Angela Louise Robinson Movies
Robert Townsend's superhero action comedy underwent much tinkering during post-production, employing four editors to whip the film into shape. Townsend wrote, directed, and produced this urban fable and also stars as Jefferson Reed, a meek substitute teacher in an inner-city neighborhood dominated by a gang of leather-jacketed, peroxided blonde goons who call themselves the Golden Lords. The residents of the neighborhood feel they can do nothing about the gang. But then a meteor hits Jefferson, who finds that he can fly, has super-strength, and can retain all the information in a book in thirty seconds. As a result, Jefferson, who normally is afraid of heights and runs from danger, becomes a reluctant superhero. The word about the "Meteor Man" gets back to the Golden Lords, who intend to rid the neighborhood of this milquetoast crime-fighter. The Meteor Man contains a cornucopia of cameos appearances, including Bill Cosby, Luther Vandross, Sinbad, Big Daddy Kane and Nancy Wilson. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Robert Townsend, Marla Gibbs, (more)
Director Peter Jackson's second feature cheerfully trumps the gross-out quotient of his splatterfest debut, the appropriately named Bad Taste. The tone is cartoonishly comic, and the premise is simple: The village dweeb (Timothy Balme) is trying to maintain a budding romance with the sweet Paquita (Diana Penalver) while concealing the fact that his overbearing mum (Elizabeth Moody, in an amazing good-sport performance) is a flesh-eating zombie. (She owes her condition to a bite from a "Sumatran Rat Monkey" at the local zoo.) Complicating matters even further is Les, a greedy uncle (Ian Watkin), who suspects that his sister has died and is eager to occupy her elegantly furnished Victorian mansion. The climax is a housewarming party Les throws to celebrate his "inheritance;" what he really gets is his comeuppance, thanks to his sister and her similarly afflicted zombie pals, who burst out of their basement prison to turn the guests into appetizers. Our hero finally cuts a wide swath through the zombie party crashers with the help of a rotary blade lawn mower, leaving the house awash in blood and body parts in order to save his romance. ~ Tom Wiener, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Timothy Balme, Diana Penalver, (more)
For his third film as a director and his third film directing Clint Eastwood, stunt-man Buddy Van Horn helmed this action comedy involving a skip tracer, some neo-nazis, and the titular vehicle. Eastwood stars as Tommy Nowak, a bounty hunter with a knack for catching bail-skippers with an array of costumes and characters. After he captures a young woman (Bernadette Peters), he suddenly finds himself between the woman's good-for-nothing husband and his white supremacist cohorts and the wads of cash hidden in the pink Cadillac she's driving. With the skin-heads hot on their tail, a romance sparks between the skip-tracer and his captive. Written by John Eskow, Pink Cadillac costars Timothy Carhart and Michael Des Barres. ~ Matthew Tobey, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Clint Eastwood, Bernadette Peters, (more)
- 1988
- R
In this suspense thriller with a few humorous touches, an employee of a phone-sex service (Lynn Danielson) is being stalked by a clown-masked psychotic killer (Cameron Dye) who has already murdered a number of her colleagues. ~ Yuri German, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Cameron Dye, Karen Black, (more)
- 1987
- R
A syndicate of Los Angeles gangsters is kidnapping beautiful young women, drugging them, and forcing them to participate in the filming of pornographic movies. A young woman teams up with a vice cop to try to find her sister, whom she suspects of falling victim to this gang. ~ Brian Gusse, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- David Naughton, Barbara Crampton, (more)
A passion for blues music is evident in this drama based on a contest-winning script by former blues musician John Fusco -- and featuring one of the decade's best-received motion picture soundtracks, written and performed by Ry Cooder. Eugene Martone Ralph Macchio is a classically trained guitarist who desperately wants to locate a long-lost blues song. At a Harlem nursing home, Eugene finds Willie Brown (Joe Seneca), a legendary blues man who may be able to help him. Eugene becomes part of the master guitarist's scheme to reclaim his soul from the Devil, which he sold in exchange for musical greatness at a rural crossroads many decades before. Making their way across the Mississippi Delta, the duo meets Frances (Jami Gertz), a runaway who becomes a love interest for Eugene. After launching his career with the sale of his script for Crossroads (1986), which is loosely based on the mythical character of Faust and a fable involving real-life blues legend Robert Johnson (played in the film by Tim Russ), Fusco went on to write the highly successful Young Guns (1988). ~ Karl Williams, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Ralph Macchio, Joe Seneca, (more)
- 1984
This routine actioner is about several models caught in a South American jungle battle between drug lords and drug busters. Cesar (Paul L. Smith) and Don Vito (John Vernon) are about to conclude a cocaine deal in Peru, and a drug enforcement agent is about to bust both men by sending a secret agent, disguised as a model, into the jungle with several other models, a photographer (Nina Van Pallandt), and their manager (Marjoe Gortner). Cesar shoots down the plane carrying the models, captures them alive and unharmed, and keeps them imprisoned where they are tortured by his evil sister (Sybil Danning). Just as everything looks the darkest, the final battle arrives at last. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Paul L. Smith, John Vernon, (more)
Although penned by the same screenwriter, David S. Ward, this sequel to The Sting (1973) is tarnished by comparisons to its predecessor. Jackie Gleason fills the shoes of Paul Newman as Harry Gondorff and Mac Davis slips into the Robert Redford role of Johnny Hooker, two con men pals whose latest "sting" involves Hooker pretending to be a down on his luck boxer. Their goal is the fixing of a prizefight, which will rook a tacky nightclub owner (Karl Malden) out of a fortune while simultaneously getting revenge on their old nemesis, Doyle Lonnegan (Oliver Reed). On their side is Veronica (Teri Garr), a seasoned scam artist, but what Gondorff and Hooker don't know is that Lonnegan is manipulating events behind the scenes. Director Jeremy Paul Kagan followed up this terribly unfunny and inferior sequel with the much better received The Journey of Natty Gann (1985), while Ward became a director of such comedies as Major League (1989) and King Ralph (1991). ~ Karl Williams, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jackie Gleason, Mac Davis, (more)
A variation on the "buddy-cop" hybridized genre, 48 HRS. greatly bolstered the career of Nick Nolte and made comedian Eddie Murphy a bonafide box-office sensation. When a pair of reckless cop-killers break out of prison, grizzled detective Jack Cates (Nolte) is left no alternative but to spring fast-talking hustler Reggie Hammond (Murphy) from the penitentiary in order to find the criminals. The catch: the pair only have 48 hours to complete their assignment before Hammond must return to prison. Naturally, the two despise each other and even engage in fisticuffs, but eventually the danger facing them proves a strong enough common bond for them to play on the same team, and even achieve a little mutual admiration. ~ Jeremy Beday, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Nick Nolte, Eddie Murphy, (more)
