Howard W. Koch Movies

Actor Edward Norton debuts as a director with this comedy-drama about love, friendship, and faith. Priest Brian Finn (Norton) and rabbi Jacob Schram (Ben Stiller) have known each other since childhood. When Anna Reilly (Jenna Elfman), whom they both knew as children, returns to New York, both men find themselves infatuated with her, sparking both rivalry and personal dilemmas: Brian has taken a vow of celibacy, and Jacob is allowed to marry only within his faith. Award-winning director Milos Forman appears in the supporting cast, alongside Anne Bancroft, Ron Rifkin, and Eli Wallach; the screenplay marks the debut of writer Stuart Blumberg, whom Norton met when they were both undergraduates at Yale. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

A high-profile slaying becomes the case of an ambitious attorney's career in this legal thriller based on the novel by William Diehl. Richard Gere stars as Martin Vail, a famed defense lawyer who volunteers his services to Aaron Stampler (Edward Norton), a Kentucky teenager charged with the murder of a Chicago archbishop. Covered with blood, Aaron was captured after a foot chase broadcast live on TV, making a gleeful Vail certain that he could raise his profile by defending the obviously guilty suspect. Assigned to prosecute is Assistant District Attorney Janet Venable (Laura Linney), who is Vail's ex-girlfriend. Vail's case becomes more complicated than he expected when a psychologist, Dr. Molly Arrington (Frances McDormand) concludes that Stampler suffers from multiple personality disorder. Vail also uncovers evidence that the archbishop was involved in a corrupt land scheme and may have molested young parishioners. Now the cynical, opportunistic attorney is faced with a daunting prospect, a client who may actually deserve his best defense. Its shocking, twist ending made Primal Fear (1996) a big box office hit and earned Norton, in his screen debut, an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor. ~ Karl Williams, All Movie Guide

Originally produced for PBS, the American Cinema series examines at length what is probably the leading American art form: film. Chock-full of clips from important films and interviews with the men and women who made them, each episode is an in-depth look at an important facet of the history of American film. This particular episode examines the studio system in the golden age of Hollywood movies. For a long period of time, Hollywood was run by three or four major film studios. Having squeezed out the independent producers, these studios were free to impose their idea of what a movie should be on the viewing public. Paramount Pictures is used as a case study. ~ Rob Ferrier, All Movie Guide

The Temp is yet another installment in the 1990s thriller genre of "the conniving woman who gets back at all who stand in her way to success," as seen in The Hand That Rocks the Cradle, Single White Female, Basic Instinct, The Crush, The Babysitter, et al. In this rehash of the perennial formula, Peter Derns (Timothy Hutton), a marketing executive for a cookie company that has recently been bought out by another firm, is forced to hire temporary help when his regular office assistant takes maternity leave. Into the breach comes Kris Bolen (Lara Flynn Boyle), whose efficiency saves the day for the clueless Peter. Unfortunately for Peter's associates, her efficiency extends to killing off Peter's regular assistant upon her return to work by arranging an accident with a paper shredder. But Kris doesn't stop there, and Peter begins to notice a high body count of dead employees falling around him. Peter suspects Kris may be the culprit, but since he has just emerged from treatment for acute paranoia, he can't decide if he is imaging things or not. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide

Phillip Noyce directed Joe Eszterhas's adaptation of Ira Levin's novel about voyeurism, starring Sharon Stone as Carly Norris, a book editor on the rebound from an emotionless seven-year marriage. Carly decides that a change of location will help her in the healing process, so she moves into a sleek Manhattan high-rise. In her new apartment, she meets a collection of curious neighbors --Vida (Polly Walker), who snorts cocaine along with ingesting all the dark secrets of the building and its tenants; Jack Landsford (Tom Berenger), a successful writer who also wants to also be successful with Carly; and Zeke Hawkins (William Baldwin), Carly's new landlord. Carly is attracted to Zeke, but she sees that he is hiding something from her. Unbeknownst to Carly, Zeke, an obsessive voyeur, watches his tenants from a bank of television screens at his headquarters. But when Carly discovers Zeke's voyeurism, she herself becomes obsessed with the daily lives of her neighbors. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide

After a recruitment scandal, a struggling college football team is forced to turn to a rag-tag group of misfits in this sports comedy. It seems that Texas State University's football team has relied on some rather unorthodox -- and illegal -- methods to gain players, resulting in the disqualification of most of the team's stars. The desperate coach (Hector Elizondo) must rely on the school's actual students, a motley crew of unlikely characters that includes a female place kicker and a quarterback in his thirties. Unexpectedly, however, the coach discovers that the passer still has a heck of an arm, and suddenly the team again has a chance. The expected comic complications and obvious bits of slapstick follow as this band of eccentrics struggles to find a way to victory, resulting in a familiar reprise of a well-worn storyline. ~ Judd Blaise, All Movie Guide

An interesting hybrid of popular film genres, Ghost showcases the talents of its entire cast. While out on the town one evening, New York couple Sam (Patrick Swayze) and Molly (Demi Moore) are confronted by a mugger. After submitting to his demands, Sam is murdered anyway. He then finds himself a disembodied spirit, invisible to the living world, wandering without hope until he finds a spiteful spirit aboard the subway (Vincent Schiavelli) who gives him some helpful pointers on how to co-exist. Soon Sam comes back into contact with those he knew in life, and he begins to learn piece-by-piece of his close friend and co-worker Carl's (Tony Goldwyn) embezzling plot which caused his death; the apparent mugging was, in fact, a premeditated murder. In the meantime, Carl has designs on Molly, and Sam is determined to extract revenge. He contacts a psychic (Whoopi Goldberg), and together, the two set out to serve justice and stop the maniacal Carl from getting to Molly. Blending comedy, romance, action, and horror, Ghost was a box-office smash and managed to garner five Academy Award nominations, including "Best Picture," "Best Supporting Actress" (Goldberg), "Best Original Screenplay," "Best Editing," and "Best Score"; Goldberg won her first Oscar. ~ Jeremy Beday, All Movie Guide

Set in the Manhattan street milieu that served him well in West Side Story, Robert Wise’s Rooftops tells the story of T, a quiet, soft-spoken teen-ager who has left his broken home and is living in a makeshift shelter in an old water tower on top of an abandoned tenement building. There are other kids like him, including Squeak, a talented graffiti artist who joins T after an altercation involving his mother’s boy friend. T and Squeak manage to scrape together what little money they need through minor sins (stripping cars, etc.), and at night all these street inhabitants get together in a vacant lot to “combat” dance, in which they use a combination of karate and dancing to force an opponent off of a platform. Into this mix comes Lobo, a drug dealer who moves into T’s building and turns it into a crack house. Lobo’s beautiful cousin Elana serves as his lookout – not because she wants to, but because her father’s heart attack has left her family in dire financial straits. T and Elana become interested in each other, but T and Lobo are at odds with each other – which fact leads to a showdown in which T must put his “combat” skills to good use. ~ Craig Butler, All Movie Guide

A six-hour adaptation of Danielle Steel's best-selling novel, the ABC miniseries Crossings began on board a transatlantic ocean liner in 1938. In the course of a truly eventful sea voyage, a torrid romance developed between powerful American steel magnate Nick Burnham (Lee Horsley) and Liane DeVilliers (Cheryl Ladd), the wife of French ambassador Armand DeVilliers (Christopher Plummer). This indiscretion would ultimately embroil both characters in the political intrigues leading up to WWII, with a rousing denouement in Nazi-occupied France just after America's entry into the war. To give the project a semblance of verisimilitude, several prominent historical figures flitted in and out of the action, notably Mr. and Mrs. Franklin Delano Roosevelt and France's Marshal Petain. Even so, most of the audience's interest was focused on the antics of Nick Burnham's hot-to-trot wife Hilary, played by Jane Seymour. Billed near the bottom of the huge cast was future Cheers and Frasier star Kelsey Grammer as "Craig Lawson." Partially filmed on the old British liner Queen Mary (then dry-docked as a tourist attraction), Crossings originally aired from February 23 to 25, 1986. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The Keep is an ambitious visual feast from director Michael Mann, whose previous effort was the moody, stylish Thief, and who would soon produce the quintessential pastel-colored '80s TV series Miami Vice. Adapted from the novel by F. Paul Wilson and set in German-occupied Romania of 1943, the film introduces the invaders to the dark presence lurking within the walls of an ancient fortress in the Carpathian Alps -- a presence which doesn't take well to unwanted guests. When soldiers under the command of Captain Woermann (Jurgen Prochnow) begin to die horribly, he receives the unwanted assistance of Nazi Major Kampffer (Gabriel Byrne), who immediately assumes command and forcibly enlists the aid of the local expert on ancient languages, the Jewish Doctor Theodore Cuza (Ian McKellen), in the translation of the cryptic writings left near a murdered soldier's body. When Cuza comes face-to-face with the Keep's ancient resident -- an ethereal creature which gains strength by draining the life-force from its enemies -- he forms a pact with the creature in the hope that it will escape and destroy Hitler's armies. When a mysterious stranger (Scott Glenn) arrives at the nearby village and befriends Cuza's daughter Eva (Alberta Watson), he reveals the true nature of the beast within the Keep, as well as his intent to destroy it before Cuza can release it -- a task which, if failed, will spell doom for all mankind. The film's fever-dream-logic casts a hypnotic spell -- ably assisted by Tangerine Dream's pulsating, ethereal music (including electronic variations on a theme by Thomas Tallis) -- with a story that seems to play by the Keep's own eerie supernatural rules. ~ Cavett Binion, All Movie Guide

In the dead of a Moscow winter, three bodies are found in Gorky Park. Police Inspector Renko (William Hurt) is unable to identify the corpses, since even their fingerprints have removed. For reasons unknown to him, Renko's investigation is somehow being stymied by his higher-ups. Ferreting out information on his own, Renko makes the acquaintance of Soviet dissident Irina (Joanna Pacula), a friend of one of the victims, and Lee Marvin as Armand Hammer-style American businessman. As in Martin Cruz Smith's novel, the identity of the killer is not as well hidden as the reasons behind the killing. "Glasnost" had not yet taken effect in 1983, thus Gorky Park was filmed in Finland rather than Russia. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

A special-effects laden medieval fantasy adventure, Dragonslayer centers on the attempts of a young sorcerer's apprentice to defeat a vicious dragon and save a lovely young maiden. Peter MacNicol stars as the young Galen, an aspiring magician under the tutelage of the aging Ulrich (Ralph Richardson). A nearby village turns to the pair for help when their leader begins proffering sacrifices of young virgins to satisfy a vicious dragon. The two immediately set out for battle, becoming even more determined when a courageous princess offers to sacrifice herself to the creature. Unfortunately, Ulrich's failing abilities force Galen into the center of the conflict, where the uncertain young boy must prove himself under fire. The suitably mythic if somewhat predictable story is told straightforwardly, culminating in a spectacular battle against the beast, featuring Academy Award-nominated visual effects. Despite its visual flair and relatively positive reviews, the film received mediocre response at the box office, as some criticized the film's violence as too intense for its intended younger audiences. ~ Judd Blaise, All Movie Guide