John Phillips Movies
- 1997
From the mid-'60s up to the time of his death in 1992, Eddie Mabo was a man on a political mission to give aboriginal people the right to occupy their ancestral lands, lands that were taken away by the British government that declared that native people owned nothing because they had no concept of ownership. Mabo contended that he and his kin, as natives of Murray Island in the State of Queensland, had ancestral rights to the land and should be able to reclaim it. This documentary chronicles Mabo's lifelong fight, one he did not win until five months after his death. In Australia, the implications of his victory are indeed far-reaching, and these too are briefly outlined in the film. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi
A family is torn between their need to air out their dirty laundry and their habit of sweeping things under the rug in this emotional drama. Hal (Roy Scheider) and Lena (Blythe Danner) are a successful but emotionally frosty New England couple whose four adult children are coming home for Thanksgiving. Strapping Jake (Michael Vartan) brings along his new girlfriend Margaret (Hope Davis), but while her affection for him is obvious, he's not sure how he feels about her. Mia (Julianne Moore), an alternately reserved and sexually ravenous art gallery worker, also brings her current lover, the nervous and unstable Elliot (Brian Kerwin). Leigh (Laurel Holloman) seems happier and better adjusted than her siblings, but she still hasn't resolved her long-standing rivalry with Mia. And Warren (Noah Wyle), who hasn't seen his parents for three years, has a bitter grudge against his father and hasn't been able to get his former girlfriend Daphne (Arija Bareikis) out of his mind. Co-star Noah Wyle also served as associate producer. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi
- Starring:
- Noah Wyle, Arija Bareikis, (more)
- 1996
This intellectual, witty Australian drama offers an intriguingly sophisticated look into adultery. Too say too much about this plot would give away the secrets and surprises that gradually unfold, so what follows is the barest sketch. The story features two couples from Melbourne (both played by the same actors) whose lives and romantic troubles seem to overlap or perhaps intertwine in unexpected ways. University lecturer Christopher and his wife Sorrel comprise the main couple. A recent trip to Europe seems to have brought their marriage close to ruins. Avery and Gillian also experience marital turmoil when Avery gets involved with an older French seductress, Catherine. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi
- 1996
Sleazy real estate wheeler-dealer Ben Egan (Aden Young) is brought up short when a deal catastrophically falls through. After he hits a policeman, Egan winds up doing several months of community service at a youth drop-in center. Before that, he had been all set up to marry the boss's daughter (Tammy MacIntosh) and rise swiftly in the old man's firm. The woman who runs the center (Essie Davis), and one of the children get his attention and he begins to have charitable thoughts occasionally. However, old habits die hard. When he learns that the youth center is situated in a prime development area, he tries very hard to get hold of the property. Will his growing conscience break through the shell he has built around it in time to prevent him from closing this deal? ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi
- 1995
- R
In this unusual romantic drama from Australia, Harry (John Lynch) and Kate (Jacqueline McKenzie) are both patients at a psychiatric care facility. While in therapy, the two meet and fall in love, in spite of their troubled pasts. Despite the potential complications they might foresee with the relationship, Harry's main sources of support, his brother Morris (Colin Friels) and Morris's wife Louise (Deborra-Lee Furness), are more concerned with Harry's stability and happiness than anything else, and they soon give him their blessing to marry Kate. However, it soon becomes obvious that love does not conquer all. Kate becomes pregnant, and her doctors try to persuade her to have an abortion. They believe that her mental illness could be passed along to her child, that she would not make a fit mother, and that her medication for schizophrenia could have a harmful effect on the fetus. Kate is convinced that the angel Astral speaks to her, and that the child she carries is his earthly incarnation; she refuses to have an abortion, but compromises by not taking her medication while pregnant. Harry stops taking his as well, but the couple's happiness is short-lived when their increasing instability leads to tragic consequences. Angel Baby won seven Australian Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Actor, and Best Actress. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi
- Starring:
- John Lynch, Jacqueline McKenzie, (more)
- 1995
The Australian nuns profiled in this video provide an exceptional window in to how modern nuns are finding ways to combine older practices with more modern ones. As many know, most nuns long ago had to endure lives almost completely separate from secular culture and its unique forms of self-expression. Their daily lives were planned around extensive prayer and often long periods of silence. As more modern times and Vatican II rolled around, many nuns began to question the austere nature of their existence. Large numbers of them left their convents, questioning the vow of celibacy and other basic practices. Others chose to stay and redefine their daily lives. This is a respectful portrait that brings out the special individuality of some of the women who share their thoughts in this film. ~ Elizabeth Smith, Rovi
A criminal trying to reform is forced to endure the most humiliating punishment of all -- hanging out with his son -- in this family comedy. Ray Gleason (Ted Danson) is a thief whose ambitions far outstrip both his skill and his intelligence; Ray is just bright enough to have realized this, and he's decided to go straight and open a bake shop (he learned how to decorate cakes during his last stay in prison). However, Ray needs to raise some working capital, so in association with his buddies Bobby (Saul Rubinek) and Carl (Gailard Sartain) he is planning his last heist, in which they hope to walk away with a highly valuable collection of rare coins. Ray also happens to have an 11-year-old son, Timmy (Macaulay Culkin), whose mother died several years ago; Timmy has been living with his aunt, but when she gets married and goes away on her honeymoon, Timmy ends up staying with Ray. Timmy is a lot smarter than his dad and quickly figures out what Ray and his cronies have been up to; he's long felt a great deal of resentment toward his father for not being around when he needed him, so Timmy steals the loot from the robbery and uses it to blackmail Ray into spending some quality time with him. Timmy also thinks that it's high time Ray settled down, so when he notices that Theresa (Glenne Headly), an undercover cop, has been following Ray's trail, Timmy tries to play matchmaker and bring them together. Getting Even with Dad would prove to be the next-to-last screen appearance for former pre-teen superstar Macaulay Culkin; he was 14 when this film was released, and within five years he was a married man attending the Rhode Island School of Design. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi
- Starring:
- Macaulay Culkin, Ted Danson, (more)
- 1992
Lawn bowling is a very different sport from the kind that occurs indoors; it is an almost meditative exercise resembling nothing so much as horseshoes and is much favored by the elderly in one Sydney suburb. In this low-key comedy, the lad who works very diligently to keep the bowling green immaculate has just gotten out of jail. Despite his good intentions and energetic hard work, he's just not very effective. Maybe it's all the pot he and his wife have been smoking, as now the two of them are in debt to their dealer for thousands of dollars. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi
- Starring:
- Max Cullen
Bette Midler stars as Stella Claire, a working-class, fun-loving barmaid in northern New York State. A brief affair with handsome Stephen Dallas (Stephen Collins) produces a daughter, Jenny (Trini Alvarado), whom Stella insists upon raising alone, despite Dallas' marriage offer. As the years pass, Stella and Jenny are a happy pair. Stella gives up bartending to sell cosmetics, supported by her friend Ed (John Goodman), a bartender developing a crush on her and a problem with alcohol. Dallas has stayed involved with his beloved daughter from afar and is now a urologist in New York City, engaged to a book editor (Marsha Mason). As Jenny reaches adulthood, Stella becomes aware that life with her father would provide her daughter with opportunities that she'd never have otherwise, so she devises a painful, self-sacrificing scheme to drive Jenny from the nest. Although functional as a tearjerker, many of the themes in Stella simply don't make as much sense in a modern age of healthy, fractured families, muting the drama of the tale's earlier versions, specifically Stella Dallas (1937). ~ Karl Williams, Rovi
- Starring:
- Bette Midler, John Goodman, (more)
- 1989
In this downbeat drama, Sal (Nick Carrafa), a young Italian/Australian doctor, tries to deal with his growing sense of dislocation. At first he pals around with his chums, narrowly avoiding getting into big trouble. Then he starts going out with Katie (Kimberley Davenport), a girl with a very different background from his. After a brief romance, it seems to him that they have broken up. That doesn't stop his former girlfriend from having a fit when she discovers that he has slept with her roommate. This spare story is enlivened by a huge cast of secondary characters. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi
Following the disastrous Pirates (1986), director Roman Polanski got back on creative track with this finely-wrought thriller that, while failing to impress at the box office, was nevertheless his most critically well-received film of the decade. Harrison Ford stars as Richard Walker, an American doctor who has come to Paris, where he's scheduled to deliver a paper to a medical conference. Richard has brought along his wife Sondra (Betty Buckley), because Paris was the site of their honeymoon 20 years earlier. Sondra picks up the wrong suitcase at the airport, which leads to her kidnapping and an ever-more complicated quest that takes Richard into the seedy and dangerous underworld of European drug smuggling and terrorist arms sales. Along the way, he is rebuffed by skeptical officials at the American Embassy and meets Michelle (Emmanuelle Seigner), a sexy courier who agrees to help him in exchange for the money she's owed for trafficking in narcotics. Playing cleverly on American fears about Europe's Byzantine politics and "decadent" society, Frantic received, from many observers, perhaps the greatest compliment possible for a thriller, comparison to the work of Alfred Hitchcock. ~ Karl Williams, Rovi
- Starring:
- Harrison Ford, Emmanuelle Seigner, (more)
- 1988
- Add Mamas & the Papas: Straight Shooters to QueueAdd Mamas & the Papas: Straight Shooters to top of Queue
John Phillips, Michelle Phillips, Denny Doherty and Mama Cass are featured in this retrospective of their work as The Mamas & The Papas. Features the music that made them famous, discussions with surviving group members and film clips. Dick Clark, Mick Fleetwood and Joe Cocker also appear. ~ Rovi
- 1983
The eponymous Dusty is an appropriately named dingo, or wild dog. Roaming the fertile fields of Australia, Dusty is captured as a puppy. Though dingoes are normally averse to human companionship, Dusty attaches himself to an old, worn-out shepherd, played by Bill Kerr. The dog gives Kerr a reason for living, and vice versa. Be sure to have plenty of Kleenex handy for some of the mistier passages of Dusty. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
- Starring:
- Bill Kerr, Noel Trevarthen, (more)
Based on a novel by Walter Tevis, The Man Who Fell to Earth achieved cult film status for David Bowie's performance as Thomas Jerome Newton, aka "Mr. Sussex," and the imagery of director Nicholas Roeg, a former cinematographer. In this deeply allegorical science-fiction drama, Newton is an alien from a planet that is dying for lack of water, and he has been sent to earth to find a way to ship some of the earth's plentiful supply to his home planet. He arrives with a human-looking disguise, his knowledge of unusual technologies, his despair, and little else. Using his knowledge, he takes out patents on "his" inventions, aided by patent lawyer Oliver Farnsworth (Buck Henry). He skillfully parlays the money from these inventions and becomes a financial/industrial tycoon. These inventions, and others like them, along with his political and financial power, should make possible the transfer of water to his planet. But instead of pressing forward with plans to save his home planet, he becomes enamored of Earth's low-down ways and of his strange, passive relationship with his elevator-operator girlfriend, Mary Lou (Candy Clark). Meanwhile, his phenomenal rise from anonymity to power, and his eccentric behavior, spark the government's interest. Chemistry professor Nathan Bryce (Rip Torn) also comes calling, fascinated by the alien's history. As gin and despair slowly cripple him, he becomes consumed by memories of life on his doomed planet. The longer (140 minutes) and sexier British version of this film was toned down for its American release. Roeg, whose work has received polarized responses, also directed such distinctively stylized movies as Walkabout (1971) and Don't Look Now (1973). ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi
- Starring:
- David Bowie, Candy Clark, (more)
Edie Sedgwick,1960s heroine of decadence, is exploited from beyond the grave in this clumsily pieced together film taken from two unfinished Sedgwick vehicles -- one by Chuck Wein from 1967 displaying Edie at her peak as a Warhol star, and the other from 1970 by David Weisman and John Palmer, made when Edie appeared decimated from drug and alcohol addiction. The film is arranged in the form of a cinema verité examination of her life and lifestyle: the woman lives in an empty, covered-over swimming pool, surrounded by posters of herself. She prances around topless for a good portion of the film, the better to display the results of a generous addition of silicone. The film shows her reminiscing about the days when she was a "star" and when her drug highs were mellower. Sedgwick died of a drug overdose in 1971. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi
Gore Vidal's best-selling satiric novel gets an inarguably unique screen treatment in this off-center psycho-sexual farce. Fussy film buff Myron Breckinridge (Rex Reed) goes to Europe and gets a sex-change operation from a slovenly chain-smoking doctor (John Carradine) and returns to the United States as the glamorous and willful Myra Breckinridge (Raquel Welch). Myra appears at the door of former cowboy star-turned-acting school entrepreneur Buck Loner (John Huston), who also happened to be Myron's uncle; Myra insists she's Myron's widow and demands her fair share of Loner's inheritance to her late husband. Loner, suspicious of the appearance of Myron's bride, tries to find a way out of giving her any of his money, while giving Myra a job in his acting school to keep her busy. Myra's new career allows her to make the acquaintance of Leticia Van Allen (Mae West), an aging sexpot and talent agent who represents "leading men only." Through Leticia, Myra meets alpha-male aspiring star Rusty Godowsky (Roger Herren) and his naïve girlfriend Mary Ann Pringle (Farrah Fawcett); as part of her own bid to ferment sexual anarchy, Myra attempts to introduce Mary Ann to the pleasures of lesbianism, while forcibly expanding Rusty's sexual boundaries. In the midst of the action, director Michael Sarne uses clips from dozens of vintage Hollywood films of the 1930s and '40s as a comic counterpoint to the story. Both Gore Vidal and Rex Reed expressed their dissatisfaction with Myra Breckinridge after the film hit theaters, though Vidal has also claimed not have seen the finished product; the film has gone on to develop a devoted cult following, despite the fact the film's only authorized video release has been out of print since the late '70s. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi
- Starring:
- Mae West, John Huston, (more)
