John Morrissey Movies

Based on the play Dearly Departed by David Dean Bottrell and Jessie Jones (who also penned this screenplay), this new comedy from the director of Jason's Lyric looks at a family gathering after one of their clan dies of a stroke. In the midst of a sweltering summer, the Slocumb family convenes. They include Charisse (Jada Pinkett Smith), the long-suffering, frustrated wife of philandering Junior (Anthony Anderson); there's also the Bible-spouting Marguerite (Loretta Devine), who prays to save her hard-living son Royce (Darius McCrary) from a life on welfare. Lucille (Vivica A. Fox) is the devoted family peacekeeper who is struggling with a money-grubbing funeral director, and her husband Ray Bud (L.L. Cool J) has major contempt for his family and wishes he were burying them instead. Kingdom Come also features Cedric the Entertainer as an intestinally challenged reverend and Whoopi Goldberg as the family matriarch. ~ Jason Clark, All Movie Guide

Tony Kaye made his feature directorial debut with this dramatic exploration into the roots of race hatred in America. In a shocking opening scene, teen Danny Vinyard (Edward Furlong) races to tell his older brother, neo-Nazi Derek (Edward Norton), about the young blacks breaking into his car in front of the house, whereupon Derek gets his gun and with no forethought shoots the youths in their tracks. Tried and convicted, Derek is sent away for three years in prison, where he acquires a different outlook as he contrasts white-power prisoners with black Lamont (Guy Torry), his prison laundry co-worker and eventual pal. Meanwhile, Danny, with a shaved head and a rebellious attitude, seems destined to follow in his big brother's footsteps. After Danny writes a favorable review of Hitler's Mein Kampf, black high-school principal Sweeney (Avery Brooks) puts Danny in his private "American History X" course and assigns him to do a paper about his older brother, who was a former student of Sweeney's. This serves to introduce flashbacks, with the film backtracking to illustrate Danny's account of Derek's life prior to the night of the shooting. Monochrome sequences of Derek leading a Venice, California gang are intercut with color footage of the mature Derek ending his past neo-Nazi associations and attempting to detour Danny away from the group led by white supremacist, Cameron (Stacy Keach), who once influenced Derek. Director Tony Kaye, with a background in TV commercials and music videos, filmed in L.A. beach communities. Rated R "for graphic brutal violence including rape, pervasive language, strong sexuality and nudity." ~ Bhob Stewart, All Movie Guide

Robert Louis Stevenson's classic tale of a man whose scientific meddling has unexpected results gets a cross-gender update in this comedy. Richard Jacks (Tim Daly) is a research scientist trying to work his way up the ladder at a major perfume company when he inherits the notebooks of his great-grandfather, Dr. Henry Jekyll. Fascinated by Jekyll's ideas about the duality of man, Jacks starts performing experiments to refine his potion that would isolate man's good and evil natures. However, Richard's version has a very different result than the old Jekyll formula, instead of turning him into a snarling beast, the drug transforms him into Helen Hyde (Sean Young), a beautiful and powerfully sexy woman with a slight case of nymphomania. Jacks figures that a good looking woman willing to sleep with nearly anyone should have no trouble rising to a position of power within the company, so his alter-ego Helen may be his ticket to a room at the top. But this plan may require a bit of explaining to Jacks' girlfriend, Sarah (Lysette Anthony). The supporting cast includes Polly Bergen, Jeremy Piven, and Harvey Fierstein, who is so awestruck by Helen Hyde's allure that he's rendered heterosexual by the experience. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

A homeless teenager in Los Angeles manages to wind up sharing an apartment in a ritzy complex. One night he sees a beautiful neighbor swimming nude in the pool, when she is suddenly attacked by her crazed, insanely jealous husband. As he is drawn into his neighbor's life, what he doesn't realize is that he is being set up. ~ Brian Gusse, All Movie Guide

Some sources list John Morrissey as director of 9 1/2 Ninjas, while others credit Aaron Worth. There's no confusion, however, as to whom the "one-half" is. That honor goes to leading lady Andee Gray, who joins an all-male Ninja training group. Gray gets a big kick out of her lessons (no pun intended), until she realizes that she's been followed. It seems that a rival contingent of ninjas intends to assassinate her. And that's only one of the many surprises in store for the viewers of 9 1/2 Ninjas; this is no run-of-the-mill chopsocky effort, but a dizzy plunge into near-surrealism. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide