Tommy Thompson Movies

Director Robert Altman reteams with Cookie's Fortune scribe Anne Rapp for this tale of a Dallas gynecologist and the parade of anxious patients, haggard family members, and potential love interests who come his way. Richard Gere plays the titular role of Dr. Sullivan Travis, a calm, successful, and much sought-after ob-gyn who witnesses his normally stable life come apart over the course of one rainy autumn. As the film opens, Dr. T and his wife Kate (Farrah Fawcett) are preparing for the wedding of their Dallas Cowboys cheerleader daughter Dee Dee (Kate Hudson). Their other daughter -- the Kennedy-assassination conspiracy theorist Connie (Tara Reid) -- has her doubts about the impending nuptials, but Dr. T chalks them up to routine sibling jealousy. Meanwhile, escaping a messy divorce, boozy sister-in-law Peggy (Laura Dern) moves into the Travis household with her three toddler daughters in tow. For release, Dr. T finds solace target shooting and golfing (occasionally at the same time) with his buddies, and at his country club, he meets a beguiling golf pro, Bree (Helen Hunt). When the childlike Kate loses her grip on reality during a flatware shopping spree, Bree offers to give the kindly doctor some lessons in his swing -- both on and off the fairways. Dr. T had its North American Premiere at the 2000 Toronto International Film Fest. ~ Michael Hastings, All Movie Guide

Season three of Hearts Afire finds conservative political functionary John Hartman (John Ritter) still living in his hometown with his worldly, liberal journalist wife Georgie Anne (Markie Post), where they continue to churn out the local newspaper, "The Daily Beacon," with the help of John's lifelong pal Billy Bob Davis (Billy Bob Thornton) and Georgie Anne's acerbic gal-pal Madeline Stoessinger (Conchata Ferrell). Although the setting and most of the previous season's cast is intact, there are a couple of significant changes during season three. For one, J. Skylar Testa has replaced Justin Burnette in the role of the Hartmans' oldest son Ben. And for another, Georgie Anne has given birth to a daughter. Although the series' locale switch from Washington D.C. to the Deep South during season two had given Hearts Afire a small boost in the ratings, the third season episodes suffered from the stiff competition of Fox's America's Most Wanted -- and then, after switching from Saturday to Wednesday night, the series was at the mercy of another opposing Fox show, Beverly Hills 90210. Hearts Afire was canceled in February of 1995, with only 13 of the series' final 14 episodes seeing the light of day on CBS. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Season one of Hearts Afire takes place in Washington D.C., where transplanted Southerner John Hartman (John Ritter) has relocated as chief of staff to ultra-conservative Senator Strobe Smithers. Recently divorced and the father of two sons, Ben (Justin Burnette) and Elliott (Clark Duke), Hartman has developed a mile-long misogynistic streak, fueled by the calculated bitchery of Mavis Davis (Wendie Jo Sperber), the politically ambitious wife of his best friend and fellow senatorial aide Billy Bob Davis (Billy Bob Thornton), and by the vapidity of Senator Smithers' -- ahem -- secretary, the voluptuous Dee Dee Starr (Beth Broderick). But what has really turned John against the opposite sex is the fact that his wife has left him not for another man, but for another woman! Thus, when liberal journalist Georgie Anne Lahti (Markie Post), broke and jobless after years of circling the globe and filing left-of-center news reports, comes to Smithers' office hoping to sign on as his press secretary, John's first instinct is to boot her out. But despite this, and the vituperative political arguments between the two of them, John agrees to let Georgie Anne have the job, and Georgie Anne, against her better judgment accepts. The reason? John has the hots for Georgie Anne -- and the feeling is mutual! Circumstance dictates that Georgie Anne move into the house occupied by John and his sons, which only intensifies the torrid feelings between the two protagonists. Even the put-down pragmatism of Georgie Anne's childhood nanny Miss Lula (Beah Richards) does little to extinguish the flames, as does John's dismay over the fact that Georgie Anne's dad George (Ed Asner) is an ex-convict who shows no signs of wanting to mend his ways.
As originally conceived, John and Georgie Anne were to remain single, in hopes of stirring up the same "will they or won't they" intrigue that had added spice to such mismatched-couple series as Cheers and Moonlighting. But the executives at CBS were antsy over the unhitched status of the Hearts Afire protagonists, especially since the series was being seen in a relatively early Wednesday-night time slot. Under protest, producer Linda Bloodworth-Thomason agreed to make things more "family friendly" by having John and Georgie Anne get married before the first season was over -- and that was only the first of several radical changes in the series' concept. Surprisingly, despite Thomasons' well-known Washington connections, only one political figure appeared during the series' first season -- if "political figure" is the correct phrase to describe "Presidential brother" Roger Clinton! ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Black Widow bears no relation to the 1954 film of the same name--beyond its characterization of the female as the deadlier of the species, that is. Debra Winger stars as a federal agent who has sworn to bring Theresa Russell to justice. Ms. Russell has married several millionaires who have all died mysterious deaths, for which she has remained undetected because she has assumed a number of different identities. Ms. Winger is the only person in her department who suspects that all of the deceased millionaires' widows are the same person. Finally tracking down Russell, Winger finds herself inexorably becoming friends with the charming murderess. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Robert Altman cooled his "innovative" jets to make the innocuous romantic comedy A Perfect Couple. Marta Heflin plays a member of a boisterous rock group. Paul Dooley is a bashful bachelor from a tradition-bound Greek family. Heflin and Dooley meet via a computer dating service, whereupon all the expected comedy setups avail themselves, though most of these setups are played as seriously as if this film were MacBeth. The best moments are the scenes with Heflin's musical group, though there are far too many of these. While Perfect Couple didn't make a dime, it still represents one of Altman's better "chamber" films. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Perhaps the least seen but most talked about film of Robert Altman's career, Quintet is a somber science fiction tale that takes place after a nuclear holocaust has thrown the world into another Ice Age. A man named Essex (Paul Newman) and his pregnant wife Vivia (Brigitte Fossey) are wandering the desolate, frozen landscape and attempting to find Essex's brother, Francha (Tom Hill). They finally locate him in a frozen city, occupied by a number of apocalyptic survivors who who pass their time playing a mysterious game called "Quintet." No one is able to explain just how it is played, but Grigor (Fernando Rey) appears to act as the referee, and the stakes of the game are unusually high - losing means being thrown out into the snow and devoured by Rottweilers. Francha is soon killed, not as a casualty of Quintet per se, but for playing an assassination game on the side to relieve his own ennui. As 'collateral damage,', Vivia and the rest of Francha's family are soon extinguished as well. Essex is not happy with the way they've been rubbed out, but as he attempts to seek revenge, he is only drawn deeper into the lethal competition of Quintet. While this picture received negative reviews on its initial release, in retrospect it is worth noting that the photography (by Jean Boffety) and production design (by Leon Ericksen) are beautiful and striking, and that the film boasts one of Altman's strongest international casts, including Vittorio Gassman, Nina Van Pallandt, and Bibi Andersson, as befits its European-art-movie ambiance; the influence of the equally opaque, allegorical, game-playing Last Year at Marienbad (1961) is especially strong. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Robert Altman's over-frenetic satire on American marriage rituals and hypocrisy concerns the upper-crust marriage between Dino Corelli (Desi Arnaz Jr.) and Muffin Brenner (Amy Stryker). As the film begins, a senile bishop forgets the lines to the wedding ceremony and Nettie Sloan (the groom's grandmother) drops dead in an upstairs bedroom. Nettie's death is not disclosed to the two families who converge at the wedding reception. As the two sets of in-laws slam into each other, the bride and groom disappear in the ensuing whirlwind of chaos as both extended families vie for sexual favors and try to keep hidden never-discussed family secrets. Regina Corelli (Nina Van Pallandt) is revealed to be a drug addict, while Luigi, is endeavoring unsuccessfully to keep his Mafia connections under wraps. Meanwhile, the bride's family, although more down to earth, are revealed to be no better. Tulip Brenner (Carol Burnett) begins to flirt with one of the wedding guests, Mackenzie Goddard (Pat McCormick), while Snooks Brenner (Paul Dooley) acts like a lout and drinks heavily. And flying around the edges of the action like Tinkerbell is Buffy Brenner, the Brenners' youngest daughter, who is pregnant by the groom. As other characters bang into each other -- sexual degenerates, hard-nosed radicals, raw-boned emotional wrecks -- the wedding reception heads for its inevitable nuclear explosion. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide

Robert Altman's Three Women takes a surreal, improvisational and rather eerie look at the lives of three women in a western desert town. The plot centers around the youngest of the women, Pinky (Sissy Spacek), an eccentric, withdrawn woman trying to begin a new life. She finds work as an attendant at a hot springs spa catering to the elderly and infirm. There she befriends her co-worker Millie (Shelley Duvall), an equally strange but more outgoing woman; the two bond, and are soon sharing an apartment. Pinky becomes increasingly dependent on Millie, eventually adopting aspects of her personality and appearance. This obsessive attachment is threatened when Pinky discovers Millie with a man -- Edgar (Robert Fortier), the macho, faux-cowboy husband of local artist Willie (Janice Rule), the last of the title's three women. Pinky's subsequent, desperate actions precipitate the film's enigmatic conclusion, involving an unexpected series of confrontations and role reversals amongst the three women. This story tends to take a backseat to the elliptical, spooky imagery, particularly the desert landscapes, and the quirky performances -- not surprising, given that the film was reportedly shot without a full screenplay and inspired by Altman's own dreams. ~ Judd Blaise, All Movie Guide

Alan Rudolph's first feature Welcome to L.A. displays his characteristic mood of romantic despair utilizing a La Ronde-like circle of sexual adventures and failed affairs centered around song-writer Carroll Barber (Keith Carradine) which spread out through the city. Barber is an aloof womanizer who cannot commit or love and is used by Rudolph to illustrate the loneliness inherent in big-city life. The film, featuring a haunting score by Richard Baskin, is a bit too ambitious for the beginning director. However, he gets good performances from Sally Kellerman as a lonely real estate agent, Geraldine Chaplin, as a Valley housewife addicted to taxi rides and Lauren Hutton as the mistress of a wealthy man. ~ Linda Rasmussen, All Movie Guide

"It's OK with me...." Applying his deconstructive eye to the "film noir" tradition, Robert Altman updated Raymond Chandler in his 1973 version of Chandler's novel, The Long Goodbye. Smart-aleck, cat-loving private eye Philip Marlowe (Elliott Gould) is certain that his friend Terry Lennox (Jim Bouton) isn't a wife-killer, even after the cops throw Marlowe in jail for not cooperating with their investigation into Lennox's subsequent disappearance. Once he gets out of jail, Marlowe starts to conduct his own search when he discovers that mysterious blonde Eileen Wade (Nina Van Pallandt), who hired him to find her alcoholic novelist husband Roger (Sterling Hayden), lives on the same Malibu street as the absent Lennox and his deceased spouse. As numerous variations on the title song play in unexpected places, Marlowe encounters a shady doctor (Henry Gibson), a bottle-wielding gangster (director Mark Rydell), and a guard aping Barbara Stanwyck (among other stars), before heading to Mexico to stumble onto the truth once and for all. ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide

Memorably described by Pauline Kael as "a beautiful pipe dream of a movie," Robert Altman's McCabe & Mrs. Miller reimagines the American West as a muddy frontier filled with hustlers, opportunists, and corporate sharks -- a turn-of-the-century model for a 1971 America mired in violence and lies. John McCabe (Warren Beatty) wanders into the turn-of-the-century wilderness village known as Presbyterian Church, with vague plans of parlaying his gambling winnings into establishing a fancy casino-brothel-bathhouse. McCabe's business partner is prostitute Mrs. Miller (Julie Christie), who despite her apparent distaste for McCabe helps him achieve his goal. Once McCabe and Mrs. Miller become successful, the town grows and prospers, incurring the jealousy of a local mining company that wants to buy McCabe out. Filmed on location in Canada, McCabe & Mrs. Miller makes use of such Altman "stock company" performers as Shelley Duvall, René Auberjonois, John Schuck, and Keith Carradine. The seemingly improvised screenplay was based on a novel by Edmund Naughton and the movie features a soundtrack of songs by Leonard Cohen. McCabe & Mrs. Miller joined such other Altman efforts as M*A*S*H, The Long Goodbye, and Thieves Like Us in radically revising familiar movie genres for the disillusioned Vietnam era. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The Lucy Show undergoes a number of major changes as the series enters it fourth season. For one thing, the show is now lensed in color rather than black-and-white. For another, wacky widow Lucy Carmichael (Lucille Ball) has moved from Danfield, CA to San Francisco -- as has banker Theodore J. Mooney (Gale Gordon), who by transferring to an executive post at Frisco's Westland Bank had foolishly assumed he had rid himself of his longtime nemesis Mrs. Carmichael, whose bank account had been (and would continue to be) in Mr. Mooney's trembling hands. Also, Lucy's longtime cohort Vivian Bagley (Vivian Vance) has left the series as a regular character, though she will continue to show up for several well-received guest appearances. Other regulars missing from season four are Lucy's daughter Chris (Candy Moore) and Viv's son Sherman (Ralph Hart), while Lucy's son Jerry (Jimmy Garrett) has been reduced to "recurring" status. Although most of this season's episodes are set in motion by the friction between Lucy and Mr. Mooney -- especially after Lucy takes a job as Mooney's secretary in order to make financial ends meet -- a trio of guest actresses have been added to the fold to make up for Vivian Vance's absence. Mary Jane Croft is seen in a handful of episodes as Mary Jane Lewis, Lucy's co-worker at the bank and frequent coconspirator in our heroine's zany schemes. And carried over from the previous season for a number of memorable appearances is Ann Sothern as the glamorous globetrotter Countess Framboise, who in an earlier life had been Lucy's school chum Rosie Harrigan -- and who, being as flat broke as Lucy, is forced to accept a job as a real estate agent. Finally, Joan Blondell can be seen in two episodes as another of Lucy's bosom buddies, movie-studio employee Joan Brenner. Season four is distinguished by a number of celebrity guest appearances, beginning with baseball great Jimmy Piersall in the season opener, "Lucy at Marineland" (which also marks the first time that the series filmed an episode "on location" rather than within the walls of Desilu studios). Later episodes this year include "Lucy Helps Danny Thomas," "Lucy Saves Milton Berle," "Lucy and Art Linkletter," "Lucy Discovers Wayne Newton" -- and best of all, "Lucy Dates Dean Martin," which Lucille Ball has cited as her all-time favorite Lucy Show installment. One of these "guest" episodes, "Lucy Meets Bob Crane," is a continuation of a running gag introduced during season five, wherein Lucy supplements her income by moonlighting -- in drag -- as Hollywood stunt double "Iron Man Carmichael." And on at least two occasions, the series' reliance upon guest performances conjures up sweet memories of past triumphs for Desilu studios. "Lucy the Gun Moll" is a broad spoof of the classic Desilu crime drama The Untouchables, with Robert Stack (the former Elliot Ness), Bruce Gordon (the onetime Frank Nitti), and narrator Walter Winchell going through their familiar paces; and on a more poignant note, "Lucy and the Countess Have a Horse Guest," which features the last-ever TV appearance by I Love Lucy's unforgettable Fred Mertz, William Frawley. The changes wrought upon The Lucy Show resulted in some of the series' best ratings, with the series ending its fifth season as America's third most popular program. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Lucille Ball proves that her two-year absence from network television has not in any way blunted her comic expertise as The Lucy Show launches its first season. The episodes herein are pleasantly schizophrenic, with widowed mother Lucy Carmichael (Ball, of course) harvesting new comedy opportunities out of such situations as attracting eligible bachelors, raising money to augment her allowance, and wrestling with the trials and tribulations of single motherhood with daughter Chris (Candy Moore) and son Jerry (Jimmy Garrett), and at the same time capturing the carefree zaniness of the I Love Lucy days, vis-à-vis Lucy's misadventures with best her friend and housemate, divorcée Vivian Bagley, played by Ball's former I Love Lucy co-star Vivian Vance. For her part, Viv Bagley also must be both mother and father to her own kid Sherman (Ralph Hart) -- who, fortuitously enough, is Jerry Carmichael's best friend. On the "dating" front, things get off to a fine start with the series' second episode, in which Lucy and Viv finagle Jerry's math teacher (William Windom) into escorting both of them to a Saturday night dance; in later episodes, Lucy will try to win a guy (Frank Aletter) away from Viv by feigning an interest in classical music, and will go gaga over her new boss (John Vivyan) when she takes a temporary job as a society columnist. (Incidentally, Dick Martin of Rowan & Martin fame is seen throughout this season as Harry Conners, Lucy's next-door neighbor and occasional boyfriend.) As for her money-raising schemes, Lucy inaugurates her well-meaning torture of Mr. Barnsahl (Charles Lane), the banker handling her late husband's estate, when she accidentally writes a donation check for two thousand dollars and then goes to great and hilarious lengths to cover up the gaping hole in her bank account. And in a classic episode reminiscent of I Love Lucy at its best, Lucy and Viv set up a "factory" in their kitchen to mass-produce Viv's caramel corn recipe. Finally, our heroines gently intrude upon their offspring's private lives by making a big production of waiting for Chris' return from a date and becoming a public spectacle while refereeing Jerry and Ralph's football game; and best of all, Lucy imitates Charlie Chaplin in a comedy sketch staged for Chris' classmates. And on a pure slapstick-force level, few of the Lucy Show episodes can match the hilarity of the first-season episode in which Lucy and Viv become volunteer firemen, or the one in which Lucy takes singing lessons from guest star Hans Conried to qualify for a neighborhood barbershop quartet, or the installment wherein Lucy finds herself "driving" a dump truck. The first-season ratings of The Lucy Show proved beyond doubt that America still loved Lucy: her series ranked as the fourth most popular TV show in the country, sharing this honor with the popular Bonanza. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide