Feb 9 2001 HANNIBAL opens. Dir. Ridley Scott. Box office busting sequel to 1991's Silence of the Lambs finds Anthony Hopkins' cannabalistic serial killer hiding out in Florence with the FBI (Julianne Moore subbing for Jodie Foster) & one of his surviving victims hot on his trail.

Feb 9 1990 HARD TO KILL opens. Dir. Bruce Malmuth. Like his debut Above The Law in 1988, Steven Seagal's 2nd outing is a text-book example of the kind of proficient, bone crunching, cops & crims action vehicle that was once a staple of every grindhouses' repertoire.

Feb 9 1979 HARDCORE opens in NY. Dir. Paul Schrader. George C. Scott is grimly compelling as midwestern businessman who gets his strict Calvinist convictions compromised when he embarks on an obsessive trawl thru LA's flesh & porn parlours in search of his runaway daughter.

Feb 9 1977 FUN WITH DICK AND JANE opens. Dir. Ted Kotcheff. Faced with mounting debt after the husband loses his job, an upscale LA couple engage in some selective robbery to make ends meet. George Segal & Jane Fonda work hard to keep the broad rom-com inanities bubbling.

Feb 9 1978 THE WARRIORS opens. Dir. Walter Hill reaches for Arthurian metaphors in powerhouse urban epic following a framed-for-murder NYC street gang's desperate, all-night, against-the-odds, cross-city battle to reach the sanctuary of their Coney Island home turf. A classic.

Feb 9 1977 TWILIGHT'S LAST GLEAMING opens. Dir. Robert Aldrich. Burt Lancaster as renegade US general escapes from prison & seizes control of Montana nuclear missile silo, demanding POTUS make public secret Vietnam war docs. Explosive set pieces gamely fuel far-fetched premise.

Feb 8 1991 ROSENCRANTZ & GUILDENSTERN ARE DEAD opens. Tom Stoppard directs Gary Oldman & Tim Roth in a very stagebound adapt. of his absurdist meta-theatrical play wherein Shakespeare’s Hamlet is viewed from the vantage point of the play's 2 clueless subsidiary characters.

Feb 8 2008 IN BRUGES opens. Dir. Martin McDonagh. Superb, darkly comic, Pinteresque crime caper follows 2 Irish hitmen - Brendan Gleeson's cultured older pro & Colin Farrell's young loose cannon - lying low in titular Belgian city awaiting instructions from London-based boss.

Feb 8 2002 MONSTER'S BALL opens. Dir. Marc Forster. Bigoted prison guard forms uneasy friendship with the wife of a recently executed death row inmate. Billy Bob Thornton & Oscar-winning Halle Berry galvanize persuasive, meditative, racially charged portrait of 2 broken people.

Feb 8 1991 LA STORY opens. Dir. Mick Jackson. Steve Martin's absurdist, sharp witted, affectionate valentine to LA centering on a waggish, unhappy TV weather man who goes looking for his romantic silver lining in a city where even the electronic freeway signs have an opinion.

Feb 8 1980 THE LAST MARRIED COUPLE IN AMERICA opens. Dir. Gilbert Cates. Dispiriting, numbingly formulaic rom-com with George Segal & Natalie Wood as well-off LA couple who begin to question their happily married life when all their friends start heading for the divorce court.

Feb 8 1970 THE MOLLY MAGUIRES opens in NY. Dir. Martin Ritt. In 1876 Pennsylvania, a Pinkerton detective infiltrates a secret guerilla group of exploited Irish immigrant miners. Impassioned historical drama dies at box office despite solid work from Sean Connery & Richard Harris.

Feb 8 1976 TAXI DRIVER opens. Dir. Martin Scorsese's dark, disturbing study in alienation & disenfranchisement with Robert De Niro as NYC taxi-driving ex-Marine steering his simmering PTSD afflicted frustrations & avenging angel delusions toward a violent & bloody reckoning.

Feb 8 1968 PLANET OF THE APES opens in NY. Dir. Frankin J. Schaffner. After 50 years of sequels, remakes & reboots, this original with Charlton Heston still holds pride of place in cinema's pantheon of classic sci-fi, with the jaw-dropping, surprise ending now the stuff of legend.

Feb 7 1986 HANNAH AND HER SISTERS opens. Dir. Woody Allen’s smart, multi-character, 3 arc Bergmanesque tapestry, set over 12 months, examines 3 disaffected sisters' romantic entanglements with their respective husbands & lovers. Michael Caine & Diane Wiest win Best Actor Oscars.

Feb 7 1997 DANTE'S PEAK opens. Dir. Roger Donaldson. 1st of the year's 2 volcano disaster movies with newly minted 007 Pierce Brosnan as volcanologist outrunning boiling lava streams & fire balls in WA hamlet. Serviceable, efficiently assembled formulaic multiplex fodder.

Feb 7 1992 MEDICINE MAN opens. Dr. John McTiernan. Sean Connery's obstreperous biochemist searching for cancer cure in Amazon rainforest & Lorraine Bracco's visiting Big Pharma oversight exec. struggle to align their wisecracking banter with film's agitprop eco imperatives.

Feb 7 1986 F/X opens. Dir. Robert Mandel. Scrappy, entertaining, mid-'80s conspiracy caper with Aussie Bryan Brown as pre-CGI movie special effects wiz forced to exploit his bag of tricks after dirty Feds frame him for murder. Rumpled cop Brian Dennehy lends a hand.

Feb 7 1974 BLAZING SADDLES opens. Dir. Mel Brooks' hit & miss (now dated) fourth wall breaking, box office busting Western satire metaphorically pummels racial discrimination & prejudice with a barrage of mugging & smirking juvenilia that grows more puerile by the minute.

Feb 6 1942 SULLIVAN’S TRAVELS opens. Dir Preston Sturges witty, slapsticky, sobering rebuff of the “message” movie with Joel McCrea as H’wood comedy dir. who discovers the true value of laughter after he decides to live the life of a hobo as research for his next serious film.

Feb 6 2015 JUPITER ASCENDING opens. Directors Lana & Andy Wachowski tarnish their Matrix cred. & stars Channing Tatum & Mila Kunis their reputations in an eye-glazing, obscenely expensive, CGI-ed to the hilt interplanetary space opera bereft of style, wit & imagination.

Feb 6 2004 MIRACLE opens. Dir. Gavin O'Connor. Kurt Russell's head coach is an emotional force of nature in a winning, unashamedly flag-waving sports drama recounting the US men's hockey team's against-the-odds gold medal victory against the Soviets at the 1980 Winter Olympics.

Feb 6 1981 FORT APACHE, THE BRONX opens. Dir. Daniel Petrie. Paul Newman shines in gritty, vignette-driven, Hill Street Blues-like day-in-the-life police drama following a jaded veteran cop struggling to hold the thin blue line in one of NYC's toughest, crime ravaged precincts.

Feb 6 1974 ZARDOZ opens in NY & LA. Dir. John Boorman's painfully self-important, endlessly pretentious folie de grandeur with a breech-clothed Sean Connery as a noble "brutal" warrior straddling a post-apocalyptic 2293 populated by starving primitives & immortal "eternals".

Feb 6 1921 THE KID opens. Charlie Chaplin's 1st full-length (68 mins) silent movie finds his iconic Tramp character fighting to maintain guardianship of abandoned child, played by precocious young Jackie Coogan. Warmly sentimental blend of pathos & slapstick breaks BO records.

Feb 5 1993 THE VANISHING opens. Dutch dir. George Sluizer trashes his intelligent skin crawling 1988 thriller with a schematic, unconvincing H’wood remake. Jeff Bridges’ creepy kidnapper & Kiefer Sutherland’s distraught boyfriend struggle to match the original’s sense of dread.

Feb 5 1999 PAYBACK opens. Dir. Brian Helgeland. Lean, muscular, neo noirish update of Point Blank with ice cool Mel Gibson stepping into Lee Marvin's big shoes as double crossed career thief methodically cutting a deadly swath thru Mob hierachy in search of his heist cut.

Feb 5 1988 THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF BEING opens. Dir. Philip Kaufman. Richly textured, faithful adapt. of Milan Kundera's voyeuristically eroticized tale of loyalty & betrayal centering on womanizing doctor's relationship with 2 sensuous women during the Prague spring of '68.

Feb 5 1988 COP opens in NY. Dir. James B. Harris. A wired, intense James Woods stimulates formulaic B-movie tropes in violent, James Ellroy sourced police procedural focusing on an abrasive, hard boiled, rule-bending LAPD cop's obsessive search for a serial killer.

Feb 5 1975 REPORT TO THE COMMISSIONER opens in NY. Dir. Milton Katselas. Combustible, little-seen policier stained with Serpico's NYC 70s grit & grime feat. Michael Moriarty as rookie cop caught in conspiratorial shitstorm following killing of undercover cop. With Yaphet Kotto.

Feb 5 1969 THE WRECKING CREW opens. Dir. Phil Karlson. 4th & final film in the Bond spoofing Matt Helm series with Dean Martin perfunctorily mugging his way thru inept Denmark-set spy caper involving stolen gold bullion. Sharon Tate's final appearance before her Manson murder.

Feb 5 1956 INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS, director Don Siegel's micro-budgeted, noir-styled 50s cult classic (& quasi political allegory) is released in limited theaters on a double bill with The Atomic Man. Kevin McCarthy stars. Philip Kaufman directs excellent remake in 1978.

Feb 4 1970 THE HONEYMOON KILLERS opens. With its crisp B&W photography, rudimentary sound and stark natural lighting writer/director Leonard Kastle’s laudable sole directing gig, chronicling a tawdry lovebird couple’s late 1940s murder spree, makes for a worthy cult classic.

Feb 4 2000 GUN SHY opens. Dir.Eric Blakeney. Light & breezy, little seen gangster farce with a very funny Liam Neeson as stressed out undercover DEA agent juggling loopy therapy sessions whilst liaising with Mafia & Columbian drug kingpins. Kudos to scene-stealing Oliver Platt.

Feb 4 1994 ACE VENTURA: PET DETECTIVE opens. Dir. Tom Shadyac. Rubber-limbed Jim Carrey makes memorable star-making debut with inspired, riotous exercise in juvenile lunacy centering on an animal loving PI hot on the trail of the abducted dolphin mascot of Miama football team.

Feb 4 1993 ROMEO IS BLEEDING opens. Dir.Peter Medak. Crooked, duplicitous cop falls genitals deep for the sultry Russian killer his Mob minders have hired him to eliminate. A feverish Gary Oldman & Lena Olin steam it up in overwrought, brutally efficient neo-noir crime thriller.

Feb 4 1976 NEXT STOP, GREENWICH VILLAGE opens. Dir. Paul Mazursky's captivating nostalgic roman a clef centering on young Brooklyn lad who sets out to chase his acting dreams on the bohemian streets of Greenwich Village circa 1953. Memorable star turn from the late Lenny Baker.

Feb 4 1970 PATTON opens in NY. Dir. Franklin J. Schaffner. George C. Scott delivers towering, Oscar-winning tour-de-force in epic Francis Ford Coppola co-scripted bio-pic/character study of WW2's controversial "blood & guts" 4 star general. All up, film wins 7 Oscars.

Feb 3 1971 DOCTOR’S WIVES opens. Dir. George Schaefer. A bunch of “name” stars led by Gene Hackman & Dyan Cannon go paycheck slumming in a trashy but not entirely without merit soap opera following the dysfunctional misfortunes of a group rich doctors & their neglected wives.

Feb 3 2006 WHEN A STRANGER CALLS opens. Dir. Simon West. Loose, PG rated remake jettisons most of original's (1979) claustrophobic atmospherics forcing Camilla Belle's imperiled babysitter & her phone stalking psycho to pad out the inconsequential theatrics to a bare 87 mins.

Feb 3 1995 IN THE MOUTH OF MADNESS opens. Dir. John Carpenter concludes his Apocalypse Trilogy with a Lovecraft /Stephen King horror riff feat. Sam Neill as insurance investigator whose search for a missing horror author turns into a macabre journey to the other side of insanity.

Feb 3 1989 HER ALIBI opens. Dir. Bruce Beresford. Occasionally diverting rom-com thriller with a post Magnum Tom Selleck as a blocked mystery novelist who gets more inspiration than he bargained for when he conjures up a false alibi for an attractive Romanian accused of murder.

Feb 3 1960 LA DOLCE VITA prem. in Rome. Federico Fellini's magnum opus follows Marcello Mastroianni's jaded, celebrity-focused tabloid reporter on a wayward, week-long, soul-searching immersion in the ostensibly sweet but starkly empty lives of Rome's rich & famous.

Feb 2 1996 WHITE SQUALL opens. Dir. Ridley Scott. Jeff Bridges leads young cast in fact-based nautical rites of passage drama recounting the 1960 storm related sinking of a teenage-crewed sailing school brigadine. Film's center piece is a stunning 16 min. storm sequence.

Feb 2 1975 RAFFERTY AND THE GOLD DUST TWINS opens. Dir. Dick Richards. Alan Arkin as dour, unfulfilled working stiff who allows himself to be kidnapped by a pair aimless drifters. Fun, frivolous, aimably offbeat & episodic road movie with Sally Kellerman & MacKenzie Phillips.

Feb 2 1979 THE FIRST GREAT TRAIN ROBBERY opens. Dir. Michael Crichton. In Victorian England 1855 a rascally con-man & an oddball safecracker conspire to heist a gold shipment from a London train. Wonderfully entertaining fact-based caper with Sean Connery & Donald Sutherland.

Feb 2 1967 NIGHT OF THE GENERALS opens in NY. Dir. Anatole Litvak. A serial killer is on the loose in Nazi-occupied Warsaw & Paris, & 3 German generals emerge as prime suspects. Handsomely mounted, endlessly fascinating military thriller reuniting Peter O'Toole & Omar Sharif.

Feb 1 1973 LAST TANGO IN PARIS opens in NY. Dir. Bernado Bertolucci's provocative, polarising & prosecuted cause celebre feat. Marlon Brando as despondent widower who initiates an anonymous sexual relationship with Maria Shneider's young Parisian drifter. Film is huge BO hit.

Feb 1 1978 ROMAN POLANSKI, just hours before his sentencing on charges of sexual assault of a minor, flees the US on night flight to London. The following day he flies to Paris where, as a French citzen, he is able to avoid extradition. He remains a fugitive from US justice.

Feb 1 1961 THE MISFITS opens. Dir. John Huston. Haunting, melancholic rumination on disillusion & disempowerment with Marilyn Monroe as fragile divorcee who falls in with Clark Gable's ageing cowboy & Montgomery Clift's laconic rodeo rider roping wild Mustangs in Nevada desert.