Michael De Luca Movies

Tom Holland's classic vampire-moves-next-to-teen horror comedy gets the redo treatment with this DreamWorks production scripted by Mad Men's Marti Noxon. ~ Jeremy Wheeler, All Movie Guide

The story behind the massive social networking site Facebook gets the big-screen treatment with this Columbia Pictures production scripted by The West Wing's Aaron Sorkin and directed by David Fincher. The film focuses on Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg's (Jesse Eisenberg) ladder to the top after creating one of the biggest Internet sensations. Justin Timberlake co-stars as Napster co-creator Sean Parker, with Andrew Garfield filling the role of ousted Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin. ~ Jeremy Wheeler, All Movie Guide

Brad Pitt stars in the real-life tale of Major League Baseball general manager Billy Beane, who built up a winning team despite a decreased budget thanks to his sly use of statistical data to calculate the best -- and cheapest -- players for his roster. Aaron Sorkin updates Steve Zaillian's adaptation of Michael Lewis' fly-on-the-wall novel for Columbia Pictures, with Daily Show correspondent Demetri Martin co-starring. Director Steven Soderbergh was long-attached to the project, but left due to script issues. ~ Jeremy Wheeler, All Movie Guide

Three mercenaries head into the heart of the Middle East to track down a terrorist in this Relativity Media production. Seven Years in Tibet's Jean-Jacques Annaud directs from a script by D.B. Weiss. ~ Jeremy Wheeler, All Movie Guide

Director Robert Luketic adapts Ben Mezrich's best-seller Bringing Down the House: The Inside Story of Six M.I.T. Students Who Took Vegas for Millions to tell the true-life tale of six genius students who used their brains to beat considerable odds. Ben Campbell (Jim Sturgess) may be shy, but his wallflower reputation betrays his inner brilliance. As smart as Ben may be, however, if he can't pay his tuition he'll be kicked out of M.I.T. Fortunately, the answer to all of Ben's problems is right there in the cards. Recruited to join a team of extremely gifted students who have used their mastery of numbers to beat the odds at blackjack, Ben procures a fake identity in order to join the casino scammers and their brilliant leader -- eccentric math professor and stats genius Micky Rosa (Kevin Spacey) -- in some highly profitable weekend excursions to Las Vegas. Counting cards isn't illegal, and by using a complex series of signals, this team has cracked the code. Of course, it doesn't take long for Ben to become seduced by the glamorous Las Vegas lifestyle, and the attention afforded to him by his sexy teammate Jill Taylor (Kate Bosworth) finds him pushing his luck to the absolute limits. Laurence Fishburne stars as Cole Williams, the Sin City security chief who catches on to the group and makes it his mission to expose their lucrative blackjack scam. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

Austin Powers trilogy star Mike Myers collaborates with writer Graham Gordy for this comedy concerning a self-help guru named Pitka (Myers) who devotes his life to unknotting the romantic entanglements of troubled couples. As a young child, Pitka is abandoned at the gates of an ashram in India and taken in by kindly gurus. An American by birth, Pitka absorbs the lessons taught to him by his teachers and later returns to the United States to become a leading authority on spirituality and self-help. While Pitka's methods are decidedly unorthodox, they may be the only means of ensuring that the Toronto Maple Leafs win the coveted Stanley Cup. Maple Leafs star Darren Roanoke (Romany Malco) is in trouble. His estranged wife has recently begun dating L.A. Kings star Jacques Grande (Justin Timberlake) in a vengeful effort to send her husband's career into a tailspin, and when Roanoke starts to falter on the ice, the whole team starts to suffer. As their visions of leading the Maple Leafs to the Stanley Cup are quickly going up in flames, team owner Jane Bullard (Jessica Alba) and Coach Cherkov (Verne Troyer) enlist the aid of the world's best-known relationship expert in restoring the peace between Roanoke and his wife, and getting their team back on track to the championships. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

In the late '60s, American culture experienced a period of change as the youth movement challenged conventional attitudes about politics, sex, drugs, and gender issues, while the advancement of the Vietnam War found many citizens questioning the actions and wisdom of their government for the first time. As American attitudes continued to evolve, so did the American film industry; as costly big-budget blockbusters nearly brought the major studios to the brink of collapse, smaller and more personal films such as Bonnie and Clyde, Easy Rider, and Five Easy Pieces demonstrated there was a ready audience for bold and challenging entertainment. As the '60s faded into the 1970s, American cinema moved into an exciting period of creativity and stylistic innovation, which led to such landmark films as The Godfather, MASH, The Last Picture Show, Shampoo, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Chinatown, and Taxi Driver, and new freedom for directors and screenwriters. Ironically, however, it was another pair of big-budget blockbusters directed by students of the new wave of filmmaking -- Jaws and Star Wars -- which brought the studios back to power and put an end to Hollywood's flirtation with offbeat creativity. A Decade Under the Influence is a documentary which explores the rise and fall of new American filmmaking in the 1970s, and features interviews with many of the key directors, screenwriters, and actors whose work typified the movement, including Francis Ford Coppola, Robert Altman, Martin Scorsese, Paul Schrader, Roger Corman, Dennis Hopper, Jon Voight, and Julie Christie. A Decade Under the Influence received its world premier at the 2003 Sundance Film Festival, and an expanded version of the film was later shown on the premium cable outlet The Independent Film Channel; the documentary was the final work of co-director Ted Demme, who died shortly before the film was completed. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Bob Odenkirk and David Cross stretch one of the characters from their HBO comedy sketch series Mr. Show into a full-length feature with Run Ronnie Run!. Ronnie Dobbs (Cross) becomes a media celebrity when he becomes the star of his own show ("Ronnie Dobbs Gets Arrested"). On this premise, the writers (and director Troy Miller) hang a series of pop culture spoofs. Among the targets are Mandy Patinkin, the television series Cops, and Survivor. South Park creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker make a cameo appearance. ~ Perry Seibert, All Movie Guide

What's a middle-aged woman to do when her husband walks out on her and her favorite pop star is murdered by a serial killer? Writer/director P.J. Hogan explores this and many other pressing questions in Unconditional Love, a comic murder-mystery he devised with his wife and co-screenwriter, Jocelyn Moorhouse. Their heroine, Grace Beasly (Kathy Bates), finds her placid Midwestern life turned upside down after she loses both of the aforementioned men in her life: her husband (Dan Aykroyd) and the Tom Jones-like, Welsh singing star Victor Fox (Jonathan Pryce), whom she unabashedly worships. After Fox's death, Grace impetuously flies to England for his funeral. Paying an uninvited visit to his countryside estate, she discovers Dirk Simpson (Rupert Everett), Fox's longtime, secret live-in lover, who's also in a state of shock following the senseless murder. Together, the two team up, traveling back to the Windy City to find the infamous "Crossbow Killer" who took Fox's life. After receiving a fall 2002 release in the U.K., Unconditional Love had its U.S. premiere on the Starz network in August 2003. ~ Michael Hastings, All Movie Guide

A national health care crisis in the United States yields this tense drama from screenwriter James Kearns and director Nick Cassavetes, who experienced a real-life dilemma with his daughter's congenital heart disease that mirrors the one in this film. Denzel Washington stars as John Q. Archibald, a factory worker facing financial hardship as a result of reduced hours in his workplace. When his young son, Michael (Daniel E. Smith), is stricken during a baseball game, John and his wife, Denise (Kimberly Elise), discover that their child is in need of an emergency heart transplant. Although the Archibalds have health insurance, they are informed by hospital administrator Rebecca Payne (Anne Heche) that their policy doesn't cover such an expensive procedure. Unable to raise the money himself, John persuades the hospital's compassionate cardiac surgeon, Dr. Raymond Turner (James Woods), to waive his lofty fee, but is still left with too much of a financial burden to bear. With no recourse but to take his son home to die, John snaps and holds the staff and patients of the hospital's emergency room hostage at gunpoint. John is soon a media hero, the focus of intense news coverage, even as police chief Gus Monroe (Ray Liotta) and hostage negotiator Frank Grimes (Robert Duvall) try to resolve the situation before it leads to bloodshed. ~ Karl Williams, All Movie Guide

A surprise box-office smash spawns this inevitably action-packed buddy comedy follow-up that reunites director Brett Ratner with stars Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker. Chan is Chief Inspector Lee of the Royal Hong Kong Police, who travels back to China with his American colleague, Los Angeles detective James Carter (Tucker). The men intend to take some vacation time but are quickly pulled into the case of two murdered U.S. customs agents, who were investigating an illegal counterfeiting scam involving Ricky Tan (John Lone), one of the most powerful Triad gangsters in Asia and an old enemy of Lee's. Lee and Carter are soon embroiled in a dangerous mystery that also involves a sexy secret-service agent (Roselyn Sanchez), a billionaire hotel owner (Alan King), a dangerous femme fatale (Zhang Ziyi) and a finale set in a lavish Las Vegas casino. ~ Karl Williams, All Movie Guide

This long-delayed romantic comedy from director Peter Chelsom stars Warren Beatty as a wealthy New York architect, Porter Stoddard. The revelation that his best friend Griffin (Garry Shandling) is cheating on his wife Mona (Goldie Hawn) leads to a mid-life crisis of sorts for Porter, jeopardizing his marriage to Ellie (Diane Keaton). When Mona leaves Griffin for her family's antebellum home in Mississippi, Porter accompanies her to lend his professional assistance in designing some home improvements and ends up entangled in a romantic assignation with his best friend's estranged wife. He then embarks on a series of other illicit, comical affairs. Among Porter's conquests are a cellist, Alex (Nastassja Kinski), the beautiful Eugenie (Andie MacDowell), and a Halloween reveler named Auburn (Jenna Elfman). He also runs afoul of Eugenie's overprotective father (Charlton Heston), who's armed with a shotgun and disturbingly unable to view his daughter as an adult. Town & Country (2001) is based on a script co-written by Buck Henry. ~ Karl Williams, All Movie Guide