Made under the great filmmaker's usual veil of secrecy, the erotic marital drama teams Tom Cruise with wife Nicole Kidman. Other acclaimed filmmakers hoping not to get lost in Kubrick's ghostly shadow will have their work cut out for them. Wes Craven takes a holiday from horror with 50 Violins starring Meryl Streep as a music teacher. Spike Lee breaks new ground with Summer of Sam , an ensemble drama about New York's Son of Sam killings in 1977. John Travolta stars in the military murder tale The General's Daughter while Brad Pitt plays a white collar sociopath in director David Fincher's Fight Club .
Thrillers are the summer's third favored genres.
The Thomas Crown Affair gets remade with Pierece Brosnan and Rene Russo while The Haunting receives a new screen adaptation as The Haunting of Hill House . And then there's Tarzan , the obligatory animated feature from Walt Disney. In a colorful development, the Disney production opens opposite the South Park feature. As always, the art houses stay open during the summer months. Despite the much-lamented, overall decline in foreign filmmaking during the 1990s, several significant movies from overseas will come to Milwaukee's Oriental and Downer theaters this summer.