Johnny Green Movies
In the opening episode of Touched by an Angel's fifth season, amiable Angel of Death Andrew (John Dye) promises a dying hospital patient to help restore the faith of someone else at death's door. The identity of that person can be found in a missing Bible, which Andrew searches for with the help of Monica (Roma Downey). At the same time, the angels must root out the well-meaning but misguided mortal who has been posing as the Angel of Death, providing false hope to a number of terminal patients. Without giving away the ending, it can be noted that among the episode's guest stars are such reliable performers as Chad Lowe, Margot Kidder and Carrie Snodgress. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
Episode ten showcases the writers' ingenious talent to marry each character's personality to a horror-comedy plot twist. Nightmares are coming true in Sunnydale: the self-conscious Xander (Nicholas Brendon) goes to school in his underwear; shy Willow (Alyson Hannigan) has to sing in public; bookish Giles (Anthony Stewart Head) forgets how to read; superficial Cordelia (Charisma Carpenter) has a really bad hair day; and sensitive slayer Buffy (Sarah Michelle Gellar) finds that her parents blame her for their divorce. Buffy also has a nightmare that the Master is freed and kills her, making her a vampire. It is finally made clear that the nightmares stem from a boy in a coma. Beaten into that state by his violent baseball coach, the boy's constant dreaming of the horrible incident is being made real through the evil powers of the Hellmouth. It is interesting to note that Buffy has had nightmares from the pilot episode on -- a side effect of her slayer powers -- and this episode seems to build upon that subplot. By having of all the characters face their fears, the seeds are sown for future growth and budding relationships, such as Cordelia's eventual friendship with Buffy. ~ Rovi
Many a lovesick young man has threatened to camp out by a girl's front door, but one guy actually tries it in this alternately sweet and tasteless romantic comedy. Peter (Josh Schaefer) is a good-natured but socially inept young man who is madly in love with Erica (Keri Russell), the sweet and devastatingly sexy girl next door. Peter desperately wants Erica as his girlfriend, even though she already has a boyfriend, the large and humorless Nick (Johnny Green). Eager to prove himself, Peter takes up the advice of Nonno (Buck Kartalian), his batty grandfather, and literally camps out on her front lawn, willing to wait out the entire summer until she gives him a chance to prove that he can be the man of her dreams. Meanwhile, Peter is frequently kept company by his buddy Matt (R.D. Robb), who has learned how to deal with his sexual tensions through the use of fresh fruit, while Peter's dad (Mark Taylor) is convinced that his son has gone nuts and won't allow him back in the house, even for a change of clothes. While it won the Audience Award at the 1997 Slamdance Film Festival, Eight Days a Week didn't receive much commercial exposure until its release on video, after Keri Russell had made a splash on the acclaimed TV series Felicity. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi
- Starring:
- Josh Schaefer, Keri Russell, (more)
Director Waris Hussein delivers another made-for-television drama, this one based on the popular young-adult book by Caroline B. Cooney. The movie stars Kellie Martin as Janie, a teen who one day sees her own face on the back of a milk carton in an ad for missing children. The movie follows Janie as she unravels the mystery of her true family. When she finds out that she has been separated from her birth parents for many years, Janie struggles with questions about the family she thought was her own, and the identity of her long-lost biological parents. ~ Bernadette McCallion, Rovi
- Starring:
- Kellie Martin, Jill Clayburgh, (more)
Olivia D'Abo's sister Maryam and Mariel Hemingway's sister Margaux star in Double Obsession. Heather Dwyer (Margaux) falls in love with her roommate Claire Durka (Maryam), but "happily ever after" is not in the cards. Claire, you see, loves someone else, and Heather, you see, can't live with that. The sadistic one-upsmanship and domination games played throughout the film make Single White Female look like The Five Little Peppers and How They Grew. The suspense lies not in who will survive, but how long it will be before the neighbors complain. Frederic Forrest carries a what-am-I-doing-here? expression all during his brief scenes. As psycho-roommate films go, Double Obsession certainly delivers what its target audience craves. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
This erotic psychological thriller marks the feature film debut of popular actress Pamela Anderson in a leading role. After two johns were murdered while having sex with a prostitute, Sergeant Peg Peckham (Chelsea Field) is transferred from the vice squad to homicide and assigned to investigate. Peg's determined to catch the killer, who could be a female serial killer, and asks her police psychologist boyfriend David Stratton (Steven Bauer) for a profile. In the meantime, David has become attracted to a new patient, Felicity (Anderson), an amnesia sufferer who is having violent recurring dreams in which she murders her lovers. Although the connection to Peg's case seems obvious, Felicity doesn't fit the psychological profile, and her bombshell beauty is having an intoxicating effect on David. Snapdragon (1993) was co-written by actress Terri Treas of the Alien Nation TV series and telefilms. ~ Karl Williams, Rovi
Contemporary high schooler Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) doesn't have the most pleasant of lives. Browbeaten by his principal at school, Marty must also endure the acrimonious relationship between his nerdy father (Crispin Glover) and his lovely mother (Lea Thompson), who in turn suffer the bullying of middle-aged jerk Biff (Thomas F. Wilson), Marty's dad's supervisor. The one balm in Marty's life is his friendship with eccentric scientist Doc (Christopher Lloyd), who at present is working on a time machine. Accidentally zapped back into the 1950s, Marty inadvertently interferes with the budding romance of his now-teenaged parents. Our hero must now reunite his parents-to-be, lest he cease to exist in the 1980s. It won't be easy, especially with the loutish Biff, now also a teenager, complicating matters. Beyond its dazzling special effects, the best element of Back to the Future is the performance of Michael J. Fox, who finds himself in the quagmire of surviving the white-bread 1950s with a hip 1980s mindset. Back to the Future cemented the box-office bankability of both Fox and the film's director, Robert Zemeckis, who went on to helm two equally exhilarating sequels. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
- Starring:
- Michael J. Fox, Christopher Lloyd, (more)







