"The Skulls" (2000)

Starring Joshua Jackson, Paul Walker and Leslie Bibb
Written by John Pogue
Directed by Rob Cohen
Rated PG-13 - Language, sex, violence
Running Time: 107 Minutes
Trailer

Luke McNamara (Joshua Jackson) is a working-class orphan struggling to get through Ivy League college and then figure out a way to pay for law school.  He banks on being invited to join a secret society known as the Skulls in order to afford Harvard Law.  His best friends Will (Hill Harper) and Chloe (Leslie Bibb), whom Luke has a crush on, are not supportive of Luke's plan.

But Luke is offered membership in the Skulls, which he greedily accepts, putting him on the outs with his friends.  But within the organization, he makes new ones: Caleb Mandrake (Paul Walker), the cocky son of powerful Judge Litten Mandrake (Craig T. Nelson) the current chairman of the Skulls.  The Skulls are set up with a unique buddy system called "soul mates", and Luke and Caleb are partnered together.  Litten's soul mate, Senator Ames Levritt (William Petersen) takes a liking to Luke, and offers to mentor him in the ways of the Skulls.

Luke's life begins to turn around - he's pre-accepted to the law school of his choice, large sums of cash appear in his bank account, and he's given an expensive car to drive.  Not long after, Will is found dead of an apparent suicide, but the police learn that he was murdered and the suicide staged.  Luke discovers that Will was doing an expose of the Skulls for the student newspaper when he was killed, and comes to believe it it Caleb who is responsible, and decides he needs to take down the Skulls to get justice and to take his life back.

But the Skulls are an organization comprised of powerful men.  They control the school, the police, and everyone Luke might turn to for help will be in danger.  Who can he trust?  How can he gain leverage over the most powerful men in America, or perhaps the entire world?

"Swordfish" (2001)

Starring Hugh Jackman, John Travolta and Halle Berry
Written by Skip Woods
Directed by Dominic Sena
Rated R - Violence, nudity, drug use, sex, language
Running Time: 99 Minutes
Trailer

Oh, hackers... One day, Hollywood will figure out how to make what you do not look completely ridiculous.

Stanley Jobson (Hugh Jackman) is a former hacker who was caught by the FBI and as part of his sentence is never allowed to touch a computer again.  He works a crappy job hoping to one day get back custody of his young daughter Holly (Camryn Grimes) from her strung out, porn-star mother Melissa (Drea de Matteo).  One day, he's approached by a mysterious woman named Ginger (Halle Berry) with a job offer.  Promising him a hundred thousand dollars just to meet her employer, Ginger convinces Stanley to meet with the mysterious and dangerous Gabriel Shear (John Travolta).

Gabriel needs a hacker of the highest calibre to help him steal $9.5 billion in illegal funds from the United States government.  With this money, he tells Stanley, he will commit America to a war on terror the likes of which the world has never seen.  But hot on Gabriel's trail is FBI agent JT Roberts (Don Cheadle), the man who years earlier caught Stanley.

Trying to make enough money to save his daughter from a life of drugs and porn and keep himself out of jail, Stanley agrees to do the job for Gabriel, settling on a fee of $10 million.  But Stanley doesn't know who he can trust - not Ginger, who claims to be a DEA agent; not Roberts, who will likely send him back to jail; and certainly not Gabriel, who would just as soon kill him as soon as the job is finished.

And when Gabriel proves himself to be less a patriot and more a sadistic murderer, Stanley realizes he's in far, far over his head with no way out.

"Trespass" (2011)

Starring Nicolas Cage, Nicole Kidman and Ben Mendelsohn
Written by Eli Richbourg and Karl Gajdusek
Directed by Joel Schumacher
Rated R - Violence, language, drug use
Running Time: 91 Minutes
Trailer

So what's the deal with Nicolas Cage?  Is it really his money troubles that keep him bouncing from one terrible movie to another?

Kyle Miller (Nicolas Cage) is a slick diamond dealer, a middle-man for people looking to sell or purchase diamonds.  He lives at home in his incomplete mansion, which he's have trouble with the contractor to finish, with his lovely wife Sarah (Nicole Kidman) and teenage daughter Avery (Liana Liberto).  One evening, after Avery sneaks out to go to a party, some men come to the door posing as police officers to talk to the Millers about recent break-ins in the area.

Kyle lets them in, not knowing that these men are, in fact, robbers themselves. They grab Kyle and Sarah and bring them into Kyle's office where they attempt to coerce him into opening the safe, where they believe they will find a large cache of unsold diamonds.  Kyle says he can open the safe and give them the diamonds, if the men let his wife go safely, but then reveals that because the diamonds have been etched and their ownership registered with a national agency, they will be useless to the thieves because they can't be sold.

The stakes grow bigger when Avery returns home early from the party, however, giving the thieves another hostage to bargain with.  As Kyle does everything in his power to keep his family alive, the thieves grow more desperate as things begin to go wrong for them.  And Kyle begins to realize that his family may not be the only hostages, for one of the thieves reveals that he's being forced to rob from Kyle to save his own life.  But who can Kyle trust?  And how will any of them live through the night?

"Fear" (1996)

Starring Mark Wahlberg, Reese Witherspoon and William Petersen
Written by Christopher Crowe
Directed by James Foley
Rated R - Violence, language, sex, drug use
Running Time: 96 Minutes
Trailer

Good-girl Nicole Walker (Reese Witherspoon) spends much of her time dealing with her somewhat overbearing father Steven (William Petersen) and her step-mother Laura (Amy Brenneman) and hanging out with her best friends Gary (Todd Caldecott) and Margo (Alyssa Milano).  One night, Margo convinces her to go to a rave, where she meets David (Mark Wahlberg) a seemingly nice older guy who helps her out when the rave gets out of hand.

Soon enough, Nicole and David are dating.  Steven is wary of David, as fathers often can be, but everyone tells him to loosen up.  As their relationship deepens, David begins to push Nicole subtly, manipulating her.  Blind to his manipulations as negative, she initially goes along with it since it's all so exciting and new to her, and David seems so nice.

But David soon begins to show a darker side.  He assaults Gary when he sees Gary and Nicole share a hug outside of school, and gives Nicole a black eye.  Nicole covers it up with her parents, but decides not to see David again until he shows up at Margo's house and begs her forgiveness and for another chance, which she grants.  But by now, Steven has decided that David is not a good person, and will do whatever it takes to keep David from seeing her.

"Moonraker" (1979)

Starring Roger Moore, Richard Kiel and Michael Lonsdale
Written by Christopher Wood
Directed by Lewis Gilbert
Rated PG - Violence, language, sex
Running Time: 126 Minutes
Trailer

When an experimental space shuttle is stolen while being transported across the ocean, MI6 agent 007 James Bond (Roger Moore) is sent to the United States to investigate the manufacturer, Hugo Drax (Michael Lonsdale).  There, he meets Holly Goodhead (Lois Chiles), a beautiful scientist and undercover CIA agent.

Bond suspects that Drax is involved the theft of the shuttle, but can't prove it.  He begins to dig deeper into Drax's massive multinational corporation, and finds evidence that Drax may be manufacturing some kind of nerve gas.  He heads to Italy, where he finds Goodhead once more, and after surviving an encounter with the assassin known as Jaws (Richard Kiel), the two decide to team up and figure out exactly what Drax is up to.

Eventually, they find that Drax is creating a secret society in space and plans to wipe out all of humanity using his deadly nerve gas, and the survivors will be only those of his choosing to form a master race.  Bond and Goodhead must race against time, assassins, and Drax's henchmen to stop the gas from raining death upon the Earth.

"The Man with the Golden Gun" (1974)

Starring Roger Moore, Christopher Lee and Britt Ekland
Written by Richard Maibaum and Tom Mankiewicz
Directed by Guy Hamilton
Rated PG - Violence, sex
Running Time: 125 Minutes
Trailer

James Bond (Roger Moore) is relieved of duty when the British government learns he may be the target of a mysterious assassin named Scaramanga (Christopher Lee), whom no one has ever seen, and who kills his targets with a custom-made golden gun.  M (Bernard Lee) has received a golden bullet with "007" inscribed on it, and tells Bond he must abandon his mission to find a scientist named Gibson who has perfected a solar energy device which could solve the world's energy crisis.

But instead of laying low, Bond decides to track down Scaramanga himself, heading to Beirut where he finds one of Scaramanga's bullets which he then tracks to a gunmaker in Macau.  Bond meets Andrea Anders (Maud Adams), Scaramanga's mistress, who he forces to help him set up a chance to get at Scaramanga.  But Bond learns that Scaramanga is not after him at all, but after Gibson.

Teaming up with a Hong Kong agent named Hip (Soon-Tek Oh) and the beautiful MI6 agent Mary Goodnight (Britt Ekland), Bond must uncover Scaramanga's true plot to steal the solar energy device, and engage in a duel with the world's greatest assassin.

"Diamonds Are Forever" (1971)

Starring Sean Connery, Jill St. John, and Charles Gray
Written by Richard Maibaum and Tom Mankiewicz
Directed by Guy Hamilton
Rated PG - Violence, sex
Running Time: 120 Minutes
Trailer

Agent 007, James Bond (Sean Connery) tracks down his nemesis, Ernst Stavro Blofeld (Charles Gray) and kills him, to get revenge for the death of his wife Tracy in "On Her Majesty's Secret Service."  Soon after his return, M (Bernard Lee) assigns him a new mission: to uncover a diamond smuggling ring.

Bond travels to Amsterdam and impersonates a smuggler named Peter Franks, setting up with a woman named Tiffany Case (Jill St. John) to transport a large load of diamonds to the United States without getting caught.  When they arrive in Las Vegas, Bond begins to unravel the threads of the diamond smuggling ring, including run-ins with two assassins named Mr. Wint (Bruce Glover) and Mr. Kidd (Putter Smith).

Bond suspects that the head of the smuggling ring is the massively wealthy and reclusive entrepreneur Willard Whyte (Jimmy Dean).  But no one has seen Whyte in years, and arranging an audience with him is impossible. While maintaining his cover as diamond smuggler Franks with Tiffany, Bond tries to ingratiate himself into Whyte's organization and finds that the diamonds are to be used in the construction of a space weapon that can annihilate anything from orbit.  But Bond discovers that Whyte is not behind this dastardly plot to hold the entire world hostage.  Who, then, is calling the shots?  And from where?