield wants us to MEET WALLY SPARKS, a gauche talk-show host he
plays in his new comedy vehicle… In METRO, Eddie Murphy breathes new life
into the cop-buddy genre he helped to create… John Leguizamo displays his
dexterity donning different personalities and costumes as a con man hunted as
human prey in THE PEST… Inspired by a Leo Tolstoy novella, the acclaimed
Russian movie PRISONER OF THE MOUNTAINS tells the funny and contemporary
adventure of two Russian soldiers who are held hostage by a Chechen father who
hopes to exchange them for his son… With PREFONTAINE, Disney is the first out
of the gate with a film biography of track star Steve Prefontaine… THE QUIET
ROOM is told from the perspective of a withdrawn, seven-year-old girl, who
chooses to stop talking and watches as the world around her becomes more
uncontrollable and her parents’ marriage disintegrates…
Director-cinematographer Peter Hyams returns with another sci-fi suspenser, THE
RELIC, about a museum’s dusty fossils that unexpectedly transmogrify into demon
critters…
Kadeem Hardison plays a ghost who inspires his brother (Marlon Wayans) and the
Washington Huskies basketball team to victory in THE SIXTH MAN…
Seinfield‘s Michael Richards plays an actor who poses as a defense
attorney when his best friend (Jeff Daniels) is too hungover to make it to
court in TRIAL AND ERROR, a comedy directed by Jonathan Lynn (My Cousin
Vinny, Sgt. Bilko)… Those colorful kid superheros are back for
their second film adventure, TURBO: A POWER RANGERS ADVENTURE, and introduce
their newest addition — the futuristic Turbo Zord car… Ray Liotta plays an
escaped serial killer who commandeers a passenger plane in TURBULENCE; Lauren
Holly is the survivor who must land the plane in this version of Speed on a jumbo jet… The Griswold family attempts a VEGAS VACATION in another
National Lampoon odyssey starring the ever-reliable Chevy Chase, Beverly
D’Angelo, and Randy Quaid… WARRIORS OF VIRTUE is an action fantasy that pits
a young boy and five kung-fu kangaroos against an evil warlord… A dog and a
dolphin play star-crossed lovers in ZEUS AND ROXANNE…
This article appears in February 14 • 1997 and February 14 • 1997 (Cover).