Starring: Jack Nicholson, Glenn Close, Annette Bening, Pierce Brosnan, Danny DeVito, Martin Short, Sarah Jessica Parker, Michael J. Fox

What should you do when Martians tell citizens of Earth that they “come in peace”? Don’t believe them! Tim Burton’s hilariously original Mars Attacks! features an all-star cast who either help fight against the nearly unbeatable aliens or succumb to their irresistible (and sometimes sexy) powers. All the world is at risk from these cruelly comedic Martians and the United States must stand at the forefront in this battle as well as help rebuild a nation when the attack is over! And this includes everyone from young teenagers, a scientist, the president and Tom Jones. Isn’t America grand?!

Starring: Kurt Russell, Dennis Dun, James Hong, Kim Cattrall

All aboard the Porkchop Express! American truck driver Jack Burton enters into a whole different world when he picks up his pal’s Wang Chi’s fiancee from the airport. Bubbling up from the depths of Chinatown is the evil and body-less Lo Pan who must marry a girl with emerald green eyes in order to regain his form…and guess who has green eyes? Thus commences an epic mystical underworld battle between good and evil complete with some of the best lines in film…

When some wild-eyed, eight-foot-tall maniac grabs your neck, taps the back of your favorite head up against the barroom wall, and he looks you crooked in the eye and he asks you if ya paid your dues, you just stare that big sucker right back in the eye, and you remember what ol’ Jack Burton always says at a time like that: “Have ya paid your dues, Jack?” “Yessir, the check is in the mail.”

Starring: Sandra Bullock, George Clooney, Ed Harris

Sandra Bullock plays Dr. Ryan Stone, a brilliant medical engineer on her first shuttle mission, with veteran astronaut Matt Kowalsky (George Clooney) in command of his last flight before retiring. But on a seemingly routine spacewalk, disaster strikes. The shuttle is destroyed, leaving Stone and Kowalsky completely alone—tethered to nothing but each other and spiraling out into the blackness.

The deafening silence tells them they have lost any link to Earth…and any chance for rescue. As fear turns to panic, every gulp of air eats away at what little oxygen is left. But the only way home may be to go further out into the terrifying expanse of space.

Starring: Naomi Watts, Martin Henderson, David Dorfman, Brian Cox, Jane Alexander, Lindsay Frost

A year after her breakthrough performance in Mulholland Drive, Naomi Watts elevated this remake of the 1998 Japanese horror movie Ringu with a committed performance as the journalist aunt seeking answers after the mysterious and horrible death of her niece. Seattle is the gloomy backdrop and the color palette works mostly in grays and blacks, effectively creating an unsettling atmosphere and showing restraint from the usual Hollywood glitzing of the sparse original. There is plenty to captivate the eye – creepy kid drawings, troubled horses, and even a bit of that signature Japanese menacing long black hair. If there was any warning to be heeded from how video infects our brains, in this age of YouTube and TikTok it seems rather quaint that one passed-around VHS could do that kind of damage.

Starring: Nicolas Cage, Holly Hunter, John Goodman, Trey Wilson

Raising Arizona is one of the Coen Brothers’ most beloved films and with good reason: it’s perfect combination of comedy and strangeness make it enduring unique. Here a young Nicolas Cage plays an ex-con who is hell bent on making his policewoman wife (Holly Hunter) happy but procuring her a baby when they’re unable to conceive. But baby-rearing sure isn’t easy when that baby is stolen from the wealthiest couple in the state and everyone they know, plus a maniacal bounty-hunter, aim to use little Nathan Junior for their own financial gain. Doesn’t get much better.

Starring: Chevy Chase, Beverly D’Angelo, Randy Quaid, Juliette Lewis, Johnny Galecki

Bad luck seems to follow Clark Griswold and his family no matter where they go or what they do. The perpetual optimist, our dear Clark (don’t you just love the young Chevy Chase?) tries to make the holidays a special family event by chopping down the biggest tree in the forest, hanging a million Christmas lights, and dealing with his obnoxious visiting family members. He does this all while banking on his holiday bonus – but will it come? National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, the third installment of the National Lampoon Vacation film series, was written by the beloved John Hughes.

Starring: Fred Willard, Eugene Levy, Catherine O’Hara, Jennifer Coolidge, Parker Posey, Michael McKean, John Michael Higgins, Christopher Guest

Mostly improvised, Best in Show is full of quotables by the links of Catherine O’Hara, Eugene Levy and Jennifer Coolidge (“we can talk or not talk for hours”) as the dirty politics of the dog show circuit comically play out. Whether a rich trophy wife, a country fisherman, a yuppie couple, a gay couple, and your average couple, these people are obsessed with the relationships with their best friends… and winning. To quote Fred Willard, “To think in some countries these dogs are eaten.”

Starring: Bruce Willis, Gary Oldman, Ian Holm, Milla Jovovich, Chris Tucker, Luke Perry

Luc Besson’s Fifth Element is an over-the-top space adventure that straddles comedy and action. It’s the twenty-third century and Korben Dallas (Bruce Willis) is a cabbie in a colorfully futuristic New York who, as fate would have it, has the lovely orange-haired Leeloo (Milla Jovovich) land on his car one afternoon. But Leeloo has some troubles, she was escaping from a laboratory who was trying to insert DNA from the recently deceased Fifth Element who, you know, comes to Earth every five thousand years to protect humans. So you can imagine what happens next: space travel, singing aliens, martial arts and two lovers saving the world.

Starring: George Clooney, John Turturro, Tim Blake Nelson, John Goodman, Holly Hunter, Chris Thomas King

Set in the depression-era deep south and loosely based on Homer’s The Odyssey, O’Brother Where Art Thou? (written, directed, and produced by Joel and Ethan Coen!) is an intelligent comedy about one man’s journey to becoming “bona fide”. Starring George Clooney as the cunning Ulysses Everett McGill and his two convict cohorts Peter (John Turturro) and Delmar (Tim Blake Nelson), the three escape the chain gang to locate the 1.2 million dollars Everett knows is waiting for him. Along the way they encounter the soothsayer, the sirens, and the devil as well as a cyclops, George “Baby Face” Nelson, and the KKK. The trio even cuts a hit record as the “Soggy Bottom Boys” on their way to the treasure they seek…and the treasure they find.

Starring: Kyle MacLachlan, Sting, Francesca Annis, Max von Sydow, Sean Young, Virginia Madsen, José Ferrer

Come celebrate the 40th anniversary of one of the wildest blockbusters ever committed to celluloid! Author Max Evry will be on hand to intro the film and sell/sign copies of his book A Masterpiece in Disarray.

David Lynch brought Frank Herbert’s wildly popular science-fiction novel Dune to the big screen in 1984 and it’s been a trip-tastic go-to-movie ever since. Set in the year 10,191 when the universe is dependent on a spice called Melange that can extend life and can fold time, a Duke’s son (Kyle MacLachlan) leads the enslaved desert warriors on the spice-producing planet Arrakis in an epic battle with the evil Emperor. In the tradition of futuristic space worlds like Star Wars and The Matrix, Dune is about a young man deemed the messiah rising up and trying to make things better for the people. Time, space, telepathy, monsters, madness, love, and righteousness – long live the fighters!