Valerie Curtin Movies

Barry Levinson directed this cautionary fantasy fable--a triumph of production design--concerning the clash between benevolent, funny toys and malevolent, violent war toys and video games. Donald O'Connor is the kindly, gentle Kenneth Zevo, founder of Zevo Toys. The workers love him and the love they feel for Zevo comes through in the lovingly cute toys they produce. His son Leslie (Robin Williams) is an eccentric inventor who concentrates on coming up with different styles of plastic vomit and over-sized ears. His addle-headed daughter Alsatia (Joan Cusack) enjoys trying out all of Leslie's inventions. But their innocent, idyllic existence is soon to be shattered. Kenneth is dying and he is reluctant to bequeath the factory to the immature hands of Leslie and Alsatia. He finally decides to pass on his factory to his three-star general brother (Michael Gambon), reasoning that the general will run the factory efficiently and prod Leslie and Alsatia into adulthood. When Kenneth dies, the general and his army surplus son Patrick (LL Cool J) immediately turn Zevo Toys into an oppressive fascistic environment. The general also stops production of the innocent Zevo products and forces the workers to manufacture violent interactive video games and sadistic war toys. Leslie must rouse himself out of his over-long childhood to preserve the tradition of Zevo Toys. Although Toys did not fare well at the box office, it features a stunning combination of production design by Ferdinando Scarfiotti and art direction by Edward Richardson. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide

It took nearly two years after its completion for Big Trouble to reach the big screen. Peter Falk and Alan Arkin are respectively cast as a shady wheeler-dealer and an uptight family man. Strapped for the cash necessary to send his son to Yale, Arkin reluctantly enters into a murder scheme with Beverly D'Angelo. She is married to Falk, who, though he hasn't got long to live due to a heart ailment, may very well spend every penny D'Angelo has before he expires. Arkin is persuaded to kill Falk before this happens, then split the money with D'Angelo. To Arkin's amazement he finds himself the victim of a carefully prepared confidence scam engineered by Falk and D'Angelo. Now that he has a hold over Arkin, Falk gets the poor fellow mixed up in yet another "perfect crime". ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This remake of the 1948 Preston Sturges classic stars Dudley Moore as the symphony conductor who imagines ways to get back at the wife he believes is unfaithful to him. Moore plays Claude Eastman, the conductor of a prestigious sympathy, who suspects that his actress wife Daniella (Nastassja Kinski) is fooling around behind his back with the orchestra's handsome soloist, Maxmillian Stein (Armand Assante). The tip comes courtesy of Norman Robbins (Albert Brooks), Daniella's brother. As Claude is conducting a symphony, an elaborate plot plays out in his head -- he will murder his unfaithful wife to get revenge on her. The plot is simpler and more straightforward than the original version, in which the conductor harbored three separate elaborate fantasies. ~ Michael Betzold, All Movie Guide

In this romantic drama, Treat Williams plays Cletus, a rather unpleasant and morally shaky man desperate to keep his mitts on the one-million-dollar inheritance bequeathed to himself and his siblings. He improbably accepts a job as a social worker, then becomes emotionally involved with Jeorge (Gabriel Swann), a little boy torn away from his wrongly convicted and incarcerated mother., Cletus then sets about reuniting Jeorge with his mother. Along the way, he falls in love with Kay (Lisa Eichhorn. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Richard Donner directed this compassionate tale concerning the daily struggles of handicapped citizens. The film deals with the volatile relationship between Roary (John Savage), who has unsuccessfully tried to kill himself, and the hair-trigger Jerry (David Morse), a basketball player who has no money to pay for an operation to repair his knee. Roary, who has been permanently crippled after jumping off a building, travels an emotional route from being deeply disturbed and embittered to slowly regaining confidence in himself. Helping him along the road to emotional recovery is Louise (Diana Scarwid), a young woman dealing with the handicapped who, in the process, comes to terms with her own limitations. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide

Norman Jewison's blackly satirical look at the American justice system has gained in stature as one of the more incisive social commentaries of its time. Al Pacino plays Arthur Kirkland, an incorruptible attorney who attempts to initiate reforms in the Maryland justice system. Kirkland is haunted by the fates of two past clients, one of whom committed suicide in jail; the other is still alive but is locked up on a trumped-up traffic violation. The ability of power and money to distort the pursuit of justice becomes all too clear as Kirkland finds out how deeply the rot has spread. He finally retaliates by representing a repulsive judge (John Forsythe) accused of rape. Pacino's and Forsythe's performances are intense and powerful. Many critics found the film biting and almost painful in its razor-sharp indictment of the justice system, while others declared the script too outrageous. ~ Don Kaye, All Movie Guide

Based on the 1976 autobiography My Luke and I by Eleanor Gehrig and Joseph Durso, Love Affair: The Eleanor & Lou Gehrig Story provides a slightly different slant on the events previously dramatized on film as Pride of the Yankees (1942). The story is told in flashback from the point of view of the wife of baseball's "Iron Man". Sitting in a deserted Yankee stadium, Eleanor (Blythe Danner) relates her tale to her biographer Joseph Durso (Robert Burr). She recalls how she met the painfully shy ballplayer Lou Gehrig (Edward Herrmann) on a blind date in 1933. She remembers her battle of wills with Lou's domineering and possessive mother (played with a nearly impenetrable foreign accent by Patricia Neal), and her 1934 elopement with her "Luke." Other memories include the New York Yankees' goodwill trip to Japan, where relationships became strained between teammates Gehrig and Babe Ruth (Ramon Bieri). Also recalled is the fact that Lou played 2130 consecutive games (a record was only recently broken by Cal Ripken Jr.). Eleanor's story ends inevitably with Lou's slow death from amyotropic lateral sclerosis. In summing up, Eleanor insists that despite the tragic final years, she wouldn't have traded her short time as Mrs. Lou Gehrig for anything. Edward Herrmann took pride in the fact that his portrayal of Lou Gehrig won the unqualified praise of the real Eleanor (though Herrmann learned to bat southpaw for the role, he is seen actually playing baseball only once) Originally scheduled for broadcast on October 9, 1977, the made-for-TV Love Affair was bumped by a World Series playoff game; it was rescheduled for January 15, 1978--smack dab opposite the Super Bowl. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The seemingly lighthearted title of this made-for-TV movie obscures the film's somber overtones. Good Times star Jimmie Walker was past 30 when he starred as teenaged athlete Morris Bird III in The Greatest Thing That Almost Happened. Stricken with leukemia, Morris nonetheless intends to play in an upcoming basketball tournament. His own personal tragedy is compounded by the surprisingly aloof behavior of his father (James Earl Jones). Set during the 1950s, the film admirably evokes its time-frame without hitting the audience over the head with its attention to period detail. Based on a novel by Don Robertson, The Greatest Thing That Almost Happened was first aired October 26, 1977. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Silent Movie is just that: a totally nonverbal comedy, save for one single line. Director Mel Brooks stars as a once-famous comedy director, who with his faithful assistants Dom DeLuise and Marty Feldman return to Hollywood with plans for a comeback. Brooks wants to return to the good old days by producing a silent movie (he explains this via subtitle). Producer Sid Caesar is agreeable, provided Brooks can line up top stars. In a series of vignettes better seen than described, Brooks persuades Burt Reynolds, Liza Minelli, Paul Newman, James Caan and Anne Bancroft (Brooks' real-life wife) to star in his project. The only holdout is mime Marcel Marceau, who after a few moments of walking against the wind shouts the film's solitary line: "No!" Meanwhile, the crooked executives of the Engulf and Devour conglomerate want to take over Caesar's studio and are worried that Brooks' film might be so huge a hit that Caesar won't be interested in selling. To prevent this, the conglomerate dispatches sexy Bernadette Peters to lure Brooks into drink and ruination. The film's climax is lifted from the 1943 Olsen and Johnson film Crazy House). Featured in brief comic cameos are Harry Ritz as the man with half a suit, Charlie Callas as the blind man, Dom DeLuise's wife, Carol Arthur, as the incredibly pregnant woman, Fritz Feld as the headwaiter (whose trademarked "Pop" is conveyed on a subtitle) and Henny Youngman as the diner with a fly in his soup. Co-writers Ron Clark, Rudy DeLuca and Barry Levinson also show up on screen as three of the Engulf & Devour minions. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Not everything Henry Fonda did was Grapes of Wrath or Mister Roberts. In the enjoyable low-budget "road" flick The Great Smokey Roadblock, Fonda plays a worn-out trucker named Elegant John. Anxious to make one last, big haul before retiring, Fonda loses his 18-wheeler to the repo men. He steals his rig back, then further thumbs his nose at the law by hauling a group of prostitutes across the border as a favor to his old flame, bordello madam Eileen Brennan. This rollicking film ends on an unexpected--but logical within the framework--tragic note. Filmed in 1974, The Great Smokey Roadblock lay on the shelf for nearly two years. Despite a plethora of illnesses, Fonda is in fine fettle, delivering one of his sprightliest latter-day performances. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Martin Scorsese's first Hollywood studio production also marked his first (and only) foray into a woman-centered story. Alice Hyatt (Ellen Burstyn), a resigned Southwest housewife, takes advantage of her trucker husband's sudden death to hit the road with her bratty son Tommy (Alfred Lutter) and pursue her childhood dream of a singing career. She finds a job as a lounge singer, but after a horrific encounter with an abusive new beau (Harvey Keitel), she flees and winds up taking a waitress job at Mel's Diner, run by gruff cook Mel (Vic Tayback). With her career on hold, Alice soon finds strength and self-worth through her friendship with the other waitresses, saucy Flo (Diane Ladd) and spacy Vera (Valerie Curtin). When sensitive rancher David (Kris Kristofferson) starts courting her, Alice wonders if she wants to abandon her goals for domesticity again. To contrast Alice's dream life with her reality, Scorsese created a stylized opening sequence of Alice as a child reminiscent of The Wizard of Oz, Duel in the Sun and Gone With the Wind, before shifting into the present-day atmospheric immediacy of location shooting and scenes built out of improvisations. That opening sequence alone cost over twice as much as Scorsese's debut feature, Who's That Knocking At My Door?. ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide