Richard Dreyfuss

Josh Brolin stars as George W. Bush in this Oliver Stone biopic that traces the head of state's rise to power from a privileged alcoholic to a born-again Christian whose belief in religious destiny helped move him to the top ranks of political power. Co-written by Stanley G. Weiser, Bush is produced by fellow Stone collaborators Moritz Borman and Jon Kilik, with Elizabeth Banks co-starring as the first lady, James Cromwell as the elder President Bush, Ellen Burstyn as Barbara Bush and Richard Dreyfuss as Vice President Dick Cheney. ~ Jeremy Wheeler, All Movie Guide

Produced for the Sci-Fi Channel, this twisted variation on L. Frank Baum's classic tale follows a young girl named D.G. and her newfound friends as they embark on a wondrous adventure through the Outer Zone (O.Z.) on a mission to locate a powerful wizard known as the Mystic Man, and break the spell of the wicked sorceress Azkadellia. An ordinary girl suddenly thrust into an extraordinary world, D.G. (Zooey Deschanel) arrives on the Outer Zone prepared to follow the fabled Old Road and fulfill her destiny. When D.G. discovers that the evil Azkadellia (Kathleen Robertson) has cast an oppressive spell over the Outer Zone, she enlists the aid of half-brained eccentric Glitch (Alan Cumming), kindly-but-cowardly beast Raw (Raoul Trujillo), and heartbroken former lawman Cain (Neil McDonough) in seeking out the wisdom of the fabled Mystic Man (Richard Dreyfuss) who lives at the end of the Old Road. With the future of the Outer Zone hanging in the balance, this adventurous group ventures down a perilous road that will find them doing battle with nightmarish flying monkey bats and Azkadellia's malevolent henchmen as they attempt to break a spell with the power to destroy them all. Perhaps before their journey is over, D.G. and her new friends will discover a few things that they never even knew about themselves as well. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

Set adrift in the vast waters of the North Atlantic for a luxury New Year's Eve party staged in the ship's magnificent ballroom, the massive ocean-liner Poseidon receives an unexpected jolt when a rogue, 100-foot wave rolls it completely upside down, forcing the surviving passengers to fight their way to safety in Das Boot director Wolfgang Petersen's waterlogged blockbuster. Trapped beneath the waterline and implored by the captain to remain in place until a rescue team arrives, the panicked survivors struggle to keep their cool as the water begins to rush in, infernos blaze all around, and a loss of electricity plunges the doomed vessel into total darkness. Seasoned gambler Dylan Johns (Josh Lucas) isn't willing to wage his life on the prompt arrival of help, though, and as he attempts to navigate the treacherous, inverted maze of death, he is flanked by desperate band of like-minded seafarers including eight-year-old Conor (Jimmy Bennett) and his mother, Maggie (Jacinda Barrett), reticent stowaway Elena (Mía Maestro), suicidal Richard (Richard Dreyfus), and concerned father Robert (Kurt Russell), whose missing daughter may still be somewhere onboard along with her frightened fiancé. With a little luck and a little help from onboard waiter Marco (Freddy Rodriguez), the desperate team may just live to see the morning after. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

Celebrated writer and director John Sayles turns his eye to politics in America in this drama. The son of respected Colorado politician Senator Jud Pilager (Michael Murphy), Dicky Pilager (Chris Cooper) is a charming but half-bright man with a bad habit of mangling the English language and a decided lack of political correctness. Dicky is also in the midst of a hard-fought campaign to become governor of Colorado. Dicky's campaign manager, Chuck Raven (Richard Dreyfuss), is a ruthless sort who will leave no stone unturned to see that his candidate wins, so when Dicky snags a dead body while fishing during the shooting of a campaign commercial, Raven is determined to find out if his man has been set up. Raven hires Danny O'Brien (Danny Huston), a former journalist turned private investigator, to find out who the dead man is and if he might be connected to Pilager's enemies. But the deeper O'Brien digs into the matter, the more he finds out about the candidate and his family -- and very little of it is flattering. John Sayles assembled a typically impressive cast for Silver City, with the supporting cast highlighted by Tim Roth, Kris Kristofferson, Maria Bello, Thora Birch, Daryl Hannah, Billy Zane, and Mary Kay Place. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Based upon Peter Biskind's book of the same name, this BBC-produced documentary traces the rise of a generation of Hollywood filmmakers who briefly changed the face of movies with a more personal approach that pushed the boundaries of what was acceptable onscreen. Influenced by such European directors as Jean-Luc Godard, François Truffaut, and Federico Fellini, the movement kicked off in the mid-'60s with two films directed by Arthur Penn: Mickey One and Bonnie and Clyde. (The latter had been offered to both Godard and Truffaut before it wound up with producer/star Warren Beatty and Penn.) What really kicked it into gear was the unexpected success of Easy Rider, a biker-road movie that became that rare film phenomenon: acclaimed at the Cannes Film Festival and a huge commercial success. Film school graduates, the first generation brought up with movies as their main cultural reference, flooded the studios (whose own regimes were changing) with production chieftains such as Robert Evans of Paramount and David Picker at United Artists; they approved risky-looking projects and allowed relatively untested filmmakers like Francis Ford Coppola to take on heavyweight movies such as The Godfather or Hollywood newcomers like Britain's John Schlesinger to make quirky stories like Midnight Cowboy. Enriched by success with their TV show The Monkees, producer Bert Schneider and director Bob Rafelson formed a company that produced not only Easy Rider but seminal '70s films such as Five Easy Pieces and the Oscar-winning Vietnam War documentary Hearts and Minds. Another godfather to the new movement was producer Roger Corman, who gave early career opportunities to Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Peter Bogdanovich, and Jonathan Demme on low-budget projects that allowed them to learn their craft.

Two things brought this movement to an end: Some individual filmmakers' personal excesses (such disastrous flops as Dennis Hopper's follow-up to Easy Rider, appropriately titled The Last Movie, and Scorsese's New York, New York), and the studios growing fascination with special effects-driven B-movies. An outgrowth of two box-office and marketing juggernauts -- Jaws and Star Wars -- the resulting films became entertainments rather than personal statements of the directors. Narrated by William H. Macy, Easy Riders, Raging Bulls features vintage clips of Coppola, Scorsese, Beatty, George Lucas, Sam Peckinpah, Roman Polanski, Robert Altman, and Pauline Kael. It also includes original interview material with Penn; Corman; Bogdanovich; Hopper; Picker; writer/directors John Milius and Paul Schrader; actresses Karen Black, Cybill Shepherd, Margot Kidder, and Jennifer Salt (the latter two shared a house in Malibu, a social center for young filmmakers); actors Peter Fonda, Kris Kristofferson, and Richard Dreyfuss; producers Jerome Hellman, Michael Phillips, and Jonathan Taplin; editor Dede Allen; production designer Polly Platt; writers David Newman, Joan Tewksbury, Gloria Katz, and Willard Huyck; cinematographers Laszlo Kovacs and Vilmos Zsigmond; agent Mike Medavoy; and former production executive Peter Bart. Among the films discussed are Rosemary's Baby, The Wild Bunch, Mean Streets, American Graffiti, The Rain People, Midnight Cowboy, M*A*S*H, McCabe and Mrs. Miller, The Last Picture Show, Shampoo, Taxi Driver, and Raging Bull. (Three interviewees -- cinematographer Gordon Willis, critic Andrew Sarris, and writer-director Monte Hellman -- listed in the Variety review of this film, were not included in this version from a screening on Bravo.) ~ Tom Wiener, All Movie Guide

According to this made-for-cable documentary, stage and film star John Garfield set the standard for naturalistic acting that blazed the trail for such future "method" types as Marlon Brando and Robert De Niro. Lovingly narrated by Garfield's actress daughter, Julie Garfield, the film details the early childhood of Julius Garfinkel in the mean streets of New York, his fascination with acting, his absorption into the influential Group Theatre, and his ultimate journey to Hollywood, where as John Garfield, he earned an Oscar nomination for his first starring feature film, Four Daughters. From there, Garfield's star continued to ascend, unaffected by his internal battles with the studio bosses and his many marital infidelities. Yet for all his fame and fortune on the silver screen, Garfield was frustrated at being typecast as a "tough guy," yearning for more substantial, three-dimensional roles. With rare exceptions, such roles would elude him in Hollywood, compelling him to return to New York at the height of his movie popularity to star in Clifford Odets' Broadway hit The Big Knife -- ironically the story of a movie idol who had "sold out." Though extremely liberal in his politics, Garfield was never a Communist, but this didn't stop him from being persecuted by the HUAC in the late '40s, which led to his being blacklisted in Hollywood. Hounded and tormented by the anti-Red witch hunt of the era, Garfield's health suffered mightily, and by age 39 he was dead. In addition to an abundance of precious film clips (including rare footage of the actor's only TV appearance), The John Garfield Story features interviews from Garfield's co-worker's, friends, family members, and modern-day fans. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Standup comedian turned director Chris Ver Weil makes his debut with this wild and woolly romantic comedy cum noir crime thriller. The film centers on Trevor Finch (Christian Slater), a master counterfeiter and career con who learns that he has a price on his head from mob hitman Critical Jim (Tim Allen). The reason turns out to be a wacky case of mistaken identity -- Finch has assumed the name Cletis Tout, a sleazy, long-dead French muckraker with, it turns out, a criminal history himself. Rewind to 1977, when Micah (Richard Dreyfuss) pulls off a massive diamond heist and buries his booty in a field with the help of his young daughter Tess. Five presidential administrations later, Micah and his cellmate Finch bust out of prison, only to learn from the now-grown Tess (Portia de Rossi) that the diamonds are behind the walls of another newly built prison. Meanwhile, sparks begin to fly between Tess and Finch. This film was screened at the 2001 Toronto Film Festival. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide

Oscar winner Richard Dreyfuss made his long-awaited weekly TV series bow in CBS' weekly, 60-minute The Education of Max Bickford. In the tradition of Dreyfuss' theatrical feature Mr. Holland's Opus, the series focuses on an irascibly liberal-minded but rigidly tradition-bound professor of literature at a prestigious women's college. Passed over for a promotion in favor of his former student (and lover) Andrea Haskell (Marcia Gay Harden), Max Bickford (Richard Dreyfuss) begins to wonder if his 23 years of steadfast academic service were truly worth it. All but deserted by his best friend Steve -- who has been reinvented as "Erica" (Helen Shaver) after a sex change -- and his Gen-X daughter Lyla (Katee Sackhoff), who happens to attend the college where Max teaches, our hero finds himself drawing closer to his 13-year-old son Lester (Eric Ian Goldberg), a chip off the old block if ever there was one. The producers describe the series as "a drama about a man who realizes life has passed him by and has to re-examine a lot of his assumptions." Debuting September 23, 2001, The Education of Max Bickford was one of the few new series of the 2001-2002 season whose premiere was not delayed by coverage of the World Trade Center bombing. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Based on the novel by Luis Sepulveda, this drama stars Richard Dreyfuss as Antonio Bolivar, an elderly man who lives in a small village along the Amazon River. Many years ago, Bolivar and his young wife came to the village as part of an effort to colonize the area; the couple was welcomed by Nushino (Victor Bottenbley), leader of the native tribes, but after a fever took the life of his spouse and attacks by fortune seekers caused the natives to turn their backs on the white settlers, Bolivar has been virtually alone, with only one close friend in the village, an aging dentist named Rubicondo (Hugo Weaving). Bolivar passes his time by reading florid romance novels passed along to him by Josefina (Cathy Tyson), Rubicondo's mistress who works as an aide for the village's mayor, Luis Agalla (Timothy Spall). Agalla, not an especially scrupulous man, has been selling illegal hunting permits to visitors hunting big game, and one of his customers made the mistake of killing and skinning a pack of jaguar cubs; the mother of the cats found the hunter, and tore him to shreds. Now likely to attack any human she sees, the mother jaguar is roaming the jungle near the village and must be found before she can kill again, and Bolivar steps forward to help with the dangerous assignment of finding and capturing the vicious cat. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide