A beautiful woman (Tippi Hedren, aka Melanie Griffith's mom) has a chance meeting with an attractive fellow (Rod Taylor) and later decides to visit him unannounced in his quaint island town bearing a gift of two lovebirds in a cage. On the way a seagull flies into her, cutting her with its beak. She arrives where Taylor lives with his kid sister and bitter widowed mother. Staying for dinner, she's there when a whole flock of starlings fly down the chimney. Without spoiling much of the story, eventually the bird attacks become deadly and rather spectacular in some of the most famous sequences in film history, including the crows assembling on the jungle gym and the fiery attack on the gas station.

Rachel Carson's influential book Silent Spring came out in 1962, warning that the insecticide DDT was killing millions of birds, so Hitch peddled some promotional BS describing THE BIRDS is an environmental statement. THE BIRDS is about a lot of things, but the environment isn’t one of them…

It’s essentially a poltergeist movie. The murderous birds are a manifestation of Hedren's sexual desires and other base passions. Some spoilers in the following discussion: The opening shot is some lads wolf-whistling as shapely Hedren passes. When she turns around with a flash of curious pride the park across the street erupts with birds. She then meets Taylor and is some immediately attracted to him she makes a fool of herself pretending to be a shop-girl at a pet shop. (The birds in the shop go wild when she enters and never shut up.) She cements the motif when she buys the pair of lovebirds. The pair of caged lovebirds are the wholesome aspect of her desire for Taylor and even when all other birds go mad we’re explicitly reminded that “the love-birds never hurt anyone.” (Is their cage marriage?) Throughout the film the swarms of bad birds rise and fall like waves of passion, anger and jealousy. They build like sexual desire, burst into a few minutes of frenzied violence and then return to docility for a few hours until they’re ready to explode again. And look at how efficient they are... The birds keep she and Taylor together on the island. They even slaughter Hedren’s only romantic rival.

Another surreal motif involves Hedren progressively replaces her beau’s possessive mother, played by Jessica Tandy. Tandy looked almost exactly like an older version of Hedren. It’s a jarring resemblance, not an incidental coincidence. And the more she’s around Hedren, Tandy becomes less substantial. Bad enough that Hedren plans to steal Rod Taylor away, but little sister Cathy (Veronica Cartwright) also transfers her affection from her mother to Hedren almost on sight. When Tandy later fears for her daughter’s safety at school we might expect her to rush to her daughter’s aid, but instead she goes to bed and leaves the task to Hedren. (At Hedren's suggestion.) Then during a climactic bird attack Cartwright leaps into Hedren’s comforting arms while Tandy sits motionless, visually paired with the portrait of her dead husband. (At one point Rod Taylor appears startled by the tableau but then realizes there are more immediate concerns, like the birds pouring in the window.)

The final attack on Hedren in the attic is bizarre even by Hitchcock’s standards; more a consummation than an attack. As bloodied Hedren succumbs and slides to the floor her last utterance is an unmistakably sexual moan of, “Oh, Mitch…”

All this is my personal interpretation but I can’t take much credit for it because Hitchcock was not a subtle man. He would frequently have a character just stand up a say whatever the movie is about, in this case the hysterical woman at the diner who screams at the camera that Hedren’s a witch and points out that no birds acted up until Hedren arrived. (Watch Hedren’s reaction to the accusation!) The bird phenomenon is so intimately and obviously connected to Tippi Hedren that it’s the voice of reason at the diner (the old bird expert lady) that ends up seeming ridiculous. She talks to everyone like children, high-handedly explaining that birds are incapable of a massed attack on people and is promptly contradicted by events. (Note Hitchcock’s delight showing her chagrined expression while cowering on the floor with everyone else after the attack. Hitchcock disliked old women, interlopers and know-it-alls.)

Based on the best selling cult novel by Guy Burt. Four teenagers at a British private school arrange to play hooky from a school trip by spending the weekend in the depths of a sealed underground bomb shelter. All is well until they realize they cannot get out. The film's charm is that we do not know what tragic events really happened down there or why. We see the story ROSHAMON style in flshback versions of divergent stories told to the police and get a few good surprises along the way. "A disturbing roller coaster ride where truth and fiction become commodities in a bizarre adolescent prank gone wrong."

This suspenseful psychological thriller features hot young stars Thora Birch (GHOST WORLD, AMERICAN BEAUTY), Desmond Harrington (GHOST SHIP), and a hip, edgy cast! When Liz Dunn (Birch) and three of her prep school friends decide to bail on their scheduled weekend field trip and hide in a long-abandoned bomb shelter, they expect to party and hang out. They don't expect someone to lock them in! As anxious hours turn into desperate days, fear and insecurity erupt uncontrollably as their spontaneous adventure turns into a bloody fight for survival! Also starring Keira Knightley (PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: THE CURSE OF THE BLACK PEARL, BEND IT LIKE BECKHAM) and Embeth Davidtz (THE EMPEROR'S CLUB, BRIDGET JONES'S DIARY) – you'll find yourself bolted to your seat as the electrifying tale unfolds through Liz's tormented eyes!

The Plot: Sleazy divorce detective Hammer picks up a woman wearing nothing but a raincoat (Cloris Leachman) who intimates that her life is in danger. She's right! They're kidnapped, and goons torture the girl to death, then send she and Hammer over a cliff in his car. He miraculously survives, and now he's committed to the case despite dire warnings from the FBI, the cops, and the crooks. He finds himself protector to the dead girl's room-mate; a very short-haired blonde (Gaby Rodgers) whose spacey voice emanates sex in a way we can't describe. Aldrich intended her to be carnal and alluring, but not beautiful, because no one in the film is beautiful. The entire cast is intentionally freakish (think Bruegel), with not enough make-up, and usually bathed in sweat.

The clues lead to a circle of suspiciously sophisticated people seeking a mysterious radioactive carton that may spell the end of existence. (Aldrich isn't subtle in identifying it as Pandora's box) The audience is always a step ahead of Hammer, who is cunning but stupid.

American critics were as clueless as Hammer, but the French avant-garde got it right away, with Cahiers du cinéma then-critic François Truffaut declaring Aldrich the revelation of 1955. The original ending sequence is restored here, and it's quite a different ending than older TV prints.

The best post WWII art substitutes ambiguity for subtlety; recoiling from propaganda while embracing the raw power of media. KISS is anything but subtle, yet can be read as right-wing or left-wing or no-wing, depending on one's initial assumptions – the world is so hostile to Hammer's individualism that perhaps he's right to be hostile and paranoid. From the opening frame every character he meets offers a scathing spoken critique of him, often as if he wasn't even there, like he's a lab rat.

This Greek chorus of condemnation is only one quirky classical evocation in a script crammed with literary and mythological allusions that lie outside Hammer's grasp. He cannot relate to women, to authority, or to educated people, but he's a hero to the many down-trodden foreigners he encounters, every one of whom is an outrageous insulting ethnic stereotype reminiscent of Chico Marx at his most tasteless. In this sense Hammer seems a colonial figure, unable to exist within his own culture and functional only when dealing with "inferiors."

Hammer considers himself to be the good guy, but is utterly amoral. He pimps his pathetic secretary (who loves him), delights in beating people much weaker than himself, and is ultimately at war with culture itself; destroying modern paintings and opera records, and hilariously suspecting that different people he's tailing are co-conspirators because they all listen to the classical music station… yet he's right, and the educated and cultured people are the ones flirting with destruction of the world! No easy answers.

With Sterling Hayden, Nina van Pallandt, Jim Bouton, Henry Gibson; look for a young Arnold Schwarzenegger. 113 min. Widescreen (Enhanced); Soundtracks: English Dolby Digital mono, French Dolby Digital mono; Subtitles: English, French, Spanish; featurettes; radio spots; theatrical trailers.

Alec Baldwin is fantastic as charismatic pure-sociopath Frederick J. Frenger Jr. who, when he comes to Miami, cannot even make it out of the airport without homicide. (He breaks a Hari Krishna's finger and the guy goes into shock and dies.) Frenger hooks up with naieve rookie prostitute Susie Waggoner (Jennifer Jason Leigh) and goes on a crime rampage posing as a cop.

A good, entertaining film directed by George Armitage who started out in the 1970s directing exploitation (Private Duty Nurses) but landed on his feet in the 1990s with MIAMI BLUES and GROSSE POINT BLANK.

"Brace yourself'this intoxicating cocktail with rum and cyanide (Time) is at once brutal, funny, unpredictable and a bit unhinged (Newsweek)! Fred Ward, Alec Baldwin and Jennifer Jason Leigh star in this offbeat black comedy about a murdering thief, his simple-minded wife and the denture-wearing cop closing in on his trail. Veteran criminal Junior Frenger (Baldwin) has moved to Miami to get a fresh start at robbing a whole new set of people. But when his streetwalker-gone-straight wife (Leigh) begins to suspect his criminal behavior, and an obsessed cop (Ward) begins to close in, Junior will need a lot more than luck and a bogus badge to escape a crossfire hotter than the barrel of a smoking gun!

"An Irish gangster (Albert Finney) and his trusted lieutenant (Gabriel Byrne) and counselor find their domination of the town threatened by an ambitious Italian underboss (Jon Polito). Just as this threat erupts, the two sever their friendship when they realize that they love the same woman (Marcia Gay Harden). When one joins ranks with the enemy, a bloody gang war erupts."

Starring Tom Cruise, Jon Voight, Emmanuelle Béart, Henry Czerny, Jean Reno, Ving Rhames, Kristin Scott-Thomas and Vanessa Redgrave.

For all Cruise's unlikability he has been good for movies. Ever since he started taking a direct interest in his films his projects are always better than average. He won't work with untalented directors. Only Spielberg, DePalma, Woo, Mann, etc..

I'll avoid recapping the story because synopsis would be full of spoilers (the twists start early and never stop) and the plot is primarily a framework for some of DePalma's best cinematic set pieces. (The earlier big sequence involving all the agents feels for all the world like the prom in CARRIE in the way events keep getting worse and envelop more people.) Screenplay by David Koepp and Robert Towne.