Stefan Arngrim Movies

Director Joe Carnahan resurrects the popular 1980s-era action series with this explosive reboot following the adventures of four Iraq War veterans who begin a second career as mercenaries for hire. Col. John "Hannibal" Smith (Liam Neeson), Templeton "Face" Peck (Bradley Cooper), B.A. Baracus (Quinton "Rampage" Jackson), and H.M. "Howlin' Mad" Murdock (Sharlto Copley) are a group of former Special Forces operatives who have been fighting the good fight for eight years when they're sentenced to military prison for a crime they didn't commit. Breaking out with relative ease, they embark on a treacherous quest to clear their names while being hunted across the globe by Charissa Sosa (Jessica Biel), a high-ranking military officer and one of Face's many former lovers. Meanwhile, mysterious CIA operative Lynch (Patrick Wilson) offers tips that help point the federal fugitives in the right direction, which seems to lead straight to former military contractor Pike (Brian Bloom), who may have been responsible for setting them up in the first place. Just when it seems that the A-Team has all the evidence needed to prove their innocence, however, they discover that their latest mission is just getting started. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

In 1979, while working as a cameraman for a local news program in Salt Lake City, Trent Harris made the acquaintance of a genial but eccentric entertainer from the nearby town of Beaver, UT, who called himself Groovin' Gary. Harris' experiences with Groovin' Gary inspired three different short subjects, and The Beaver Trilogy collects Harris' three Groovin' Gary films into one feature presentation. In 1979's The Beaver Kid, viewers are introduced to Groovin' Gary, the self-proclaimed "Rich Little of Beaver," as he shows off his car (named after Farrah Fawcett), does impressions, and plugs a talent show in which he'll be appearing. Gary's act turns out to be a full-drag (and painfully sincere) impersonation of Olivia Newton-John performing "Please Don't Keep Me Waitin'." Two years later, Harris made The Beaver Kid 2, essentially a satiric recreation of the first film, with Sean Penn (who had then only recently scored his first film role) playing Groovin' Larry (the real Gary had since chosen to distance himself from Harris and his documentary). Finally, 1985's The Orkly Kid features Crispin Glover (who later starred in Harris' Rubin and Ed) as Larry, an aspiring comic and entertainer from Orkly, IA, who bears a certain resemblance to Groovin' Gary. Larry feels he has a gift and a message he wants to share with the world, but his fellow citizens of Orkly aren't so sure they're ready for Larry's Olivia Newton-John tribute, eventually leading Larry to move on to the big city in hopes of making his dreams come true. Both The Beaver Kid and The Beaver Kid 2 were produced on color video (the latter on a reported budget of only one hundred bucks), while The Orkly Kid was filmed in 16 mm, with the support of the American Film Institute; the three shorts were transferred to 35 mm film for their release as The Beaver Trilogy. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

Due South it's not, but there are some nice touches in this thriller about an American drug enforcement agent on exchange assignment in Vancouver. The RCMP, the CIA and the KGB are all in pursuit of a deranged free-lance hit man who kills randomly-selected women in addition to his political targets. John Hyde (Martin Sheen) and his Mountie partner, McKenzie (Michael Ontkean) investigate the murder of a Korean embassy employee, and end up in the middle of this jurisdictional nightmare, as does Hyde's ex-wife (Beverly D'Angelo) who's the assassin's next target. ~ Michael P. Rogers, Rovi

This imaginative low-budget horror film from first-time director Frank LaLoggia tells the story of shy high-school student Andrew (Stefan Arngrim) who, in a nod to the Omen films, slowly begins to realize that his feelings of alienation stem from the fact that he is the Antichrist. This revelation is not lost on Andrew's elderly next-door neighbor and one of his fellow students -- both of whom are actually archangels-in-hiding who have been waiting for the inevitable moment when the boy's latent identity finally surfaces. Andrew's first demonstration of his powers allows him to avenge himself on his cruel classmates (in an imaginative scene, one macho poser is gifted with breasts), but soon he begins to undergo a more dramatic change. The climactic moment comes during an outdoor Passion play performance -- during which the actor portraying Jesus on-stage ends up crucified for real -- and archangels Gabriel and Michael arrive to fulfill their destiny in the final battle between good and evil. Considering the budgetary limitations, this is still an impressive debut, tackling its weighty metaphysical themes with style and intensity seldom seen in other teen-horror films and boasting a superb score blending punk, pop, and new wave tracks with haunting Gregorian chants. Apart from its artistic merit, Fear No Evil should stand as an inspiration to young filmmakers everywhere. Producer/director Frank LaLoggia managed to scrape up 150,000 dollars to finance the production and find distributors all on his own -- all at the tender age of 23 -- long before his success directing the more subdued supernatural opus Lady in White. ~ Cavett Binion, Rovi

The basic premise of Land Of The Giants, along with most of the attributes of the seven characters, is established in the first episode, "The Crash". The sub-orbital passenger ship Spindrift, en route from Los Angeles to London, is drawn into a glowing space apparition that carries them to a world exactly like Earth -- except that everything, people, animals, plants etc., is 12 times larger than on Earth. And as the crew and the passengers soon discover that they are subject to capture and experimentation by whatever inhabitants of this planet might trap them.

Within that framework, however, the series did undergo changes during the first season. In the first episode, the giants -- who are seen mostly in the guise of a scientist and his assistant -- are seen as distant, distorted figures, the size differential almost disorienting to the camera; and they are heard only indistinctly, speaking in muffled and distorted voices, and it's not clear at first what language they might be speaking. In other words, the size differential is emphasized to the degree that the giants and the "little people," as we later learn Earth visitors are referred to, are isolated from one another even in each others' presence, as sentient beings. This creates an eeriness to their interactions and adds an element of isolation in the point of view of the main characters in the early episodes that was lost in subsequent shows, as the point-of-view changed along with the way that the giants were presented.

In later shows, the giants' voices are fully comprehensible and they are speaking English and communicating with the "little people." And we discover that there is a government bounty on them. And we learn that most of the planet seems to be organized as a worldwide totalitarian state, similar to some of the Eastern bloc communist countries, with a secret police service -- a similarity that residents of many of those countries picked up on and resonated to very strongly, once the series started running in Eastern Europe in the 1970's. One such member of that service, Inspector Kobick (Kevin Hagen), investigates enough cases involving the Sprindrift's complement, that he actually at one point refers to the ship's commander, Captain Steve Burton (Gary Conway), by his last name -- a major concession to Burton's essential humanity and Kobick's own inability to ignore it, despite his official position.

During the first season, many of the episodes revolve around the Spindrift's crew and passengers trying to patch up their vessel for an eventual attempted return to Earth -- if they can get the equipment they need, if they can reach escape velocity, and find a space-warp that will take them back to Earth. There are so many barriers to their escape, that sheer curiosity about how they might overcome any of these obstacles made one want to tune in from week to week, this despite the fundamental concept behind the series being scientifically absurd -- people and animals (or anything else) 12 times larger than normal will, of necessity, weigh 144 times as much, and be incapable of movement, and it's not even a matter of weight so much as mass, which is independent of gravity. But the series was presented with enough of a brisk pace and sense of adventure so that few viewers were bothered by this matter (anymore than anyone ever tuned out The Adventures of Superman over the matter of how he flies . . . .).

The visitors are still learning about the giants' planet and social order during this season, and coping with their own individual motivations. This is especially true where Alexander Fitzhugh (Kurt Kasznar), an embezzler on the run with a million dollars, is concerned; he has a soft spot for the orphaned boy Barry Lockridge (Stefan Argrim), who looks up to him because Fitzhugh is wearing a US Navy commander's uniform (which is clearly a disguise, but one maintained for the run of the show), but otherwise is a sometimes unstable personality. The others aren't too much better -- Mark Wilson (Don Matheson) is a high-powered businessman and engineer who has an agenda of his own; and Valerie Scott (Deanna Lund) is a wealthy playgirl accustomed to getting her own way in most things. There were enough places for friction to keep the show interesting on a basic character level across the first season.

The first season credit sequence of the series has always been a point-of-interest for television and music mavens. Most of it is comprised of an animated motif in which a diminutive figure, representing the "little people," is being stalked by a much larger shadowy figure with a searchlight, while John Williams' sting-laden theme music plays, building gradually in intensity, in the background. Both the design and the music for this sequence bear a striking resemblance to the opening credits for Kraft Suspense Theater, which had aired across the early and middle 1960's on network television -- and had a similar musical accompaniment by . . . John Williams. ~ Bruce Eder, Rovi

Senator William J. Tadlock (Kirk Douglas) enlists the help of veteran scout Dick Summers (Robert Mitchum) to lead a wagon train of settlers from Missouri to Oregon in this plodding, routine western. A scared settler accidently shoots an Indian boy who is mistaken for a wolf, prompting Summers to order newlywed triggerman Johnny Mack (Michael Witney) to be hanged to avoid an Indian attack. Sally Field appears in her first big-screen role as the slatternly Mercy McBee. ~ Dan Pavlides, Rovi