George Parker Movies

Through flashbacks, a movie special-effects designer tells the story of four days with his family that changed his life. Back in 1984, his father was terminally ill and wanted to see the Richard Wagner's Ring Cycle one last time before he died. Vast in scope and execution, this operatic series demands a marathon-like level of endurance even from the listeners. Furthermore, the convoluted plot of the operas resembles nothing so much as the combined plots of all the Godfather movies set in a legendary world resembling something out of Conan the Barbarian. The father's four sons all know this, and some of them are even opera fans themselves. They decide to put on a lip-synched, much-abbreviated version of the operas for their dad in the living room of their home and recruit friends and acquaintances (mainly bikers) to enact the parts. Even in highly abbreviated form, this generous amateur performance will take the better part of four days. In this amiable and well-received first feature, the boys help their dad enjoy his last performance of the cycle and have a pretty good time themselves. The exposition of the operas' complicated plots is so accurate and concise that some reviewers recommended that music teachers use this film to introduce them to Wagner neophytes. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

Based on a novel by Richard Peck called Don't Look and It Won't Hurt, Allison Anders's melodramatic coming-of-age tale Gas Food Lodging takes place in Laramie, NM, a small town right off the highway. Nora (Brooke Adams) is a truck-stop waitress who lives in a trailer park with her two teenaged daughters, Trudi (Ione Skye) and Shade (Fairuza Balk). While Trudi sleeps around and defies her mother, Shade spends her time at the local cinema and wishes she could have a dad like a normal family. One day, Trudi hooks up with a visiting geologist (Robert Knepper) and spends a magical evening in a cave with him. However, he turns up missing and Trudi finds herself pregnant. Meanwhile, Shade's romantic advances are rejected by Darius (Donovan Leitch), but she finds something new with film projectionist Javier (Jacob Vargas). Shade's attempts at finding a husband for her mom are unsuccessful, but Nora ends up meeting satellite TV installation man Hamlet Humphrey (David Lansbury). Features a cameo appearance from Dinosaur Jr. frontman J. Mascis, who also wrote the original music. ~ Andrea LeVasseur, Rovi

Fledgling filmmaker (and future film historian) Kevin Brownlow worked in collaboration with Andrew Mollo for nearly ten years to create It Happened Here. Shot on 16-millimeter stock in stark quasi-documentary fashion, the film is predicated on the postulation that Germany had invaded--and defeated--England in World War II. Brownlow and Mollo's vision of this nightmarish world is perfect in every detail, right down to the German road signs in rural Britain. The plotline is carried by Pauline Murray, playing a nurse who uncovers Nazi atrocities perpetrated on Polish and Russian hospital patients. Begun in 1957 when Brownlow was an 18-year-old editing apprentice, It Happened Here was finally completed in 1964, and released theatrically two years later. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi