Cusack, Dick

While You Were Sleeping

In Chicago, a subway employee is in love with a stranger she only sees from a distance. But when she rescues him from a mugging in which he is knocked into a coma, his family mistakes her for his fiancee. When she falls for his charming brother, the mix-u
Genre: Feature Film-Comedy
Rating: PG
Release Date: 4-JAN-2005
Media Type: DVD

If you don't mind a heavy dose of schmaltz and sentiment, this romantic comedy has a gentle way of seducing you with its charms. While You Were Sleeping was the first starring role for Sandra Bullock after her blockbuster success in Speed. In a role that nicely emphasizes her easygoing appeal, Bullock is the reason the movie works at all. She plays Lucy Eleanor Moderatz, a Chicago Transit tollbooth clerk who's hopelessly smitten with a daily commuter, Peter Callaghan (Peter Gallagher). She saves the object of her affection from certain death after he's mugged and falls onto the train tracks. While Peter is in a coma, she lets his family believe that she is his fiancée, and surprisingly finds herself drawn to his brother (Bill Pullman), for whom the attraction is definitely mutual. How Lucy gets out of this amorous predicament is what makes this pleasant movie less predictable than its familiar ingredients would initially indicate. It's feel-good fluff, with characters and performances that keep you smiling through the drippy plot mechanics. --Jeff Shannon

Return to Me

Who knew that when he ordered the special he d get the dish of his life? David Duchovny ("The X-Files") and Minnie Driver (Good Will Hunting) ignite sparks in this "warm-hearted winner" (Jeff Craig Sixty Second Preview) about a widower and a waitress who meet and fall in love. Featuring an incredible all-star cast this hilarious romantic comedy delivers a lot of laughs tears and joys that will make your spirits soar.It took a lot of coaxing to get Bob (Duchovny) a recently widowed architect to go on a blind date at a quirky Irish-Italian eatery. Once there he s smitten instantly...not with his date but with the sharp-witted waitress Grace (Driver). With unsolicited help from Grace s match-making Grandfather (Carroll O Connnor) Bob asks her out. And as their relationship blossoms everything seems to be going great until an unbelievable truth is revealed...one that could easily break both of their hearts for good.System Requirements:Starring: David Duchovny Minnie Driver Carroll O Connor Robert Loggia David Alan Grier Bonnie Hunt Joey Richardson and James Belushi. Directed By: Bonnie Hunt. Running Time: 1 Hour 56 Min. Color. This film is presented in "Widescreen" format. Copyright 2001 MGM Studios.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA Rating: PG UPC: 027616853417 Manufacturer No: M110591

Bob Rueland (David Duchovny) and Grace Briggs (Minnie Driver) have very little in common. Granted, they both live in Chicago and they're both a bit lovelorn, but that's about it. Still, fate has something in mind for these two somewhat-depressed souls (a construction worker and budding artist, respectively), who've both recently had brushes with death--he's a recent widower, she's just recovered from a heart transplant--and are a little more serious than their friends and relatives. After a series of misbegotten blind dates and almost-meetings, though, these two finally get together, and find that they fit seamlessly with each other. Despite their differences, they have a lot in common--in fact, quite a lot. It seems that the heart that now beats inside Grace's chest once belonged to Bob's wife (Joely Richardson), who died in a car crash. Coincidence? We think not.

A gentle, pleasing romantic comedy, Return to Me marks the directorial debut of Bonnie Hunt, an acclaimed actress known most famously for her role as Renee Zellweger's sister in Jerry Maguire. A shining, happy bright spot in whatever role she's in, Hunt has also invested the film with her trademark brand of humor: dry but sincere, sarcastic but not caustic, and with a deep current of humanity and romance. In the midst of all the permutations that fate surrounds them with, Driver and Duchovny make a pleasantly low-key couple; the triumph of the film is that despite all the contrived angst, the romance is never overly saccharine. They provide a quiet center in a film that has a fair amount of chaos in it, particularly due to Driver's extended family of Irish and Italian relatives (which occasionally tips the film into cutesy territory) and most hilariously to Driver's best friend, played by director Hunt . As a harried mother with innumerable kids and a likable oaf of a husband (James Belushi), Hunt again steals scenes effortlessly; Belushi is a comic revelation, better than he's been in years. You'll have the pleasant memories of both of these couples--one falling in love, one together for years--with you a long while after seeing this film. --Mark Englehart

Eight Men Out (20th Anniversary Edition)

John Cusack (Con Air) and Charlie Sheen (Major League) lead a "superb ensemble of actors" (Newsweek) delivering "striking performances" (The New York Times) in this "mesmerizing story" (Los Angeles Times) about the infamous 1919 Chicago White Sox scandal certainly one of the saddest chapters in the annals of professional sports. Buck Weaver (Cusack) and Hap Felsch (Sheen) are young idealistic players with the Chicago White Sox a pennant-winning team owned by Charles Comiskey a penny-pinching hands-on manager who underpays his players and treats them with disdain. And when gamblers and hustlers discover that Comiskey's demoralized players are ripe for a money-making scheme one by one the team members agree to throw the World Series. But when the White Sox are defeated a couple of sports writers smell a fix and a national scandal explodes ripping the cover off America's favorite pastime. System Requirements:Running Time: 120 Mins.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA/CLASSICS Rating: PG UPC: 883904102953 Manufacturer No: M110295

Eliot Asinof's detailed book Eight Men Out illustrates how the system of American sports collapsed in 1919, the year the Chicago White Sox threw the World Series. Filmmaker John Sayles worked on his script years before the 1988 film (or before he had the rights to make the film) as a labor of love. Sayles's adaptation proves one can make a historically accurate film in the day and age of artistic license. And what a story. Although many know about the "Black Sox," made famous--again--in the 1989 hit film Field of Dreams, the details of the saga are far less known. The center of Dreams, Shoeless Joe Jackson (portrayed correctly by D.B. Sweeney as illiterate and left-handed in Eight), is not the core of this film; it's ace pitcher Eddie Cicotte (Sayles favorite David Strathairn), who took the money, and third baseman Buck Weaver (John Cusack), who did not. The film fits nicely into Sayles's (Lone Star) strong suit: the ensemble drama. We are introduced to bickering owners, famous crooks, high-minded judges, lowlife gangsters, investigative reporters (played by Studs Terkel and Sayles himself), and, most of all, players who are at the breaking point when it comes