Brad Davis Movies

Everyone wants to get their hands on a valuable stash of narcotics in this gritty crime drama from writer/director Daniel Zirilli. Set on the mean streets of South Florida, Latin Kingz sees the cargo lost by its original owner and found by a band of local thugs. The small-timers think they've hit the motherload, but in the world of crime, nothing's that easy. Before long the smugglers show up to reclaim their goods by any means possible. ~ Matthew Tobey, All Movie Guide

A dreary and depressing tale despite the excellent assemblage of talent, this is the story of a Depression-era family where sibling rivalry and tragedy seem to be the watch words of their home life. A period piece set in 1930s Texas. ~ Tana Hobart, All Movie Guide

This Peter Maris action begins at New Mexico State Penitentiary, where a spew of toxic gas from the crash of a tanker truck leads to the evacuation of the prison by the warden (George Kennedy). In the ensuing confusion, anti-social cons Kuttner (Lee De Broux) and Patch (James Tolkan) kidnap prison psychologist Maria Slayton (Kim Delaney) and hit the road with a bus full of prisoners. The group first heads for Mexico but decides instead to take over the town of Sonora and hold its citizens as hostages. The National Guard sends in a state police lieutenant (Yaphet Kotto) and his tough-as-nails Lieutenant Colonel Johnson (Jan-Michael Vincent) to handle the situation. But the National Guard's ineffectual methods leave the situation more volatile than it was before. It is left to two citizens of Sonora -- sheriff Ike Slayton (Brad Davis) and his army pal Bill (Ken Foree) -- to take matters into their own hands and save the town from the kill-crazy prisoners. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide

Inspired suave aristocrat Col. Claus von Stauffenberg's ingenious plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler during the waning days of World War II, director Lawrence Schiller's historical war drama traces the remarkable events that unfolded as the Third Reich's Operation Valkyrie emergency plan was implemented on July 20, 1944. Could World War II have been stopped before the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki? A group of senior army officials have decided to turn on their führer, but is their plan doomed from the very moment of conception? A strategy meeting is set to take place at Hitler's Wolfsschanze (Wolf's Lair). There, the tyrannical German leader will be completely vulnerable to attack by the very people he trusts most - his own officers. In order to succeed, von Stauffenberg and his men will need to make some serious sacrifices. Later, as the plot gets underway, fighting continues raging all across Europe, and the men wait patiently for the perfect moment to strike. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

In this suspenseful drama, a bereaved bricklayer vows to avenge the brutal murder of his parents. The killer is brought in, but is not given the death penalty. The young man then decides to take matters into his own hands. He oversteps the law and eventually begins to question his actions. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Based on a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Herman Wouk, this thought-provoking made-for-television drama chronicles the court martial of the lieutenant who commandeered the U.S.S. Caine during a potentially deadly storm. The only way his attorney can save him is to prove that Captain Queeg was mentally incompetent to safely run the ship. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

The fourth and final season of the original Transformers cartoon series is actually a three-part miniseries titled "The Rebirth." The age-old war between the two rival Transformer factions, the Autobots and the Decepticons, takes the combatants to Nebulos, a planet controlled by evil telepaths. In the course of events, the lines of battle are blurred when, thanks to those aforementioned telepaths, several Decepticons, disguised as good-guy Autobots, infiltrate the other side. As the climax approaches, the fate of everyone concerned rests in the hands of the Autobots' human ally Spike -- with a bit of assistance from the revivified Optimus Prime, head of the Autobots, who has merged his intelligence and resources with the "super computer" Vector Sigma. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Season three of the cartoon series The Transformers opens with an elaborate five-part story (eminently suited to be "transformed" into a single two-hour TV movie), "The Five Faces of Darkness," set largely on Cybertron, home planet of the warring Autobots and Decepticons. This plotline serves to introduce a new human ally for the good-guy Autobots, Marrisa Fairborne of the Earth Defense Command. In other developments this season, the Autobots' earthling chum Spike, long married to a girl named Carly, inadvertently involves his son Daniel in the neverending Autobot-Cybertron conflict; the ghost of Decepticon Starstream goes on a relentless search for a new host body; and several new groups of characters are brought into the action, the better to sell more toys for the Hasbro company: among these are the Technobots, the Junkions, and the Quintessons. The season ends with a two-parter wherein Autobot mentor Optimus Prime, long presumed dead, makes a spectacular return in an all-out final(?) assault against the despicable Decepticons. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The robotic cartoon adventure series The Transformers begins its second season with the episode "Autobot Spike," in which one of the human allies of the Autobots in their ongoing battle against the Decepticons literally loses his mind to a super-Transformer. "Autobot Spike" is one of the few single-episode storylines to be found this season. Many of the other scenarios take up two episodes or more, notably "Dinobot Island," wherein the discovery of a remote island populated by prehistoric beasts leads to a serious schism in the time-space continuum; "Megatron's Master Plan," in which the leader of the evil Decepticons does his best to turn public opinion against the Autobots; and "Desertion of the Dinobots," which finds the title characters rebelling against their enslavement by the robots and trying to claim the Autobots' home planet as their own. The best of The Transformers' two-parters during the series' second season is "The Key to Vector Sigma," a story built around a computer from the planet Alpatrian with which the Decepticons intend to bestow artificial intelligence upon their newly created flunkies, the Stunticons. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Season one of the "cartoon commercial" The Transformers begins with the three-part "More Than Meets the Eye," which explains how the two warring Transformers armies from the planet Cybertron, Optimus Prime's good-guy Autobots and Megatron's bad-guy Decepticons, were placed in suspended animation when they attempted to expand their battle to prehistoric Earth. "Thawing out" in 2005 A.D., the combatants resume their war as if nothing had happened, with the Autobots gaining a bit of an advantage by winning two human earthlings, Spike and Sparkplug, over to their side. A later episode, "Roll for It," introduces another major human ally of the Autobots, computer whiz Chip Chase. Subsequent season-one highlights include the three-part story, "The Ultimate Doom," wherein Megatron enlists the aid of a mad (Do you hear? Mad!) human scientist in attempting to bring Cybertron into Earth's orbit. And "A Plague of Insecticons" introduces a brand-new threat to Autobots and Decepticons alike -- not to mention a fresh new line of Hasbro-licensed Transformer toys! ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

A sailor learns to take, and give, it like a man in this surrealistic adaptation of writer and thief Jean Genet's novel Querelle de Brest by avant-garde German director Rainer Werner Fassbinder. In a colorful brothel in the port of Brest, proprietor Nono (Gunther Kaufmann) is known for wagering with his customers. Win a throw of the dice, and they get to make love with his wife, Lysiane (Jeanne Moreau); lose, and they must take it from behind by Nono himself. One day, Lysiane reads the tarot for her lover, Robert (Hanno Poschl), and learns in the cards of his intense passion for his brother, Querelle (Brad Davis). Querelle himself soon arrives, and the brothers enact a bizarre greeting halfway between a hug and a wrestling match. Querelle, it seems, is looking for partners in a drug deal; Robert points him in the right direction. An argument about the merits of sex between men soon leads Querelle to murder his fellow smuggler, Vic (Dieter Schidor). Back at the whorehouse, Querelle loses on purpose to Nono and finds he has a taste for passive gay sex. Meanwhile, fellow sailor Gil, who looks exactly like Querelle's brother (and is played by the same actor), murders one of his compatriots after the brute publicly impugns his manhood. Wanted by the police for both his own crime and Querelle's, Gil goes on the lam. Querelle soon crashes his hideout, and an intense bond develops between the two murderers -- a friendship that will lead Querelle to the greatest love, and the greatest treachery, of his life. Director Fassbinder was in the process of editing Querelle when he died of a drug overdose in June 1982. Gunther Kaufmann, who plays Nono, was Fassbinder's ex-lover; the film is dedicated to another former lover, El Hedi Ben Salem, the news of whose suicide had just reached the director. Critically derided even by many of Fassbinder's admirers, Querelle earned a Golden Raspberry award for Worst "Original" Song for "Each Man Kills the Thing He Loves," an Oscar Wilde poem set to music by Peer Raben and sung repeatedly by Jeanne Moreau. Moreau had previously starred in Mademoiselle, a Tony Richardson effort co-scripted by Genet. Look for Frank Ripploh, another pioneering German director, in a cameo. ~ Brian J. Dillard, All Movie Guide

Based on a true story, Chariots of Fire is the internationally acclaimed Oscar-winning drama of two very different men who compete as runners in the 1924 Paris Olympics. Eric Liddell (Ian Charleson), a serious Christian Scotsman, believes that he has to succeed as a testament to his undying religious faith. Harold Abrahams (Ben Cross), is a Jewish Englishman who wants desperately to be accepted and prove to the world that Jews are not inferior. The film crosscuts between each man's life as he trains for the competition, fueled by these very different desires. As compelling as the racing scenes are, it's really the depth of the two main characters that touches the viewer, as they forcefully drive home the theme that victory attained through devotion, commitment, integrity, and sacrifice is the most admirable feat that one can achieve. (Ian Holm was nominated for an Oscar as Best Supporting Actor in his role as Abrahams' coach), and this powerful film ended up with four Academy Awards: Best Picture, Best Original Screenplay, Best Costume Design, and Best Original Score. ~ Don Kaye, All Movie Guide