Honorato Magaloni Movies

The sophomore feature of Israeli director Joseph Pitchhadze, Besame Mucho is a meditation on the nature of love. Set mainly at night in Tel Aviv, the film revolves around a group of characters who are all loosely connected to the theft of a Christian icon from an international crime organization. Besame Mucho was screened at the 2000 Jerusalem Film Festival. ~ Rebecca Flint Marx, Rovi

This is the third film based on Tom Clancy's high-tech espionage potboilers starring CIA deputy director Jack Ryan. Harrison Ford, returning to the Ryan role after his first go-round in 1992's Patriot Games, is assigned to a delicate anti-drug investigation after a close friend of the President (a Reaganesque Donald Moffat) is murdered by a Colombian drug cartel. When Ryan discovers that the President's wealthy friend was in league with the cartel, the President's devious national security adviser (Harris Yulin) and an ambitious CIA deputy director (Henry Czerny) send a secret paramilitary force into Colombia to wipe out the drug lords. The force is captured and then abandoned by the President's lackeys. It falls to Ryan to enter Colombia and rescue them, aided only by a renegade operative named Clark (Willem Dafoe), with both his life and career on the line. ~ Don Kaye, Rovi

The scene is a remote tropical island, where several top swimsuit models converge for a magazine photo shoot, orchestrated by publisher Lee Majors. The girls are lovely, the scenery gorgeous, the weather couldn't be pleasanter. Only one hitch: one by one, the models fall victim to mysterious fatal accidents. You know by now that these are no accidents. You've also probably guessed that Cover Girl Murders is a USA Cable Network movie (world premiere: October 28, 1993). ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

For his second outing as James Bond, Timothy Dalton is working on his own rather than on behalf of the British Secret Service in this follow-up to The Living Daylights). When his American friend Felix Leiter (David Hedison), an agent of the Drug Enforcement Administration, is seriously injured by drug dealer Franz Sanchez (Robert Davi), 007 is out for blood. There is precious little time for the usual Bondian quippery and campiness, resulting in a marked increase in bloodletting (including the "implosion" of secondary villain Anthony Zerbe). A climactic highway chase involving an oil tanker and a helicopter is the highlight, as well as Benecio Del Toro in an early role as the psychotic henchman Dario. Licence to Kill's intensified taste for violence lessened Bond's box-office value, and helped keep 007 off the screen for another six years before Pierce Brosnan took up the mantle. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

After discovering that his terrorist brother has committed suicide, Marco (John Savage) travels to Columbia to investigate, in this action film. ~ Jason Ankeny, Rovi

David Lynch wades through dark waters in his adaptation of Frank Herbert's cult science fiction novel. In condensing Herbert's rambling and complex book by eliminating characters and compacting events, Lynch succeeds in rendering the story incomprehensible to those unfamiliar with the novel and making the film look like a sketchy greatest hits collection of the book for Herbert fans. The story takes place in the year 10,191. The universe is governed through a system of feudal rule, presided over by Padishah Emperor Shaddam IV (José Ferrer), who appears to take his marching orders from something that resembles a talking vagina. In the kingdom are two rival houses -- the House of Atreides and the House of Harkonnen. Each house is trying to gain dominion over the universe, but that dominion can only be gained by the house that controls the Spice, a special substance that permits the folding of time. The Spice is only available on the desert world of Arrakis, or Dune. Shaddam, tired of the feuding between the two houses, permits the Atreides to take over the Spice production on Dune, while secretly working with the Harkonnens to launch a sneak attack on the Atreides and destroy them. The leader of the Atreides is Duke Leto (Jürgen Prochnow), who rules with the help of his concubine Jessica (Francesca Annis) and son Paul (Kyle MacLachlan). The rival Harkonnens are headed by the pus-oozing degenerate Baron Vladimir Harkonnen (Kenneth McMillan, in a thoroughly through-the-roof performance) and his two unsavory nephews, Rabban (Paul L. Smith) and Feyd (Sting). When his father is murdered by the Harkonnens, Paul escapes to Dune, where he is greeted by the Fremen (the desert dwellers on Dune who prepare the Spice) as the messiah foretold in Fremen legend. Paul assumes the mantle of messiah and leads the Fremen in a revolt that topples the balance of power in the universe. ~ Paul Brenner, Rovi