Cathleen Summers Movies

Greed and obsession fuel a deadly showdown in this thriller. When Trina (Minnie Driver) was a girl, her mother and father were determined to find a fortune in diamonds that had supposedly been buried in the desert in Mexico many years before. Now that her parents have passed on, Trina has inherited their obsession, and continues to search for the stones against the advice of Frank (Stuart Wilson), a geologist and longtime friend of the family. But Trina is not about to give up, and when she discovers that a pair of escaped convicts (James Spader and Josh Brolin) have happened upon the diamonds, she is grimly determined to steal the jewels from the fugitives. Incidentally, Slow Burn features characters named Frank Norris and Paulina McTeague, apparent references to Erich Von Stroheim's Greed, which also deals with thieves trying to outwit each other in the desert, and was based on the novel McTeague by Frank Norris.
~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

The Sandlot is sparsely narrated by the main character (now an adult) who occasionally drops in on the action to comment on events or help move the story along. Tom Guiry plays Scotty Smalls, the shy new kid on the block who wants to join the rowdy pickup baseball team that plays every day in the neighborhood sandlot. But he doesn't know how to catch a baseball, and his stepfather (Dennis Leary) is too busy to teach him. He tries out for the sandlot gang anyway, and though he isn't very good, it turns out he's lucky: there happen to be only eight of them, and nine makes a team. The summer passes blissfully as Scotty learns to play ball under the wing of Benny Rodriguez (Mike Vitar), the oldest and best player, as well as Ham, Squints, Repeat, and the rest of the kid-eccentrics. The skies darken, however, when Benny literally knocks the stuffing out of the team's only baseball, a sign of impending doom, or worse, bad luck. Wanting to set things right, Scotty returns home and "borrows" his stepfather's ball, which he promptly uses to hit his first home run, knocking the ball clear out of the sandlot into mean old Mr. Mertle (James Earl Jones)'s junkyard, home to Mertle's legendary guard dog The Beast. Scotty admits that he took the ball without asking, and he naively explains that his stepfather will want it back since it had a woman's name written on it: some lady named Babe Ruth. Horror-stricken, the sandlot gang mobilizes to fetch the autographed ball from the clutches of The Beast, building a series of mechanical ball-retrieval machines which get progressively more complicated and preposterous as The Beast's size grows in their imaginations. ~ Anthony Reed, All Movie Guide

In this black teen comedy, a young man is thrilled that his kindly older brother has arranged for him to date the bombshell next door. To further impress her, little brother takes his sibling's shiny sports car. If he had known that there were a pair of corpses in the trunk though, the youth may have changed his mind. Matters get really messy when the cops pull him over and check out the trunk themselves. Soon he and his date find themselves pursued by the police, the tong and an irate florist. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Marisa Silver helmed this tightly directed hospital drama reminiscent of David Swift's 1962 The Interns. Jimmy Smits plays Dr. David Redding, who guides seven student doctors through their third year of residency at Los Angeles Central's medical school. The cast includes Laura San Giacomo as Lauren Rose, a hard-working waitress putting her uncaring husband Kenny (Jack Gwaltney) through medical school; Kenny eventually breaks down the resistance of cool fellow student Gena Wyler (Diane Lane). Kenny is also competing with doctor's son Michael Chatham (Adrian Pasdar), who wants to become the best surgeon at L.A. Central; Michael, however, has to reconsider his goals when he realizes that he also needs Gena's love. Bobby Hayes (Tim Ransom) and Suzanne Maloney (Jane Adams) are also struggling with medical school, but they are a support team who study, work, and even sleep together. Through all the competitions and love affairs it eventually takes the wisdom of a dying cancer patient (Norma Aleandro) to make the medical students realize the important things in life. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide

Though John Badham's Stakeout doesn't flinch in the violence department, the film concentrates primarily on characterization. Richard Dreyfuss and Emilio Estevez play a pair of Seattle detectives, assigned to capture escaped hood Aidan Quinn. The twosome spends much of the film on stakeout in a lonely, deserted house; the object of their scrutiny is Madeline Stowe, Quinn's former girlfriend. Pretending to be a telephone repairman, Dreyfuss plants a bug in Stowe's apartment--thereby inaugurating a romance that compromises the detective's objectivity. In the climax, Quinn gets the upper hand--at least until the fists start flying. Perfect as it stood, Stakeout didn't need to be elaborated upon with a sequel, but Another Stakeout was produced all the same. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this subpar western, gratuitous profanity and violence are at odds with the theme of rescuing a Native American from a marriage she does not want. A bearded Charleton Heston (whose son wrote the screenplay) is the fur trader Bill Tyler, out in the remote mountain ranges looking for a legendary valley where furry animals are plentiful. Brian Keith is his clownish, foul-mouthed sidekick. On their way to finding the best area to set their traps they encounter Running Moon (Victoria Racimo) who is in fact, running away from her husband Heavy Eagle (Stephen Macht. Several battles between Native Americans (portrayed by Caucasian actors) and the fur trappers keep the action moving. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide