The Net (1995)

What's that? A purely commercial-minded thriller that doubles as a tingly study of paranoid fantasies in the computer age? Yep, that's The Net, a movie that asks, What if — in the stroke of a keyboard — all official documentation of your life was stricken from the record? What if you spent so much time curled up with your hard drive that nobody could vouch for your existence? And what if even the prototypical kindly, older black cop (Robert Gossett) were in on the conspiracy? Sandra Bullock brings it all to horrible life as Angela Bennett, the mumbly-mouthed computer geek whose only hope is to outsmart the group of techno-baddies planning a massive water conspiracy. Or something like that. Best of all, though, Angela don't need no stinkin' man to step in and save her from the suave sociopath (Jeremy Northam) who goes from romantic to murderous faster than you can reboot your mid-'90s Hewlett-Packard. So what if Citizen Kane, The English Patient, and Saving Private Ryan are ''better'' films? I've watched The Net on cable more times than all of 'em combined, and enjoyed every middle-brow second of it, too. — Michael Slezak, senior writer