Aharon Ipalé Movies

Jack (Victor Garber) manages to avoid having to kill his own daughter, Sydney (Jennifer Garner), but our heroine isn't out of the woods yet. Still working for the CIA to topple rival agency SD-6, Sydney travels to Crete to locate the stealth technology being developed by the terrorist Hassan (Aharon Ipalé). Alas, the tables are turned, and Sydney falls into the villain's clutches -- while her CIA contact, Vaughn (Michael Vartan), hesitates to take the necessary steps to save her life. Alias producer and sometime director Ken Olin makes a significant unbilled cameo appearance. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Escaping the clutches of an illicit arms dealer, Sydney (Jennifer Garner) takes on her next counterespionage assignment. Her mission transports her to Madrid, where she is to purchase a 500-year-old drawing by the remarkably prophetic Renaissance artist Milo Rambaldi -- a sketch containing a portion of a code vital to the operation of a deadly nuclear device. In the course of events, Sydney continues to press her secret-agent father, Jack (Victor Garber), for details surrounding the death of her mother, Laura. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Loosely adapted from the classic 1932 horror film starring Boris Karloff, The Mummy is set in Egypt, where over 3,000 years ago the high priest Imhotep (played by Arnold Vosloo) was given the all-important assignment of preparing the recently dead for their journey into the afterlife. However, Imhotep made one terrible mistake - he became smitten with Anck-Su-Namun, the mistress of the Pharaoh himself. Driven mad by jealousy and love, Imhotep murdered the Pharaoh, and his punishment was to be buried alive and suffer the torment of an eternal life in his wretched tomb. In 1925, a band of adventurers seeking fame and fortune - led by Rick O'Connel (Brendan Fraser), an American expatriate who has joined the foreign legion, and Evelyn Carnarvon (Rachel Weisz), an amateur archeologist - find a previously unknown burial site in Egypt. The team starts to dig, hoping to find lost riches, but instead they disturb the tomb of Imhotep, and soon the cursed priest rises from his grave to wreck vengeance on humanity. The Mummy was written and directed by Stephen Sommers, whose previous cinematic journeys into the past include The Jungle Book and The Adventures Of Huck Finn. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

Once again, Jessica (Angela Lansbury) joins forces with Chicago P.I. Charlie Garrett (Wayne Rogers), this time at a New York cultural museum. At first, Jessica and Charlie are on opposite sides as they bid against each other during an auction for a rare manuscript allegedly written by "Sherlock Holmes" creator Arthur Conan-Doyle. Before long, however, the two sleuths are following the clues surrounding the murder of a notorious art forger suspected of copying a stolen Degas painting. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

After the death of Peter Sellers in 1980, writer/director Blake Edwards assembled a new "Pink Panther" film from outtakes of Sellers as Inspector Clouseau from previous movies in the series (the result was called The Trail of the Pink Panther) and later made two attempts to revive the series with another actor. In this case, Edwards cast Roberto Benigni as Jacques Gambrelli, a hopelessly inept French policeman who turns out the be the illegitimate son of Inspector Clouseau. Gambrelli becomes involved with the investigation of a kidnapping involving the beautiful Princess Yasmin (Debrah Farentino) literally by accident, when he crashes into a car driven by Police Commissioner Dreyfus (Herbert Lom). Gambrelli soon becomes smitten with Yasmin, while the investigation suggests that the kidnapping was set up by her mother, the Queen (Shabana Azmi), and her lover, General Jaffar (Aharon Ipale). Claudia Cardinale who played a different character in the original Pink Panther returns, while Burt Kwouk returns as the violent Korean manservant Cato. Roberto Benigni's Gambrelli proved no more successful at the box office than Ted Wass's Clouseau-like Clifton Sleigh in The Curse of the Pink Panther (1983), though after his multiple-Oscar winning success with 1998's La Vita e Bella, Roberto's probably gotten over it. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

In this drama, also titled "Great Pretender," an award-winning reporter, who has been demoted to nowhere position at his paper, reveals a government backed and highly corrupt land deal. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

It took nerve to release a small-scale Canadian drama called Erik in the same year that all the big promotional guns were booming on behalf of the lush-budget British film Erik the Viking. The Canadian picture stars Stephen McHattie as a Vietnam veteran who has trouble adjusting to a peacetime society. He offers his services as a mercenary, and soon finds himself dodging bullets in a South American country that isn't El Salvador, but might as well be. Second-billed Deborah van Valkenburgh befriends the vet, and through him strives to understand why certain people cannot function unless fully armed. Director Michael Kennedy also wrote the mildly existential screenplay for Erik. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Considered one of the great box-office turkeys of its decade, Ishtar was an attempt by writer/director Elaine May and stars Dustin Hoffman and Warren Beatty to do a modern-day road picture in the style of the much-loved Bob Hope and Bing Crosby comedy classics. Beatty is Lyle Rogers, a dimwitted songwriter who befriends and partners with Chuck Clarke (Hoffman), who is only slightly more intelligent but every bit as untalented. Together the duo dreams of becoming a big-time lounge act, but their songs, with titles like "That a Lawnmower Can Do All That," are unintentionally hilarious. Chuck becomes suicidal, but just when it seems they'll never strike it rich, the boys are offered a shady gig at a North African hotel, entertaining U.S. troops stationed in the tiny nation of Ishtar. On their way to accept the job, Lyle, Chuck, and their blind camel are sidetracked by a mysterious woman (Isabelle Adjani) and a scheming CIA agent (Charles Grodin), who are involved in a rebellion against the country's emir. The memorable songs crafted by Chuck and Lyle were written by actor and composer Paul Williams. ~ Karl Williams, Rovi

After her ex-lover threatens to explode a nuclear warhead, a former CIA agent organizes a team of crack female operatives to bring him back to justice. The film is also known as Slay It Again Sam. ~ John Bush, Rovi

This British Merchant-Ivory look-alike was adapted from a novel by Isabel Colgate. In the summer before World War I, British nobleman James Mason invites an assorted group of acquaintances for a weekend shooting party on his huge estate. Among the participants are longtime rivals Edward Fox and Rupert Frazer, Fox's occasionally unfaithful wife Cheryl Campbell, and staunch anti-hunting advocate John Gielgud. The film unfolds in a carefully calculated but seemingly spontaneous fashion, in the manner of its 1938 ancestor Rules of the Game. Also like the earlier film, The Shooting Party casts a jaundiced eye towards class consciousness--and ends with a sudden, senseless but not altogether unexpected tragedy. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

This is a made-for-TV bio about the film star Rita Hayworth. Lynda Carter stars as the legendary star. ~ Rovi