John Tamburro Movies

A taxi driver is unexpectedly taken on the ride of his life in this stylish thriller from acclaimed director Michael Mann. Max (Jamie Foxx) is a cab driver who hopes to some day open his own limo company; one night behind the wheel begins promisingly when he picks up Annie (Jada Pinkett Smith), an attorney working with the federal government who is attractive, friendly, and gives him her business card after paying her fare. Max thinks his luck is getting even better when his next fare, Vincent (Tom Cruise), offers him several hundred dollars in cash if he'll be willing to drop him off, wait, and pick him up at five different spots over the course of the evening. Max agrees, but he soon realizes Vincent isn't just another guy with errands to run -- Vincent is an assassin who has been paid to murder five people who could put the leaders of a powerful drug trafficking ring behind bars in an upcoming trial. As circumstances force Max to do Vincent's bidding, the cabbie has to find a way to prevent Vincent from killing again and save his own skin, a task that becomes especially crucial when he discovers Annie is one of the names on Vincent's hit list. Collateral also stars Mark Ruffalo, Peter Berg, and Bruce McGill as police detectives hot on Vincent's trail. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

A shy radio telescope operator named Zane Ziminski (Charlie Sheen) picks up a series of regular signals coming from space -- and deliberately pointed toward Earth. Convinced that he has discovered alien transmissions, Ziminski is first chastised and then fired by his boss (Ron Silver). Obsessed, he builds a makeshift radio telescope in his house to find out where the signals were sent. Convinced that they're intended for aliens already hidden on Earth, he tracks them to a bleak, isolated Mexican village, where he joins forces with a female scientist (Lindsey Crouse), who has suspicions of her own after witnessing an acceleration of global warming. The villagers turn out to be aliens, and the village a front for an underground alien complex. The aliens are here to "terraform" Earth and prepare it for the arrival of the rest of their race, who will die unless they leave their homeworld and colonize elsewhere. Only Ziminski can stop them. Written and directed by David N. Twohy, The Arrival is a throwback to the genre chillers of the '50s. ~ Don Kaye, Rovi