Lorri Lindberg Movies
- 1997
- PG
Scripter Robert W. Lenski adapted G.D. Gearino's novel What the Deaf-Mute Heard for this Hallmark Hall of Fame comedy. It was filmed in Wilmington, North Carolina, by director John Kent Harrison. During the '40s, single mother Helen (Bernadette Peters) boards a bus for Barrington, Georgia, with her 10-year-old son Sammy (Frankie Muniz). She tells him not to say a word. The two are separated when she exits the bus and is carried away, leaving the sleeping Sammy to travel to Barrington by himself. Because Sammy won't speak, bus-station manager Norm assumes he's mute and deaf. Norm gives Sammy a cot in the back of the station, and he's fed by widower Norm's friend Lucille (Judith Ivey), owner of the adjacent cafe.
Years pass, but the grown Sammy (Matthew Modine), working as a handyman, still remains silent. Well-to-do widow Tynan (Claire Bloom) orders him about when she has him clean porch furniture. Her snobbish son Tolliver (Jake Weber), who steals church money, treats Sammy with contempt. Tolliver's sister Tallasse (Anne Bobby) likes Sammy, and she confides in Sammy, thinking he can't hear what she's saying. Her father and Sammy's mother, they learn, both loved the Weill-Gershwin song, My Ship. Throughout Barrington, the locals have learned to trust Sammy, but eventually, joyful junkman Thacker (James Earl Jones) stumbles onto Sammy's secret. Bernadette Peters is heard singing My Ship during the closing credits. What the Deaf Man Heard first aired November 23, 1997 on CBS. ~ Bhob Stewart, All Movie Guide
Years pass, but the grown Sammy (Matthew Modine), working as a handyman, still remains silent. Well-to-do widow Tynan (Claire Bloom) orders him about when she has him clean porch furniture. Her snobbish son Tolliver (Jake Weber), who steals church money, treats Sammy with contempt. Tolliver's sister Tallasse (Anne Bobby) likes Sammy, and she confides in Sammy, thinking he can't hear what she's saying. Her father and Sammy's mother, they learn, both loved the Weill-Gershwin song, My Ship. Throughout Barrington, the locals have learned to trust Sammy, but eventually, joyful junkman Thacker (James Earl Jones) stumbles onto Sammy's secret. Bernadette Peters is heard singing My Ship during the closing credits. What the Deaf Man Heard first aired November 23, 1997 on CBS. ~ Bhob Stewart, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Matthew Modine, Claire Bloom, (more)
- 1997
Just before all three of them are to be wed to the men of their dreams, longtime friends Monique (Connie Sellecca, Eve (Twiggy) and Teri (Shawnee Smith) flying off to Australia for a pre-nuptual photo shoot. To fully appreciate the episodic events that follow, it should be noted that Monique is a magazine editor engaged to a control freak; Eve is a model whose trail is being dogged by a psychotic ex-suitor; and Teri is a bewitching lass who has not told her fiancé everything he should know about his past. Amidst a sea of romance-on-the-rebound, tense melodrama and deep dark secrets, the audience is afford a few islands of relief vis-à-vis the performance of Dina Merrill as Monique's ailing "old-money" mom. Adapted from the novel by Jillian Karr and Karen Katz,the made-for-TV Something Borrowed, Something Blue made its initial CBS network appearance on March 11, 1997. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1997
Small screen veterans Soleil Moon Frye (Punky Brewster), Ari Meyers (Kate & Allie, Evening Shade) and Tess Harper (Tender Mercies) co-star in the melodrama The Secret (AKA The Killing Secret), which took its initial bow on Mon., Jan. 6, 1997 as an NBC prime-time telemovie, but is now available in this home video release. While fictional, the story nonetheless bears eerie parallels to such real-life incidents as the Scott Peterson homicide. It tells of Greg (Mark Krassenbaum), a well-to-do high school senior and football star who divides his time and attention between two girlfriends: ritzy cheerleader Nicole (Meyers) and poor-as-dirt Emily (Frye). All is well until Emily drops the bombshell that she's expecting - and Greg does away with mom and the baby. Although Greg protests his innocence, his vice tightens when Nicole and Emily's mother become friends, and the authorities discover Emily's body in a lake. Noel Nosseck directs, from a teleplay by Rob Fresco. ~ Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Mark Krassenbaum, Ari Meyers, (more)
- 1996
In this low-budget screwball-mystery, the death of an L.A. woman leads to a surreal murder investigation on the outer fringes of la-la land. When Molly McMannis (Justine Bateman) turns up dead, still impaled with the murder weapon -- a carrot -- the police launch a probe into the colorful world Molly inhabited. The suspects range from her ex-con brother to her roommate to her high-strung friend (Heather Graham). But a more likely culprit lurks among the ranks of a therapy group full of off-the-wall serial killers and the shrinks who coddle them. The fetishistic police detectives -- including sadistic interrogator Angela Pierce (Jill Hennessy) -- prove as disturbing as the people they're investigating. In fact, their unorthodox procedures leave the door open for the killer to strike again. Written, produced, and directed by Jordan Alan, who previously helmed the similarly offbeat Love and Happiness, Kiss and Tell features a who's who of obscure and indie Hollywood talent, including veteran actor Lewis Arquette and his three famous sons. ~ Brian J. Dillard, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Peter Howitt, Daniel Craig, (more)
- 1996
The bane of the existence of city attorney Elizabeth Gates (Shelley Long) is the jovial, widowed former barber (Bruce Kirby) who has chosen to be a year-round Santa Claus, transforming his house into a permanent "North Pole" village and giving away free presents to needy children. Unfortunately, "Santa" is operating out of a residential zone, and thus is technically running an illegal commercial business. Elizabeth's problem is to evict the would-be Kris Kringle without endangering her mayoral campaign -- and to hide from her impressionable son Tommy (Nathan Lawrence) the real reason behind her dislike for "Santa." Meanwhile, a cynical big-city reporter (Barry Bostwick) follows the case with interest (his interest is mainly in Elizabeth, of course), and a local land developer goes into "Scrooge" mode as he schemes to tear down a landmark train station. Based on an actual 1989 court case, A Different Kind of Christmas was made for cable, airing originally over the Lifetime network on December 9, 1996. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Shelley Long, Barry Bostwick, (more)
- 1995
Devoted to the point of obsession to her brother, Jessica Wells (Jodie Bissett) is completely unhinged by the brother's death. When Jessica becomes schizophrenic, her family must deal with the grim necessity of institutionalizing the girl. Salvation comes from an unexpected source: a new, experimental drug, with which her doctors hope to restore Jessica to normalcy--and to repair her tattered romance with her loyal boyfriend Patrick (Jason Gedrick). Trouble begins when Jessica goes off her medication and transforms into what TV Guide writer Susan Stewart described as a "sexual carnivore." A young Chad Lowe plays a small but pivotal role in the fact-based, made-for-TV Dare to Love, which had its world premiere over ABC on December 17, 1995. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1995
Director Waris Hussein delivers another made-for-television drama, this one based on the popular young-adult book by Caroline B. Cooney. The movie stars Kellie Martin as Janie, a teen who one day sees her own face on the back of a milk carton in an ad for missing children. The movie follows Janie as she unravels the mystery of her true family. When she finds out that she has been separated from her birth parents for many years, Janie struggles with questions about the family she thought was her own, and the identity of her long-lost biological parents. ~ Bernadette McCallion, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Kellie Martin, Jill Clayburgh, (more)
- 1994
In this chilling thriller, a woman living in Seattle finds herself plagued with visions of a murder that occurred in the 1920s and realizes that the victim was her in an earlier lifetime. She becomes desperate to learns all the details of that death when it becomes apparent that history seems determined to repeat itself. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Lisa Hartman, Ken Wahl, (more)
- 1993
This powerful fact-based made-for-TV drama follows a poor, illiterate woman as she bravely takes on the government child protective services in hopes that they will return her three children. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- 1992
When a mother will not tell where her child is because she maintains that her ex-husband abused the girl, the mother is imprisoned in this true story. ~ All Movie Guide
Dudley Moore stars as Emory Lesson, an advertising genius whose finds himself committed to an insane asylum in Tony Bill's Crazy People. Emory becomes tired with creating phony ad campaigns and decides to create his own campaigns that tell the brutal truth. Since sex sells, Emory designs an explicit ad campaign consisting of unadorned sexuality. The campaign is so offensive that his colleagues have Emory put in a mental institution. At first Emory resists, but under the tutelage of a concerned psychiatrist, Dr. Liz Baylor (Mercedes Ruehl) and the tender love of Kathy (Daryl Hannah) a beautiful patient, Emory begins to like it in the mental home. Befriending the cute and lovable patients in the mental ward, Emory discovers that the crazy people are natural-born advertising geniuses and Emory utilizes their genius for a new ad campaign. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Dudley Moore, Daryl Hannah, (more)
When two bumbling businessmen, Larry Wilson (Andrew McCarthy) and Richard Parker (Jonathan Silverman), alert their boss, Bernie Lomax (Terry Kiser), to an expensive discrepancy in the company books, he invites them to his home on the beach with the intent to have them murdered. However when they discover that their boss has been murdered prior to their arrival, they attempt to convince people that he is still alive to avoid suspicion for his death, leading to all kinds of wacky mishaps. ~ Iotis Erlewine, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Andrew McCarthy, Jonathan Silverman, (more)
- 1988
Ryan White was the teenaged hemophiliac who contacted AIDS through a blood transfusion, then was barred from attending school in Kokomo, Indiana. All but ostracized by the community, Ryan's mother (Judith Light) engages the services of a high-powered attorney (George C. Scott) to win back her son's basic rights. While the film ends with Ryan triumphing over his human adversaries, no effort is made to sugarcoat the situation. Even after he has been welcomed by another school, we see how the boy is shunned by certain students and their parents; nor is there any glossing over the fact that Ryan's days are numbered, despite the boy's enthusiastic plans for the time he has left (young White died shortly after this TV movie was first telecast in 1989). Despite its inherent sadness, The Ryan White Story is a celebration of an exceptional young human being whose short life touched so many others in a positive, uplifting manner. While Lukas Haas portrays the title character, the real Ryan White appears in the small role of Chad, another hemophiliac AIDS victim. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Hiding Out, a surprisingly entertaining and engaging action comedy, directed by Bob Giraldi, takes the implausible idea that an adult man could enroll in high school and pass as a student and makes it real. Andrew (Jon Cryer) is a stockbroker hunted by a professional killer. He flees to stay with his sister and her teenage son Patrick (Keith Coogan). Andrew shaves off his beard, cuts his hair, and enrolls in Patrick's high school, pretending to be 17 years old. Cryer does a great job of convincingly playing both ages, and Coogan shines as the teenage son. Director Giraldi has great visual style and gives the film an energy that makes it both enjoyable and believable. ~ Linda Rasmussen, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jon Cryer, Keith Coogan, (more)
