Thoroughly revised and updated for 2005! Includes a new chapter on the best special edition DVDs and a new chapter on finding hidden easter egg features.

The popular film critic offers full-length reviews of his choices for the best one thousand movies from the 1990s to today.

For 18-year old Janelle, the transition from high school senior to practitioner of the magic arts is traumatic. Ripped from her comfortable suburban life, she is stranded in a wild land where elemental monsters roam the countryside. With her memories in tatters and her magical abilities inconsistent and limited by debilitating headaches, Janelle struggles to find her standing in this world, unsure whether it's a "real" place or the product of a comatose or diseased mind. After proving her value to the citizens of a small community, Janelle must travel on a journey of self-discovery, seeking not only to better understand her talents but to determine how the secrets of her past might inform her present. And, even as she attempts this, genocidal forces begin massing with the goal of claiming the world as their own by annihilating its current inhabitants.From James Berardinelli, the author of "The Last Whisper of the Gods" trilogy, comes a new saga that combines epic fantasy, subtle romance, and dimension hopping. "Lingering Haze" is the first book of "The Elusive Strain", a series that invites readers to accompany Janelle as she battles evil while exploring a fantastical new world and seeking to uncover the truth about the events that led to her being summoned.

Goosebumps now on Disney+! Jordan Blake and his sister, Nicole, are sick of the hot weather in Pasadena, California. Just once they'd like to have a real winter with real snow. And then it happens. The Blakes are taking a trip to Alaska! Mr. Blake has been asked to photograph a mysterious snow creature there. Poor Jordan and Nicole. They just wanted to see snow. But now they're being chased by a monstrous creature. A big furry-faced creature known as the Abominable Snowman!

The true story behind the Martin Scorsese film: A “riveting . . . account of how organized crime looted the casinos they controlled” (Kirkus Reviews). Focusing on Chicago bookie Frank “Lefty” Rosenthal and his partner, Anthony Spilotro, and drawing on extensive, in-depth interviews, the #1 New York Times–bestselling author of the Mafia classic Wiseguy—basis for the film Goodfellas—Nicholas Pileggi reveals how the pair worked together to oversee Las Vegas casino operations for the mob. He unearths how Teamster pension funds were used to take control of the Stardust and Tropicana and how Spilotro simultaneously ran a crew of jewel thieves nicknamed the “Hole in the Wall Gang.” For years, these gangsters kept a stranglehold on Sin City’s brightly lit nightspots, skimming millions in cash for their bosses. But the elaborate scheme began to crumble when Rosenthal’s disproportionate ambitions drove him to make mistakes. Spilotro made an error of his own, falling for his partner’s wife, a troubled showgirl named Geri. It would all lead to betrayal, a wide-ranging FBI investigation, multiple convictions, and the end of the Mafia’s longstanding grip on the multibillion-dollar gaming oasis in the midst of the Nevada desert. Casino is a journey into 1970s Las Vegas and a riveting nonfiction account of the world portrayed in the Martin Scorsese film of the same name, starring Robert DeNiro, Joe Pesci, and Sharon Stone. A story of adultery, murder, infighting, and revenge, this “fascinating true-crime Mob history” is a high-stakes page-turner (Booklist).

Big Night (1996), Ratatouille (2007), and Julie and Julia (2009) are more than films about food—they serve a political purpose. In the kitchen, around the table, and in the dining room, these films use cooking and eating to explore such themes as ideological pluralism, ethnic and racial acceptance, gender equality, and class flexibility—but not as progressively as you might think. Feasting Our Eyes takes a second look at these and other modern American food films to emphasize their conventional approaches to nation, gender, race, sexuality, and social status. Devoured visually and emotionally, these films are particularly effective defenders of the status quo. Feasting Our Eyes looks at Hollywood films and independent cinema, documentaries and docufictions, from the 1990s to today and frankly assesses their commitment to racial diversity, tolerance, and liberal political ideas. Laura Lindenfeld and Fabio Parasecoli find women and people of color continue to be treated as objects of consumption even in these modern works and, despite their progressive veneer, American food films often mask a conservative politics that makes commercial success more likely. A major force in mainstream entertainment, American food films shape our sense of who belongs, who has a voice, and who has opportunities in American society. They facilitate the virtual consumption of traditional notions of identity and citizenship, reworking and reinforcing ingrained ideas of power.

Soon to be a major motion picture starring Michael Shannon, Winona Ryder, with Ray Liotta and Chris Evans He was smart, merciless, and deadly. And it took someone just as tough to bring him down. A mob contract killer known as “The Iceman” for hiding a body in an ice-cream truck freezer, Richard Kuklinski boasted a personal body count of more than a hundred victims. Using guns, knives, poison, ice picks, tire irons, baseball bats, and bombs, the family man from New Jersey killed for fun, for money, to cover up his own crimes, and to satisfy his inner rage. Law enforcement officials knew all about Kuklinski and had a list of his victims, but couldn’t get near him—until undercover agent Dominick Polifrone posed as a mobster and began a deadly game of cat and mouse. In this harrowing true-crime account, Anthony Bruno delves into the mind of a cold-blooded killer, chronicling the Iceman’s grisly crimes and probing the bizarre dynamics of Agent Polifrone’s dangerous liaison with him. For as Polifrone carefully built up a case against Kuklinksi, he knew he was running out of time—because the Iceman was planning to kill him too. “Bruno puts his writing talents to white-knuckle use with a tight focus on a killer with no human feelings.”—Kirkus Reviews “Excellent . . . [re-creates] the tension and stress Polifrone experienced in fulfilling his risky undercover assignment.”—Publishers Weekly