Isabel Dean

Rough Cut -- Documentary or Narrative? Film School or Real Life? Tom (and the audience) needs to figure this out.

The small town of Junction is the proud home of “The World’s Largest Stool.” John Stevens, a doctoral candidate in roadside attractions, travels to Junction, anxious to authenticate the stool as a true piece of art. Unbeknownst to John, there has been an act of vandalism against the statue of the town’s founder, and Curtis Gorfurter, Junction’s police chief, has concluded it must be the work of a terrorist. John drops off pictures of the stool in town for development and, wishing to have them enlarged, leaves a note, “BLOW UP.” To Chief Gorfurter this can only mean that the terrorist’s target is the stool. The Chief enacts the Junction Freedom Act and institutes a town color alert, instantly raising it from brick to tangerine. Soon, the Chief, John and the Chief’s sexually frustrated girlfriend are caught in a game where common sense has taken a holiday. Played with all seriousness and a caustic dead pan humor, director Jay Martel’s Terrorists offers a biting satire on fear gone berserk. While laugh out loud funny, it is also a serious statement on how hysteria can take away our civil liberties, even with the best of motives. A serious comedy about life in post-9/11 America.

Academy Award-winner Sean Connery ("Rising Sun," "The Hunt for Red October") stars in Fred Zinnemann's ("Julia," "High Noon") haunting tale of incestuous love set against a magnificent background of the Swiss Alps. Judith Crist writes that "Zinnemann has provided Sean Connery with one of his finest roles, and introduced to us a tantalizing new actress, Betsy Brantley."

This sophisticated comedy caper centers around Burt Reynolds as a gentleman thief. He comes out of semi-retirement to plan a spectacular heist of $30 million in uncut diamonds. Reynolds teams with beautiful and mysterious Lesly-Anne Down in and effort to outwit Scotland Yard inspector David Niven, whose great ambition is to trap the elusive jewel thief. Glamorous locations in and around London add to the texture of this immensely enjoyable film.