Talisa Soto Movies

Miguel Pinero became a leading figure in New York's art scene during the 1970s as a poet, actor, and playwright whose vibrant, often pointed, work spoke directly to the lower classes and to disenfranchised minorities. As a founder of the influential Nuyorican Poets Cafe, his poetry soon became recognized as a forerunner to rap and hip-hop music. TV screenwriter turned director Leon Ichaso spins this impressionistic biographical look at this artist. Raised in an abusive family, Pinero (Benjamin Bratt) turns to streets for solace. Soon he is engaging in petty crime, drug dealing, and addiction. When he finds himself in Sing-Sing, he turns his experiences in prison into the play Short Eyes, which eventually garners him seven Tony awards in 1974. Uncomfortable with his new fame, he clings to his girlfriend, Sugar (Talisa Soto), and his childhood buddy, Miguel Algarin (Giancarlo Esposito), who is a literature professor and who co-founded the Nuyorican Cafe. Though Pinero makes cameos on such shows as Kojak, his art begins to suffer as he starts to succumb to his drug addictions. This film was screened at the 2001 Toronto Film Festival. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide

A man who fails to respect the dead pays a high price for his arrogance in this horrifying thriller. For decades, the city of New York has buried the bodies of the unknown and the destitute on Hart Island, a tiny slip of land near the Big Apple's harbor, with inmates from a nearby prison on hand to do the labor. Now, multi-millionaire land developer Mr. King (Malcolm McDowell) has decided to buy the island and build a resort. King scoffs when he's told it's bad luck to disturb the resting place of the dead, but he soon learns there's a kernel of truth in their warnings -- Hart Island is also home to huge swarms of disease-carrying flies, and when King, his associates, and a crew of prisoners are trapped on the island, there's no telling if they'll make it out alive as the insects try to claim the humans as their prey. Island of the Dead also stars Bruce Ramsay, Talisa Soto, and hip-hop artist Mos Def. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

In this suspenseful drama, a mentally unbalanced advertising executive's assistant schemes to insure that she gets a raise by seducing the boss. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

The beautiful vampire from space who starred in her own successful comic book series comes to the screen in this adaptation produced in part by Roger Corman and Forrest J. Ackerman. The planet Drakulon is populate by a race of vampires who are able to feed on the rivers of blood that flow naturally from Drakulon's oceans. But Vlad (Roger Daltrey) is an especially vicious blood-drinker who prefers to attack and kill others in order to satisfy his appetites. Vlad's appetite for violence leads him to kill the High Elder of Drakulon (Angus Scrimm), and Vlad, realizing he may have gone to far, flees to Earth to avoid capture by the authorities. The High Elder's daughter, sultry Vampirella (Talisa Soto), travels to Earth to capture Vlad and bring him back to Drakulon to face justice. On Earth, Vlad has become well-known rock singer Johnny Blood while slaking his thirst with a growing number of unfortunate victims in his spare time. Vampirella finds tracking him down harder than she expected and she soon enlists the help of modern-day vampire hunter Adam Van Helsing (Richard Joseph Paul). ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Building upon the popularity of Sports Illustrated's Swimsuit Issue, this video takes the viewers behind the scenes of the issue's many photo shoots for a glimpse at several of the world's top models. Following the standard "behind the scenes" format, the camera acts as a portal into the erotic world of half dressed women sprawled out on sandy beaches, giving the viewer a more in depth view of what went into producing the Swimsuit Issue magazine. It features an explicit view of models Angie Everhart, Rebecca Romjin, Stacey Williams and Daniela Pestova; as well as voiced over interviews from members of the photo shoot crew and the models that teamed up for the 1995 issue. Many of these interviews discuss how the location of the shoot was picked, the effort it took to capture the "one" shot and how the models were made to look so good. For those that are interested in the history of the Swimsuit Issue they can learn more from Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Video: 25th Anniversary. ~ Ed Atkinson, All Movie Guide

New York art dealer Arne Glimcher took his first crack at film directing with this florid, high-energy romance about two brothers who flee Cuba in the early 1950s to make it as musicians in the United States. Cynthia Cidre wrote the literate screenplay adapted from Oscar Hijuelos's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love. Cesar (Armand Assante) and Nestor Castillo (Antonio Banderas) are popular musicians on Havana's club circuit, but when they make enemies of the wrong people, they are forced to leave for New York City, the moody Nestor leaving behind his true love. In New York, the brothers work as meat-cutters during the day as Cesar tries to organize a band and make inroads into the lively New York music scene. Soon, as The Mambo Kings, they get club bookings and Cesar falls in love with a sharp-tongued cigarette girl, Lanna Lake (Cathy Moriarty), and Nestor with the beautiful Delores Fuentes (Maruschka Detmers), who wants to be a teacher. Cesar concentrates on singing and managing the band, while Nestor plays the trumpet and writes emotional songs of love. All seems to be going well until Cesar antagonizes the moneymen on the Latin nightclub circuit and they finds themselves playing bar mitzvahs. But after they're discovered by Desi Arnaz (Desi Arnaz Jr.), the group is prominently featured on I Love Lucy. Their popularity soars and they cut a successful album called "Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love." Cesar is glorying in his success, but Nestor is disappointed and longs to return to Cuba. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide

Silhouette, an excellent made-for-cable thriller, is the story of a businesswoman who is stranded by car trouble in a small town and who is the only witness to a murder. Samantha Kimball (Faye Dunaway), while waiting for her car to be repaired, stays in a rundown hotel in a small town. There, unable to sleep, she watches through her window as a car drives up to the home of a local waitress. She sees the shadow of a man get out and a violent attack and murder take place inside the home. After having made her statement to the police, Samantha becomes increasingly frightened as the killer begins to stalk her and her daughter, afraid that he can be identified. Dunaway is terrific as the woman who must fight to protect herself and her child, and she gives a cool, nuanced performance in a somewhat cliched role. The identify of the killer, not revealed until the bloody finale of the film, is not much of a surprise, but Silhouette, fast-paced and nicely directed by Carl Schenkel, makes the most of its familiar material and delivers an exciting, suspenseful lady-in-distress thriller. ~ Linda Rasmussen, All Movie Guide

Timothy Dalton is better in Licence to Kill than in his first James Bond endeavor (The Living Daylights), but he still seems uncomfortable on the right side of the law. This time around, Bond is working on his own rather than on behalf of the British Secret Service. His American friend Felix Leiter (David Hedison), an agent of the Drug Enforcement Administration, has been seriously injured by drug dealer Robert Davi, and 007 is out for blood. There is precious little time for the usual Bondian quippery and directorial campiness, resulting in a marked increase in bloodletting (including the "implosion" of secondary villain Anthony Zerbe). A climactic highway chase involving an oil tanker and a helicopter is stretched slightly beyond its value, but is still one of the best action setpieces in any Bond film. Licence to Kill was a refreshingly serious change of pace for the series, albeit one that tended to lessen Bond's box-office value. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide