Chris Weitz

Michael Cera and Kat Dennings star as two lonesome teens who make a love connection as they prowl the streets of New York looking for their favorite band's secret show, as well as for their drunk friend Caroline. Norah is sick of being the doormat for her catty friend Tris, so rather than look like she's arrived at yet another concert without her unreliable ex-boyfriend-with-benefits Tal, she grabs a stranger and pretends he's her date. Unfortunately, that stranger is Nick -- whom Tris just dumped. Oddly enough, though, Nick and Norah seem to have a real connection. But is Nick still too hung up on the princess? The only way to find out is to spend all night combing Manhattan in a yellow Yugo. ~ Jeremy Wheeler, All Movie Guide

Reclusive college freshman Bickford Schmeckler (Patrick Fugit) is a virtual fountain of cool ideas, and he records every single one of them in his prized, steel-bound notebook. When the notebook is stolen by hedonistic sorority girl Sarah (Olivia Wilde) during a toga party and subsequently comes into the possession of schizophrenic campus eccentric Spaceman (Matthew Lillard), the desperate Bickford embarks on a frantic quest to recover his most prized possession and prevent his life's work from being credited to someone else. John Cho and Fran Krantz star in a cinematic labor of love from writer/director Scott Lew - an ambitious first-time feature filmmaker who worked for eight years to bring his creative vision to the big screen. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

Many married couples have secrets, but one pair of lovebirds discover they've both been living dangerous secret lives in this action thriller laced with comedy. Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt and play Jane Smith and John Smith, a suburban couple whose marriage has started to go a bit stale after five or six years. Both wish for more excitement in their relationship, but as it happens, each of them is finding plenty of thrills elsewhere. Both Jane and John are world-class assassins who will take on perilous missions for the right price, but neither is aware of the other's secret life - Jane thinks her husband runs a successful construction company, and John believes his wife works on Wall Street. However, when John and Jane are both assigned to take out the same target, one Benjamin Danz (Adam Brody), they become aware of each other's secret lives, and suddenly both their careers and their marriage go through some dramatic and potentially deadly changes. Mr. and Mrs. Smith also stars Vince Vaughn as an assassin with John's company who still lives with his mother and Kerry Washington as one of Jane's associates. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

A middle-aged man finds a callow twentysomething usurping his professional life and worming his way into his family in this alternately funny and poignant comedy drama. Dan Foreman (Dennis Quaid) is a middle-aged man who has spent 20 years as the head of advertising sales for Sports America, a leading athletics magazine. Dan is happily married to Ann (Marg Helgenberger) and has a college-age daughter, Alex (Scarlett Johansson), whom he dotes on, but Dan's comfortable life is given a major shake-up when a large multimedia firm buys the magazine. Seen as a bit long in the tooth to be truly competitive, Dan is demoted to second in command of advertising, and his position is handed over to Carter Duryea (Topher Grace), a 26-year-old who talks a good game about sales but has no practical experience in the field. Dan's wounded ego makes working with the arrogant Carter an uphill battle, but when he learns that Ann is expecting another baby, Dan is in no position to quit. Before long, Dan becomes aware of Carter's intense insecurities about his new job as the younger man reaches out to him for guidance, but this doesn't make Dan any less angry when Carter begins a romance with Alex after his marriage to Kimberley (Selma Blair) crashes and burns. In Good Company marked the solo directorial debut of Paul Weitz; he previously worked in collaboration with his brother Chris Weitz, who serves as producer on this film. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Comic Chris Rock co-scripted and stars in this remake of 1941's Here Comes Mr. Jordan, which was also remade with Warren Beatty in 1978 as Heaven Can Wait. Comedian Lance Barton (Rock) is struggling to get his career off the ground when he dies in an untimely bus accident; arriving at the Pearly Gates, he discovers that he's not supposed to have passed on for another 50 years. Barton is not happy with this turn of events, and eventually the Powers That Be send his spirit back to Earth, but for the time being he has to make do with the body of a middle-aged, closed-minded millionaire, Charles Wellington. Lance falls in love with a young community activist (Regina King), but he soon finds he has bigger problems at home: the millionaire's wife and her lover are both trying to kill him. The supporting cast includes Mark Addy as an actor passing himself off as an English manservant, Chazz Palminteri as Mr. King, Heaven's no-nonsense manager, and Eugene Levy as Mr. Keyes, the angel who accidentally ends Barton's life. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

The horny teen heroes of American Pie (1999) return for further raunchy antics in this comedy sequel written by the first film's creator, Adam Herz. Returning home following their freshman year of college, old friends Jim (Jason Biggs), Kevin (Thomas Ian Nicholas), Oz (Chris Klein), Finch (Eddie Kaye Thomas), and Stifler (Seann William Scott) rent a summer house on Lake Michigan where they hope to score romantically. However, complications ensue due to Jim's relative lack of experience, requiring an interlude with a fellow student and a visit to his old friend Michelle (Alyson Hanigan), who's now a band camp counselor, all in preparation for the return of Nadia (Shannon Elizabeth). In the meantime, Oz is separated from Heather (Mena Suvari) by a trip abroad, Finch has another encounter with Stifler's mom (Jennifer Coolidge), and Jim's dad (Eugene Levy) is as clueless as ever about his son's love life. Director J.B. Rogers served as first assistant director on the first film and made his directorial debut with Say It Isn't So (2001). ~ Karl Williams, All Movie Guide

Overweight scientific genius Sherman Klump and his extended family are back in this sequel to the 1996 comedy smash The Nutty Professor. Sherman (played once again by Eddie Murphy) has come up with a discovery that ought to make him a multimillionaire: a youth serum that turns back the user's body clock. Sherman has also found time for a social life and has fallen in love with Denise Gains (Janet Jackson), a brilliant woman involved in DNA research. Sherman and Denise are engaged, but Sherman is still troubled by Buddy Love, the dark side of his personality that he wants to purge from his psyche forever. He persuades Denise to help him by splicing Buddy out of his DNA structure, but the experiment doesn't go as planned: instead of destroying Buddy, Sherman and Denise free him, and Buddy's first order of business is to get his hands on Sherman's youth serum, which Sherman has hidden at his family's house. In addition to Klump and Love, Murphy also plays Mama, Papa, Grandma, and nephew Ernie Klump, thanks to the makeup magic of Rick Baker. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Introduced with a brace of feature-length pilot episodes which aired on January 14, 1977, and January 20, 1978, the weekly, hour-long Aaron Spelling production Fantasy Island began its seven-season ABC run on January 28, 1978. Its basic format was similar to Spelling's The Love Boat: A quasi-anthology with celebrity guest stars, with two separate plotlines woven together on each episode by a central location and a small cast of regulars. Ricardo Montalban starred as Mr. Roarke, the mysterious, erudite, impeccably dressed erudite owner of a lavish and unique tropical resort known as Fantasy Island. For a flat rate of $50,000, each visitor to the island could have one lifelong dream brought to reality by Roarke and his astonishingly versatile staff. The separates storylines ranged from the poignant to the hilarious, as shy female librarians were transformed into voluptuous vixens, clumsy male bank clerks became sports superstars, mousy secretaries could turn the tables on their dictatorial bosses, elderly retirees were permitted to travel back in time to renew lost loves or recapture missed opportunities, mild-mannered suburbanites briefly lived lives of danger and intrigue, third-rate journalists were afforded the chance to score the "scoop of the century", would-be hunters could go on the prowl for the biggest game of all, and so on. While most of the stories ended happily, there was always the hint that things could have gone horribly (or even fatally awry); and of course, the most frequent lesson learned was "Be Careful What You Wish For." In the early episodes, the enigmatic Roarke came off as something of a professional illusionist and special-effects master; as the series progressed, it became clear that Roarke possessed magical, mystical powers of some sort or other. And on at least three occasions, Roarke crossed swords with the Devil Himself (played by Roddy McDowell), invariably emerging the victor. For the first six seasons, Roarke 's assistant and general factotum was the heavily-accented dwarf Tatoo (Herve Villechaize), who invariably heralded the arrival of each new group of visitors to Fantasy Island with a shout of "De plane, boss! De plane!" Although Roarke and Tattoo generally remained aloof from the trials and tribulations of their clients, they occasionally became emotionally involved in one or more of the Fantasies. During Season Four, Roarke was sometimes assisted by his goddaughter Julie (Wendy Schaal), who boasted some impressive supernatural skills of her own. And after Herve Villechaize left the series at the end of Season Six, his replacement was the veddy British Lawrence, portrayed by future Mr. Belvedere star Christopher Hewitt. Although some of the series' exteriors were lensed at the Arborteum, a tropical park located some 25 miles from Los Angeles, for the most part Fantasy Island availed itself of the best that the various Hollywood backlots had to offer. Lasting 130 episodes, the series ended its ABC run on August 18, 1984. In syndication, the hour-long episodes were either run in toto or edited into half-hour excerpts, depending upon the local stations' needs; the series' handful of 90 minute episodes, each of which contained three separate storylines and sets of guest stars, were all pared down to 60 minutes, with one of the three segments deftly edited out. In 1998, Fantasy Island was briefly and unsuccessfully revived by ABC, with Malcolm McDowell as Mr. Roarke, this time aided by a team of assistants rather than a single sidekick, and even more emphasis on the supernatural and the occult than the earlier version. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide