Starring: Fran Drescher, Timothy Dalton, Ian McNeice, Patrick Malahide, Lisa Jakub, Michael Lerner
Over twenty five years before she would heroically lead the charge for the SAG strike, Fran Drescher starred as Joy Miller, a beautician who accidentally lands a gig in a made-up Eastern European country as a teacher for the dictator’s children. There her New Yorker brassiness clashes with the gruff leader Boris Pochenko (Timothy Dalton), who finds her meddling with the hardworking citizens (she urges them to unionize!) and her indulgence of his kids to be disruptive to his authoritarian agenda.
Coiffed and colorfully dressed not unlike her famed TV persona Fran Fine in The Nanny, Drescher is effectively hilarious, making The Beautician and the Beast a delightfully irreverent 90s version of The Sound of Music. This movie is way better than it has any right to be, and ages rather well!
Starring: Jack Black, Viola Davis, Awkwafina, Dustin Hoffman, James Hong, Bryan Cranston
After three death-defying adventures defeating world-class villains with his unmatched courage and mad martial arts skills, Po, the Dragon Warrior (Jack Black), is called upon by destiny to… give it a rest already. More specifically, he’s tapped to become the Spiritual Leader of the Valley of Peace. That poses a couple of obvious problems. First, Po knows as much about spiritual leadership as he does about the paleo diet, and second, he needs to quickly find and train a new Dragon Warrior before he can assume his new lofty position. Even worse, there’s been a recent sighting of a wicked, powerful sorceress, Chameleon (Viola Davis), a tiny lizard who can shapeshift into any creature, large or small. And Chameleon has her greedy, beady little eyes on Po’s Staff of Wisdom, which would give her the power to re-summon all the master villains whom Po has vanquished to the spirit realm. So, Po’s going to need some help. He finds it (kinda?) in the form of crafty, quick-witted thief Zhen (Awkwafina), a corsac fox who really gets under Po’s fur but whose skills will prove invaluable. In their quest to protect the Valley of Peace from Chameleon’s reptilian claws, this comedic odd-couple duo will have to work together. In the process, Po will discover that heroes can be found in the most unexpected places.
Starring: Rosalind Russell, Hayley Mills, June Harding, Binnie Barnes, Mary Wickes, Gypsy Rose Lee
Shedding her good-girl persona in her first non-Disney role, Hayley Mills stars as Mary Clancy, a cigarette smoking prankster goofing her way through Catholic school. She meets her match in the Mother Superior (an anti-Auntie Mame Rosalind Russell), who is not one to suffer fools, meting out reasonable punishment with a sly grin.
The last film directed by Ida Lupino, The Trouble with Angels is a rare film portraying an almost exclusively female world in which friendship is tantamount, and mischievous girls are not seen as needing their spirits broken.
Starring: Macaulay Culkin, Joe Pesci, Daniel Stern, Catherine O’Hara, John Heard
After snarky youth Kevin McCallister (Macaulay Culkin) loses track of his father at the airport, he mistakenly gets on a plane headed for New York City — while the rest of the McCallisters fly to Florida. Now alone in the Big Apple, Kevin cons his way into a room at the Plaza Hotel and begins his usual antics. But when Kevin discovers that the Sticky Bandits (Joe Pesci, Daniel Stern) are on the loose, he struggles to stop them from robbing an elderly man’s toy store just before Christmas.
Starring: Melanie Mayron, Anita Skinner, Eli Wallach, Christopher Guest, Bob Balaban
A photographer and her best friend are roommates. She is stuck with small-change shooting jobs and dreams of success. When her roommate decides to get married and leave, she feels hurt and has to learn how to deal with living alone.
Starring: Marlon Brando, Vivien Leigh, Kim Hunter, Karl Malden, Rudy Bond
Based on the play by Tennessee Williams, this renowned drama follows troubled former schoolteacher Blanche DuBois (Vivien Leigh) as she leaves small-town Mississippi and moves in with her sister, Stella Kowalski (Kim Hunter), and her husband, Stanley (Marlon Brando), in New Orleans. Blanche’s flirtatious Southern-belle presence causes problems for Stella and Stanley, who already have a volatile relationship, leading to even greater conflict in the Kowalski household.
Starring: Kumail Nanjiani, Elizabeth Banks, Caspar Jennings, Tresi Gazal, Awkwafina, Carol Kane
This holiday season, Illumination, creators of the blockbuster Minions, Despicable Me, Sing and The Secret Life of Pets comedies, invites you to take flight into the thrill of the unknown with a funny, feathered family vacation like no other in the action-packed new original comedy, Migration.
Starring: Harrison Ford, Helen Mirren, River Phoenix
A brilliant but unstable inventor and his family create what they hope will be their Utopia in Central America.
Starring: Chris Pine, Ariana DeBose, Alan Tudyk
In Wish, Asha, a sharp-witted idealist, makes a wish so powerful that it is answered by a cosmic force–a little ball of boundless energy called Star. Together, Asha and Star confront a most formidable foe–the ruler of Rosas, King Magnifico–to save her community and prove that when the will of one courageous human connects with the magic of the stars, wondrous things can happen.
Starring: James Stewart, Grace Kelly, Wendell Corey, Raymond Burr, Thelma Ritter
A newspaper photographer with a broken leg passes time recuperating by observing his neighbors through his window. He sees what he believes to be a murder, and decides to solve the crime himself. With the help of his nurse and wife, he tries to catch the murderer without being killed himself.
