Mitch Carter Movies

The cranky beast with a heart of gold returns to the big screen in this sequel to the computer-animated smash hit Shrek. After massive green ogre Shrek (voice of Mike Myers) and his new bride, Princess Fiona (voice of Cameron Diaz), return from their honeymoon, they receive an invitation to visit Fiona's parents, King Harold (voice of John Cleese) and Queen Lillian (voice of Julie Andrews), who are the monarchs of The Land Far, Far Away. However, the king and queen are more than a bit alarmed to discover their new son-in-law is a monster the color of algae, and that their daughter's little problem with a magical spell gone wrong has turned into a full-time skin condition. Certain this isn't the sort of "happily ever after" they dreamed of for their daughter, King Harold decides to take Shrek out of the picture and return Fiona to her former beauty with the help of Prince Charming (voice of Rupert Everett), the Fairy Godmother (voice of Jennifer Saunders), and ogre-slaying feline Puss in Boots (voice of Antonio Banderas). Shrek 2 also features the voice of Eddie Murphy returning as Donkey, as well as Larry King as an Ugly Stepsister. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Writer-director Del Shores serves up a heaping helping of Southern-fried comic melodrama in this adaptation of his own play about infidelity, country & western music, and Airstream trailers. When their sister dies, Latrelle (Bonnie Bedelia), LaVonda (Ann Walker), and Sissy (Beth Grant) plan her funeral -- an unenviable task, considering that they must carefully hide the deceased's affair with amputee G.W. (Beau Bridges) from his wife, the vindictive Noleta (Delta Burke). Meanwhile, the trio has to come to terms with two cases of sexual orientation: Latrelle's openly gay soap-opera star son Ty (Kirk Geiger), whose sexuality she continues to deny; and their only brother, Boy (Leslie Jordan), who's serving a sentence in a mental ward for his adamant belief that he is actually country & western legend Tammy Wynette. Playing an aspiring singer-songwriter, Olivia Newton-John turns up to provide the film with the occasional musical interlude. ~ Michael Hastings, All Movie Guide

A variety of crooks, losers, and working stiffs living in the shadow of Hollywood find their various personal crises overlapping in this intricately woven melodrama. Lee Woods (James Spader) is a cold-blooded hit man and Dosmo Pizzo (Danny Aiello) a soft-at-heart gangster; they've been sent to murder Roy Foxx (Peter Horton), the former husband of also-ran Olympic skier Becky Foxx (Teri Hatcher). Lee's girlfriend Helga (Charlize Theron) is unhappy about his habit of killing people, and she attracts the attention of Alvin (Jeff Daniels) and Wes (Eric Stoltz), two cops who've been put on vice detail but don't have the heart to bust the prostitute they've been trailing. Alvin dreams of becoming a homicide detective, so when he discovers that he might be on the trail of a murder, it's like Santa Claus showed up in mid-July to hand him a present. Dosmo manages to escape the crime scene, only to foil a murder attempt by Lee, forcing him to hide out in the home of Hopper, a pretentious English art dealer (Greg Cruttwell), whom Dosmo holds hostage along with Hopper's long-suffering assistant, Susan (Glenne Headly). In the midst of all this, a down-on-his-luck television director (Paul Mazursky) contemplates suicide (the main stumbling block is finding someone to take care of his dog) while also being pestered by an actor with equally bad luck (Austin Pendleton) and meeting a compassionate nurse (Marsha Mason) on a visit to a cemetery. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

When director Paul Seydor was researching the seminal Sam Peckinpah movie The Wild Bunch, he discovered the film which forms the basis for this short documentary (it is approximately 30 minutes long). Some unknown person, probably a cameraman, shot over 70 minutes of film showing how key scenes in The Wild Bunch were set up and shot. Only the shot preparation is filmed. Because the actual shots themselves are not filmed, Seydor suspects that the person who shot the rediscovered footage ran one of the cameras and was not free to document the filming with his personal camera. One highlight of the documentary is footage showing how Peckinpah came up with the shot now known among film buffs as "the walk thing." Footage from the final film is incorporated at appropriate points in this largely black-and-white documentary, and important personnel in the making of the film offer their commentary on what we are seeing. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

This lackluster attempt at blending equal parts action movie and supernatural thriller ends up sacrificing the merits of both genres. The plot finds baby-faced homicide detective Logan (Lou Diamond Phillips) on the trail of "Pentagram Killer" Patrick Channing (Jeff Kober), negligibly assisted by lots of occult mumbo-jumbo espoused by various doomsaying members of the Catholic Church. Channing is eventually captured and executed, but this turns out to be a big mistake: one of the Satanic powers Channing managed to acquire through ritual sacrifice is the power to transfer his soul into other living bodies, allowing him to roam about incognito and continue his killing spree. There is little overt horror on display, as we usually see only the aftermath of Channing's evil deeds; there is scarcely enough mystery to propel the police-procedural elements either. Worse, the producers apparently decided to toss in a romantic subplot involving Phillips and psychic Tracy Griffith to keep things interesting, but fail to sustain credibility even in this department. ~ Cavett Binion, All Movie Guide

Everybody's All American covers 25 years in the life of college football hero Gavin Grey (Dennis Quaid). When he marries campus sweetheart Babs Rogers (Jessica Lange) and is picked up by the pros, a happily-ever-after denouement is predicted by friends and family. It is clear from the outset, however, that Grey is going to have to do a lot of growing up over the next few decades. Babs does her best to keep in step with her husband's career and mood swings, and in so doing becomes the "parent" in the family. John Goodman also stars as Grey's best buddy, and Timothy Hutton is on hand for a romantic-triangle subplot. Everybody's All American is based on the novel by longtime Sports Illustrated scrivener Frank Deford. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Narrator Job (Robby Kiger) relates the tale of Gatlin, NE, where one day the children, led by a boy preacher named Isaac (John Franklin), rose up and slaughtered all the grown-ups. A few years later, Job and his sister, Sarah (Ammemarie McEvoy), help their friend, Joseph (Jonas Marlowe), try to escape through the cornfields of Gatlin. Meanwhile, Burt Stanton (Peter Horton), a commitment-phobic young doctor, and Vicky Baxter (Linda Hamilton), his frustrated girlfriend, travel through the cornfield-lined roads of Nebraska on their way to Burt's new internship in Omaha. Their car hits Joseph, who appears out of nowhere, but upon examining him, Burt realizes the child's throat was slit before he ever wandered out from the corn. Attempting to locate help, Burt and Vicky turn to gas-station owner Diehl (R.G. Armstrong), who urges the couple to go anywhere but nearby Gatlin to report the murder. Several contradictory street signs later, they arrive in Gatlin anyway, and, befriending Sarah and Joseph, attempt to uncover the mystery behind Isaac's cult and its mysterious deity, known only as He Who Walks Behind the Rows. Stephen King cash-ins flooded the market between the successes of Brian DePalma's Carrie (1976) and Rob Reiner's Misery (1990), many of them, like Children of the Corn, based only loosely on the author's fiction. The original short story appeared in the collection Night Shift. ~ Brian J. Dillard, All Movie Guide

Heather (Linnea Quigley), the deaf-mute sister of Brenda (Linda Blair) is gang-raped in a drawn-out, violent scene at the beginning of this routine vengeance movie, a scene that provides the motivation for Brenda's rampage through the rest of the film. Dressed in a special outfit that bares enough skin to suit the standards of this genre and armed with a crossbow, Brenda goes after the young punks in the "Scars" gang who raped her sister -- with predictably gory results. Surrounding this miniature Charles Bronson is a society burdened with parodies of "good" people: the school principal who is only superficially tough, and the upper-class teens whose thought processes were arrested shortly after kindergarten. Stereotypical and transparent, this teen movie is interesting because it does promote a woman in a "hero" role, but the subject matter and violence will not appeal to everyone. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

Jan-Michael Vincent stars as Kyle Richardson, who works at a dead-end job in a Texas chain-link fence factory. In the tradition of such earlier films as Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, Richardson enjoys himself only on weekends when he whoops it up with his buddies at the local saloon. His carousing exacts a toll on his relationship with Jodie Lynn Palmer (Kim Basinger, in her film debut). Finally, Jodie delivers an ultimatum: either settle down and get married, or she'll skeedaddle to California, there to try her luck as a country-western singer. Real-life C&W star Tanya Tucker co-stars as Jodie's best friend and role model. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This TV movie stars Jean Stapleton as the real-life "Aunt" Mary Dobkin, a physically handicapped woman living in the Baltimore of the 1940s. Concerned that juvenile delinquency is destroying her neighborhood, Aunt Mary organizes the "Dobkin Dynamiters", a baseball team comprised of disadvantaged and minority children. As she fights to have her biracial team officially sanctioned by the highly segregated Baltimore power structure, Aunt Mary is further challenged by the amputation of her left leg and right foot. Nonetheless, she perseveres over the next two decades, providing nearly 35,000 disenfranchised boys the opportunity to escape the streets and play ball. Sportscaster Ernie Harwell, who'd once called the shots for the Baltimore Orioles, makes a cameo appearance in this 1979 Hallmark Hall of Fame presentation. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Several people in and around Rampart Hospital are felled by a potentially deadly virus--and the cause of it all may well be a woman with a pet monkey. Elsewhere, an injured man is stuck on a high scaffold; and a boy suffering from vertigo is trapped in a backyard treehouse. Featured in the cast are future That's Incredible cohost Cathy Lee Crosby, as well as Skye Aubrey, the daughter of TV and movie executive James Aubrey and actress Phyllis Thaxter. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide