Stanley Tucci

The acclaimed Trainspotting trio (director Danny Boyle, producer Andrew Macdonald, scripter John Hodge) reunited for this update of '30s screwball comedies and '40s fantasies, such as Here Comes Mr. Jordan(1941), Angel on My Shoulder(1946), Down to Earth(1947), and the 1946 Stairway to Heaven (co-directed by Macdonald's grandfather, Emeric Pressburger). Tossed together for $12 million, the result is a combination salad, a surreal salmagundi with an added animated sequence for lagniappe. In Heaven, Gabriel (Dan Hedaya) sends angels O'Reilly (Holly Hunter) and Jackson (Delroy Lindo) down to Earth to make two people fall in love. If the angels fail, they must remain on Earth. The target couple: well-to-do Celine (Cameron Diaz) and impoverished, aspiring novelist Robert (Ewan McGregor), a janitor at the corporation owned by her wealthy father, Naville (Ian Holm). Robert loses his job, kidnaps Celine, and the two retreat to a mountain hideout where they discuss splitting the ransom. O'Reilly and Jackson plan to make Robert and Celine love each other by putting them in jeopardy, so the two angels get hired on by Naville as bounty hunters. Although Robert and Celine argue, they also sing and dance together at a local karaoke bar, a scene evocative of both Dennis Potter's Karaoke and the memorable karaoke performance by Cameron Diaz in My Best Friend's Wedding. The angels make few gains, but when Jackson is on the brink of killing Robert, Celine comes to his rescue. Naville cancels Celine's credit card, so she robs a bank. Robert is shot during the robbery, and Celine has dentist Elliot (Stanley Tucci) remove the bullet. Robert awakens, finds the two together, and knocks out Elliot, prompting an argument that leads Celine and Robert to separate. Plagued by their own problems, the angels kidnap Celine themselves, and as complications mount, Gabriel eventually has God intervene. Filmed in Utah, although Hodge originally planned the story to take place in France and England. ~ Bhob Stewart, All Movie Guide

Most people fall in love and then have a baby, but one woman finds herself reversing the process in this romantic comedy. Grace Rhodes (Lisa Eichhorn) is a businesswoman inching into her 40s who has reached most of her career goals, but she is having a little trouble with her biological clock, which has started ticking very, very loudly. Grace hasn't had much luck in finding Mr. Right, and her friend Elaine (Caroline Aaron), who manages the not inconsiderable feat of being even more cynical about such matters than Grace, assures her that the man of her dreams doesn't really exist. Elaine is the first to suggest to Grace that if she wants a child and can't find a man, perhaps she should consider visiting a sperm bank. In time, Grace warms to the idea and eventually chooses sample #247. Grace becomes pregnant, and is very happy...until she starts wondering what sort of man her child's father really is. With Elaine's help, Grace cracks into the sperm bank's records and learns that #247 belongs to Peter Kessler (Stanley Tucci), a gifted but lonely photographer with serious commitment issues. Elaine meets Peter at the gallery he runs, and before long, a cautious romance begins to blossom between them, but Elaine isn't sure if this relationship is destined to last -- or when or if she should tell Peter that she's carrying his child. A Modern Affair was produced, directed, and written by Vern Oakley; it was his first feature film. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Feeling that something is lacking in their lives, the family of suburbanite Charles Grodin adopts a stray St. Bernard puppy. The cute lite beast grows up to be the less-than-cute Beethoven, a sloppy, slobbery, oversized and extremely destructive animal. Beethoven also brings with him a lot of hidden baggage in the form of evil veterinarian Dean Jones, who'll stop at nothing to steal Beethoven for the purposes of his insidious lab experiment. Several sequels followed, beginning with 1993 Beethoven's Second. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Barry Sonnenfeld directs this kissing cousin of his own 1995 hit Get Shorty, a comic caper adapted by Robert Ramsey and Matthew Stone from the novel by newspaper humorist Dave Barry. When two New Jersey hitmen (Dennis Farina and Jack Kehler) show up in Miami to whack crooked businessman Arthur Herk (Stanley Tucci), they happen to creep into his backyard at the same time as Matt (Ben Foster), a high school kid with his own assassination plans. Only, Matt plans to use nothing heavier than a squirt gun on Jenny (Zooey Deschanel), Arthur's daughter, as part of a school-wide game of "killer." When the plans collide, mayhem ensues, and Matt's struggling ex-columnist dad (Tim Allen, loosely modeled on Barry), Arthur's bored wife (Rene Russo), and two confused police officers (Janeane Garofalo and Patrick Warburton) are also called to the scene. Shift to the next day and there's more craziness to follow. Two dimwitted petty criminals (Tom Sizemore and Johnny Knoxville) choose the exact moment Arthur is transacting a nuclear arms deal to hold up the dive bar where they're regulars, which is actually a front for the Russian mob. Soon the whole motley cast -- including an agreeable drifter (Jason Lee), a buxom maid (Sofia Vergara), and a pair of ruthless FBI agents (Heavy D and Omar Epps) -- are caught up in a hostage scenario in which the weapon accidentally gets brought aboard a hijacked plan. ~ Derek Armstrong, All Movie Guide

A married couple deal with a crushing loss in a way that's both funny and deeply sad in this comedy-drama from director, screenwriter and star Stanley Tucci. Don (Tucci) and his wife Janna (Patricia Clarkson) meet every night in the same shabby nightclub where Don performs a humorously shambolic magic act. Don and Janna's relationship has been on the verge of collapse since the death of their daughter, and they're trying to reconnect with each other through role playing, so each evening they pretend they're meeting for the first time on a blind date after discovering one another through personal ads. Sometimes they assume characters that are openly confrontational, while other times they try to bring a sweetness and intimacy back into their lives, but more often than not their struggle to reclaim the love they knew ends in confusion and frustration. Blind Date was adapted by Tucci and screenwriter David Schechter from Theo Van Gogh's 1996 film of the same name; it was the second in a series of remakes of Van Gogh's films (following Steve Buscemi's Interview) created in response to Van Gogh's assassination by political extremists in 2004. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

In January of 1942, 15 of Adolf Hitler's right-hand men gathered together for a special meeting in Wannsee, in which over the course of two hours they debated the pros and cons of Hitler's latest directive and the best way to implement it. By the time they left, they had laid the practical groundwork for the "Final Solution," with the execution of every Jewish person in Europe as their goal. A transcript of the meeting has survived, and that document provided the basis for the screenplay for Conspiracy, which dramatizes (in real time) the meeting that led to the greatest crime of the 20th century. Conspiracy stars Kenneth Branagh, Colin Firth, Stanley Tucci, and David Threlfall; the film was produced for the premium cable network HBO, where it first aired on May 19, 2001. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

This film focuses on the trials and tribulations of Ira (Todd Solondz), who is an unsuccessful playwright trying to find himself in New York City. ~ Iotis Erlewine, All Movie Guide

The efforts of an American ex-patriot living on a remote Mediterranean to establish himself as a serious musician are constantly thwarted by every inhabitant of his small village in director Francesca Joseph's ensemble comedy drama. Larry (Stanley Tucci) thought that by moving to the village that was once home to a celebrated European composer he would find inspiration, but instead he just spends his nights playing for peanuts in the local pubs. Eventually Larry becomes convinced that if he stages a gala tribute to the late composer the locals will finally take note of his talent. But organizing such a lavish event and convincing the late composer's widow (Marisa Paredes) to allow her esteemed late-husband's works to be played publicly by a famed pianist (Virgile Bramley) isn't going to be easy, especially when it begins to seem like everyone wants their say in the event. Now, with everyone from Larry's neurotic partner Miranda (Jessica Stevenson) to the late musician's lovely muse Helena (Emmanuelle Seigner), opportunistic Englishman Sebastian (Hugh Bonneville) and his capricious brother Dickie (Rhys Ifans), and even Larry's long lost daughter Frankie (Jena Malone) crawling out of the woodwork, the put upon pianist will have to balance out the chaos that swirls around him if he holds out any hope of delivering his true masterwork. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

In this crime thriller, L.L. Cool J is a underworld boss so powerful that his nickname is "God." He has his fingers in 80% of the drug traffic in Cincinnati, has won over nearly every adversary through bribery or intimidation, and seems practically untouchable. New police detective Jeffrey Cole (Omar Epps), convinced that he's the man who can bring down "God" and his empire, assumes a criminal identity that allows him to infiltrate "God"'s organization. However, the longer Cole remains inside the underworld, the more he finds himself caught up in it, and getting out of "God"'s empire becomes more difficult than getting in. The supporting cast includes Stanley Tucci as Cole's superior, Nia Long as Cole's girlfriend , and Pam Grier as an undercover detective, as well as hip-hop artists Nas and Mya. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Loosely based on a true story, this uneven romantic comedy depicts the unexpected way in which a winning lottery ticket unites a pair of strangers. Waitress Yvonne (Bridget Fonda) first meets police officer Charlie (Nicolas Cage) when he eats in her restaurant. Realizing that he doesn't have enough money to give her a tip, Charlie promises Yvonne to split any winnings from the lottery ticket he just bought. The skeptical Yvonne dismisses Charlie as just another cheapskate until he wins four million dollars and, much to Yvonne's surprise, decides to honor the agreement. His action becomes front page news and wins public acclaim, but it doesn't go over nearly so well with Charlie's wife Muriel (Rosie Perez), who has her own plans for the money. Muriel's shallow, greedy behavior disgusts Charlie, who finds himself spending more and more time with Yvonne, developing a friendship that threatens to blossom into something more. Jane Anderson's screenplay stresses the relationship between Charlie and Yvonne's characters over the situation's comic potential; this earnest tone will please romance fans but may disappoint viewers expecting the farcical comedy of writer/director Andrew Bergman's and Cage's previous effort, Honeymoon in Vegas. ~ Judd Blaise, All Movie Guide

Nora Ephron adapts Julie Powell's autobiographical book Julie and Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen with this Columbia Pictures production starring Amy Adams as an amateur chef who decides to cook every recipe in a cookbook from acclaimed celebrity chef Julia Child (played by Meryl Streep) in order to chronicle it in a blog over the course of a year. Streep's Devil Wears Prada co-star Stanley Tucci re-teams with the actress as Child's husband. ~ Jeremy Wheeler, All Movie Guide

A convict agrees to go undercover and gather evidence on a notorious crime lord in order to win an early release from prison in this tough, gritty crime drama. Much of the tension develops from the inner conflict of Jimmy Kilmartin (David Caruso), who feels torn between his desire to win freedom for the sake of his family and his belief in a code of honor that sees ratting on others as an unforgivable sin. His misgivings are compounded by fear when he learns that his target is to be the notorious Little Junior (Nicolas Cage), a violent eccentric with a hair-trigger temper. Luckily for the ex-con, Junior takes a shine to Jimmy, welcoming him into his inner circle. While this pleases the investigators, it means further trouble for Jimmy, who would undoubtedly be killed were his deception ever discovered. ~ Judd Blaise, All Movie Guide