Ken Adam Movies

Stanley Kubrick was one of the most acclaimed and controversial filmmakers of his generation, but he was also an intensely private man who rarely gave interviews and produced most of his films under a shroud of secrecy, which tended to foster a great deal of rumor and speculation about his working methods. Jan Harlan, who worked as Kubrick's assistant and executive producer on several projects (and was also his brother-in-law), directed this documentary, which offers a rare in-depth look into Kubrick's career as a filmmaker, structured around interviews with a number of actors, writers, technicians, composers, friends, and family who speak on the record about his relentless perfectionism, his creative vision, his life both on and off the set, his relationships with actors, his unrealized projects, and his importance and influence as an artist. Among those who share their thoughts in Stanley Kubrick -- A Life In Pictures are actors Jack Nicholson, Tom Cruise, Nicole Kidman, Malcolm McDowell, Peter Ustinov, and Keir Dullea; writers Arthur C. Clarke and Michael Herr; special effects artist Douglas Trumbull; composers Wendy Carlos and Gyorgy Ligeti; filmmakers Woody Allen, Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, Paul Mazursky, and Sydney Pollack; and Kubrick's spouse Christiane Kubrick. Stanley Kubrick -- A Life In Pictures was originally produced as a television project, to be aired in three parts, though the project was shown in its entirety at the 2001 Berlin Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

Life is sweet for high-school English teacher and sports coach Howard Brackett (Kevin Kline); he's still living where he grew up, he has a good relationship with his father (Wilford Brimley) and mother (Debbie Reynolds), he's respected by his community, and he's about to marry Emily (Joan Cusack), his fiancée of three years. Fearing she was about to become an old maid, Emily has shed 75 pounds for the upcoming nuptials. But first, the entire town of Greenleaf, IN, settles in to watch the Academy Award telecast, because young stud star Cameron Drake (Matt Dillon), who attended Greenleaf High, has been nominated for an Oscar. What's more, he wins, and in his acceptance speech, singles out Howard -- and announces his favorite teacher is gay. Everyone in town is thunderstruck, including Howard himself. The media descend on the town, particularly Peter Malloy (Tom Selleck), whose job is hanging by a thread. Even worse, Howard's principal Tom Halliwell (Bob Newhart) is shaken by the news, and is toying with firing Howard. The beleaguered teacher tries to convince everyone (and himself) that he's as straight and macho as the next guy; he even tries to follow the rules on a motivational tape, "Be a Man." But his fondness for Barbra Streisand, his theatrical mannerisms, and the fact that he and Emily have yet to make love make everyone's eyebrows stay permanently raised. Meanwhile, out in Hollywood, Cameron, who's really a decent guy, learns about the problems his impulsive comment has caused, and heads back to Greenleaf to see what he can do to help. Howard's mother is fiercely determined to see at least one of her two sons wed -- Walter (Gregory Jbara), the other, is a doofus -- and as the wedding date draws nearer and nearer, poor Howard's life flies even farther out of control. ~ Bill Warren, Rovi

This emotion-filled story stars Whoopi Goldberg, Mary-Louise Parker, and Drew Barrymore as three women from different walks of life who find comfort in each other through tragedy. Parker plays Robin, an HIV-positive real estate executive who meets Jane (Goldberg), a lesbian lounge singer on her way to the West Coast who needs a driver. Robin volunteers for the job, and along the way, they stop in Pittsburgh to visit her friend Holly (Barrymore), who is pregnant and abused by her boyfriend. In an attempt to save Holly, all three decide to head West together to begin a new life. But they get only as far as Arizona before Robin falls ill and the three are forced to learn to rely on one another for growth and emotional sustenance. Jane, though concerned about Robin's condition, also finds herself with a romantic interest in her ailing companion. Holly confronts her need to be with abusive men, while Robin comes to grips with her fear of being alone and the realization of her own impending death. Fans of Herbert Ross' earlier Steel Magnolias (1989) might appreciate this movie, which tackles some of the same themes. Sometimes referred to as a "feminist road movie," the film deals with women who find one another in a time of crisis and realize that the bonds among women are more powerful than any of life's obstacles. ~ Don Kaye, Rovi

The ghoulish cartoon family created by Charles Addams returns for a second big-screen outing darker and nastier than the first. When Morticia Addams (Anjelica Huston) gives birth to new baby boy Pubert, the other Addams children, Pugsley (Jimmy Workman) and Wednesday (Christina Ricci), devise any number of ways to kill off their new sibling. This leads Morticia and her husband, Gomez Raul Julia, to hire a nanny (Joan Cusack) to oversee all three children. But the nanny has an agenda of her own, packing the Addams children off to a horrid parody of summer camp and setting out to seduce Uncle Fester (Christopher Lloyd), all with the goal of getting her hands on the Addams family fortune. Of course, the Addams eventually triumph, with this blacker-than-most satire extolling the virtues of eccentricity and non-conformity above all. It was followed by 1999's direct-to-video Addams Family Reunion, with Darryl Hannah and Tim Curry replacing Huston and the late Julia. ~ Don Kaye, Rovi

The demise of the Cold War rendered this flat and obsolete spy thriller, written and directed by Nicholas Meyer, mute upon its release in 1991. Gene Hackman plays Sam Boyd, a retired CIA agent, now making ends meet by engaging in industrial espionage. But Sam is recalled to duty and ordered to deliver a captured Russian spy, Pyiotr Grushenko (Mikhail Baryshnikov), to East Berlin for a prisoner exchange. Along with Pyiotr, Sam is also transporting $2 million in Columbian drug money to East Berlin. But due to a series of set-ups, Sam and Pyiotr finds themselves working together to keep from getting killed. Sam tries to get help from the CIA, but it turns out that the CIA (along with the KGB) wants them both dead. ~ Paul Brenner, Rovi

In this farcical comedy, Matthew Broderick plays Clark Kellogg, an aspiring director who arrives in New York City to attend film school. However, moments after he arrives in the city, he's robbed by Victor Ray (Bruno Kirby), leaving him no money for the $700 in books required by his instructor, Arthur Fleeber (Paul Benedict). A few days later, Clark runs into Victor and demands his money back, but Victor has already lost it (on a horse race in which he wasn't entirely sure the animal he bet on was a horse). Instead, he offers to fix Clark up with a job with his boss, an "importer and exporter" named Carmone Sabatini (Marlon Brando), who bears a stunning resemblance to Don Corleone in The Godfather. Clark's adventures with Sabatini are just beginning when he's instructed to pick up a package from the airport. Clark is expecting it to be contraband, and he's right, but not in the way he figured -- it turns out he's accepting delivery of a komodo dragon, which is to be served at a "gourmet club" specializing in dishes prepared from endangered species. Marlon Brando's hilarious comic variation on one of his best-known roles is the highlight of this film, but Bruno Kirby and Paul Benedict also deliver fine comic turns, and Matthew Broderick copes nobly with his role as the film's lone normal person. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

This historical drama, based on a novel by John Masters that was in turn inspired by actual events, follows William Savage (Pierce Brosnan), a British agent of the East India Company, as he is sent with his new wife to India in the early 19th century. While Savage holds the unusually progressive view that the people of India are human and deserve to be treated with dignity and respect, he is still a very proper subject of the British empire and behaves accordingly. One night, when he sees a group of seemingly crazed men rob and kill a defenseless woman, he demands to know what has happened. He learns that the killers were members of a bizarre cult called the Thugees; Savage is determined to do something about them, and he works his way into the group by disguising himself as one of their number; however, the more Savage tries to win the trust of the Thugees, the more he must act as one of them, which leads him into a murderous secret life of his own. The Deceivers was produced by Ismail Merchant, his first film with a director other than James Ivory. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

Agnes of God is an "opened up" adaptation of the minimalist stage play by John Pielmeier. Meg Tilly plays a young nun who secretly gives birth to a baby; the child's body is later found strangled to death. Court-appointed psychiatrist Jane Fonda is sent to the convent to investigate, a task made difficult by the weathervane behavior of mother superior Anne Bancroft. To draw out Tilly, who remembers nothing of the birth, Fonda suggests that hypnosis is called for. Playwright Pielmeier poses many questions--is Tilly a pure-and-simple murderess, or was there something "divine" in her act?--but offers frustratingly few answers. The evocative photography is by longtime Ingmar Bergman associate Sven Nykvist. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Adapted from Dennis Potter's landmark British TV miniseries and relocated to the United States during the Depression, Pennies from Heaven dramatizes how popular songs both shaped and reflected the thoughts of people living through economic (and emotional) hardship. Arthur Parker (Steve Martin) is a sheet music salesman who believes that he can spot a hit a mile away and wants to open his own store. But he can't get a bank loan and his wife Joan (Jessica Harper), who has savings left to her by her father, refuses to give him the money. Also, while Arthur has a fierce sexual appetite, Joan generally refuses his advances. While on the road, Arthur meets Eileen (Bernadette Peters), a shy schoolteacher as desperate for affection as Arthur is hungry for sex. They begin an affair, which leads to tragedy for both. Punctuating the drama of Pennies from Heaven are elaborate musical numbers in which the characters lip-synch to popular songs of the day, which at once lift their hopes and reflect their fears. Arthur's buoyant tap number to "My Baby Said Yes" and Eileen's saucy rendition of "Love is Good for Anything That Ails You" are reflections of their needs for money and love, and their pas de deux on "Let's Face the Music and Dance" is at once an escape and an acknowledgement of their hopelessness. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

Though not Ian Fleming's most famous James Bond novel, 1962's The Spy Who Loved Me was distinguished by the unique device of telling the story from the heroine's point of view; in fact, Bond doesn't make an appearance until the book is two-thirds over. This would hardly work in the film world's Bond franchise, so the original austere plotline of the novel was eschewed altogether in favor of a labyrinthine story involving outer-space extortion. The leading lady, a "hard-luck kid" in the original, is now sexy Russian secret agent Barbara Bach, who joins forces with Bond (Roger Moore, making his third appearance as 007) to foil yet another megalomaniac villain (Curt Jurgens), who plans to threaten New York City with nuclear weaponry. Beyond the eye-popping opening ski-jump sequence, the film's best scenes involve seven-foot-two Richard Kiel as steel-toothed henchman Jaws. Fifteen scriptwriters worked on The Spy Who Loved Me; only two were credited, including Bond-film veteran Richard Maibaum. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Tinto Brass scored his first major international success with this shocking but stylish tale of decadence in the Third Reich, inspired by a true story. Madame Kitty (Ingrid Thulin) is the proprietor of one of Berlin's most luxurious brothels, where many members of the Nazi high command are her regular customers. Kitty is approached by Helmut Wallenberg (Helmut Berger), an S.S. official who orders her to shut down her business and act as his partner as he founds a new bordello, which will exclusively cater to the elite of the Nazi Party and the German military. Unknown to Kitty, Wallenberg's brothel has been staffed entirely by women recruited by the S.S. for their loyalty to the Reich, and each room has been equipped with secret recording devices, which will allow Wallenberg and his staff to not only gather blackmail material against troublesome officers, but to discover who might be expressing disloyal thoughts about Hitler's regime when their guard is down. Margherita (Teresa Ann Savoy), a pretty young prostitute working for Kitty, is especially devoted to both her job and her country, but when she falls in love with Biondo (John Steiner), a German officer and frequent customer who has grown disillusioned with both the war and National Socialism, she discovers the true purpose of "Salon Kitty," and sets out to destroy the operation, with Kitty's help. Both a scandal and a success in Europe, Salon Kitty initially played the exploitation circuit in the United States in an edited version titled Madame Kitty, though the shorter version still earned an X rating. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

This suspense drama features an all-star cast, including Richard Benjamin, Dyan Cannon, James Coburn, James Mason, Ian McShane, and Raquel Welch. An interesting production fact about the film: its screenplay was written by actor Anthony Perkins and lyricist/songwriter Stephen Sondheim. Their careers depend on keeping in the good graces of Clinton (James Coburn), a powerful movie producer. That is why a group of actors, director, agents and other movie professionals (who hate each other) accept an invitation to spend a week on the producer's yacht on the anniversary of his wife's untimely death in a hit-and-run car accident. Once on board, Clinton requires them to play a vicious game which involves each person's revealing a damaging secret about themselves or someone else in the party. When one of the secrets to be revealed involves the hit-and-run murder of his wife, the game turns fatal. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

After George Lazenby portrayed James Bond in On Her Majesty's Secret Service, Sean Connery returned to the tux, gimmicks, and catchphrases of Secret Agent 007 in his penultimate Bond outing, Diamonds Are Forever. Fragments of Ian Fleming's original 1954 novel remain, including the characters of the alluring Tiffany Case (Jill St. John) and fey hitmen Wint (Bruce Glover) and Mr. Kidd (Putter Smith). The remainder of Richard Maibaum and Tom Mankiewicz's script diverges dramatically from the novel, involving Bond in a scheme by the insidious Ernst Blofeld (Charles Gray) to force the world powers to disarm so that he can take over the globe. Folksinger Jimmy Dean shows up briefly as a Howard Hughes-like reclusive billionaire, while Lana Wood (Natalie's sister) participates in one of the film's edgiest cliffhangers. Agreeing to make Diamonds Are Forever only because of the money offered him, Sean Connery parted company with the role for 12 years after this film; he returned to the role once more in 1983, for Irvin Kershner's underrated Thunderball remake Never Say Never Again. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi