Bernard Hill Movies

In flashback, we learn how nerdish computer whiz Bernard Hill has gotten himself involved with nasty gang boss Richard Hope. When Hill's wife leaves him and his stepson, he gets drunk and loses his job; before he cleans out his desk, he sells one of his "worthless" computer tapes to Hope. The latter kidnaps Hill's son, forcing the computer geek to do a printout of the tape. The information contained therein turns out to be a map of the National General Bank security system. From this point onward, be prepared for lots of twists, double-crosses and surprises. The question posed by Bellman & Ture: will Bernard Hill, sucked into the criminal gang, retain his own honesty despite big-money temptation? ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

A biographical drama about the life of great Russian filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein), Eisenstein stars Simon McBurney as its eponymous protagonist. Beginning in 1922, when the young Eisenstein, a former Red Army engineer, became the protégé of avant-garde theatre director Meyerhold (Jonathan Hyde), the film covers Eisenstein's life, work, and political struggles through three decades, set in such disparate locales as the Ukraine and Mexico. ~ Rebecca Flint Marx, All Movie Guide

Part of a television series entitled "The Shakespeare Plays," this is the conclusion of the Henry VI chronicles, which ends with the Duke of Gloucester's plan to murder Henry VI. ~ Tana Hobart, All Movie Guide

Former Monty Python members Terry Jones, Eric Idle, John Cleese, and Michael Palin were reunited by director Jones for this live-action adaptation of the 1908 children's fantasy classic by Kenneth Grahame (1859-1932). The actors have only slight physical changes to suggest animal characteristics, plus tails protruding from their Edwardian-style costumes. In pre-WW I England, fascist Weasels prowl the countryside, forcing modest Mole (Steve Coogan) from his underground home after the Weasels acquire the meadow from wealthy, waddling Mr. Toad (Jones). Toad's inheritance is leaking away because of his fascination with the recently invented motorcar. After Mole takes shelter with refined Rat (Idle), the two set out for Toad's cavernous mansion. Toad crashes into another vehicle, but unfortunately, his attorney (Cleese) has nothing nice to say in Toad's defense. Toad's behavior in court prompts the judge (Stephen Fry) to give him a century-long jail sentence. Rat and Mole plan to spring Toad with the help of the hibernating Badger (Nicol Williamson), but Toad simultaneously puts his own escape plan into motion. Back at Toad Hall, the Weasels construct a dog-food factory and intend to destroy the main house by blowing it up-so the threatened animals make plans to retake Toad Hall.

Crew members who worked on past Python films include James Acheson (production/costume design) and John Du Prez (original music and songs). Lawrence Van Gelder (New York Times) reviewed, "The Wind in the Willows, brimming with verbal and visual wit and imagination, driven by high adventure, reveling in English eccentricity, enlivened by bursts of song, unafraid of ideas and filled with color and splendid performances, exposes most other movies intended to attract children as out-and-out pap." This film should not be confused with the 1996 animated adaptation which also has Michael Palin in the cast. Filmed at Burnham Beeches (in Buckinghamshire, England). Other earlier versions: the second half of Disney's animated The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad (1949); live-action by the Minneapolis Children's Theatre (1983); stop-motion animation for British TV (1983); 1982 stop-motion animation by John Semper (Spider-Man); and Rankin-Bass animation for U.S. TV (1987). ~ Bhob Stewart, All Movie Guide

This film offers a glimpse into the abuse of disabled people in residential homes while also offering a look into the human spirit. The Skallagrigg is said to be "the mythical protector of disabled people," and 16 year old Esther who suffers from cerebral palsy wants to find him. Esther had lived most of her life in a rehab center for the handicapped. When her widowed father John, finally comes to take her out, Esther is bitter until she convinces him to help her quest for the Skallagrigg. They are accompanied by Esther's friends Raj, a cynical young man in a wheelchair, and Tom who suffers from Down's syndrome. Esther and John become closer as they discover that the Skallagrigg is a really a palsied fellow named Arthur who has been horribly abused in a nursing home. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Tom Roberts, an Emmy-winner for Mother Russia's Children, directed this documentary about Josef Stalin's efforts to build an 800-mile railroad in the Arctic Circle during the late 1940s and early 1950s, to provide a defense of the northern borders of the Soviet Union. The huge work force (drawn from the gulag prison system) faced brutal conditions (starvation, freezing cold, dysentery), and many died. After 500 miles of track was in place, the project was abandoned 20 days after Stalin's death in 1953. Archival footage is intercut with survivor interviews. Filmed across Siberia, this is the second in HBO Signature's "Double Take" series, launched with Diary of a Terrorist: Mikdad, and it premiered November 8, 1998 on HBO Signature. ~ Bhob Stewart, All Movie Guide

Based on a novel by David Garnett, Sailor's Return is a British Victorian-era domestic drama, with plenty of domesticity and precious little drama. Tom Bell stars as a sailor who returns to his home village with his new bride (Shope Soleinde). The bride is black; the village is aghast. Struggling against the prejudice of the townsfolk and his own doubts about the wisdom of his union, Bell opens a pub. No distributor wanted to have anything to do with Sailor's Return, a dilemma due less to the film's subject matter than to its production ineptitudes. The film finally got its first showing on British television, two years after its completion. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Peter Greenaway wrote and directed this typically surreal and iconoclastic black comedy. Three generations of women who share the same name -- 63-year-old Cissie Colpitts (Joan Plowright), her daughter Cissie Colpitts II (Juliet Stevenson), and granddaughter Cissie Colpitts III (Joely Richardson) -- have all discovered the same way of dealing with their marital problems. The senior Cissie has drowned her husband Jake (Bryan Pringle) in the bathtub, her daughter sent her spouse Hardy (Trevor Cooper) to a watery grave in the ocean, and the youngest Cissie sent her husband Bellamy (David Morrissey) down in a swimming pool. Needless to say, local coroner Henry Madgett (Barnard Hill) has some questions about this sudden rash of drownings among the Colpitts husbands, and again all three women respond in the same way: they promise to sleep with Henry in exchange for recording the deaths as accidental (though none of the Cissies make good on this promise). When the local gossip mill begins working overtime about this sudden rash of water-related deaths, Henry's teenage son Smut (Jason Edwards) comes to the aid of the Cissies and organizes a tug-of-war, with he and the Colpitts women on one side and the doubting townspeople on the other (and, of course, a river in the middle). Along the way, Greenaway often stops to contemplate his obsessions with literature, astronomy, and numbers. Drowning by Numbers was released in Europe in 1988, but didn't find its way to American screens until 1991, following the success of Greenaway's The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

A woman is taken on a voyage to the other side of sanity in this moody thriller. Dr. Miranda Grey (Halle Berry) is a clinical psychologist who works alongside her husband, Dr. Doug Grey (Charles S. Dutton), in the mental ward of a top security prison, where Miranda has been devoting much of her attention to a clever but deeply disturbed murderer named Chloe (Penélope Cruz), who shares gruesome tales of torture and violence that may or may not be based in fact. One night, Miranda has a hideous nightmare in which a chance meeting with a strange young girl leads to a terrifying journey into madness. Once she wakes, however, Miranda discovers that the real horror has just begun -- Doug has been brutally murdered, and the evidence points to Miranda as the prime suspect. She soon finds herself a patient in the same facility where she once treated others, and finds that her claims of innocence and sanity do little to convince Dr. Pete Graham (Robert Downey Jr.), the psychologist assigned to her case. Gothika marked the American debut of acclaimed and controversial French filmmaker Mathieu Kassovitz. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

A moribund nightclub on the fringes of Liverpool's sprawl is the primary setting for this frenetic, dark, and confusing comedy done in a heavy regional "dialect" by director Peter Smith. Set on New Year's Eve, the film chronicles the rivalry between elderly Irish Catholic and Protestant attendees at a party held in a gritty pub in Liverpool. Mixed in with the warring oldsters are some shady types such as Billy the Beast, the killer of an Ulster terrorist. The club's new manager has a talent for dealing with mayhem and violence, but his first challenge lies in handling the punk rock band perversely scheduled to entertain the oldsters by the disgruntled former manager. After that challenge, he is faced with a magician on the verge of a nervous breakdown and other kinds of chaos that tear through the place. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide