Andy Prosky Movies
Academy Award-winning director Ang Lee tells the story of the Greenwich Village interior designer who inadvertently helped to spark a cultural revolution by offering the organizers of the Woodstock Music and Arts Festival boarding at his family's Catskills motel. The year is 1969. Change is brewing in America, and the energy in Greenwich Village is palpable. Elliot Tiber (Demetri Martin) is working as an interior designer when he discovers that a high-profile concert has recently lost its permit from the nearby town of Wallkill, NY. Emboldened by the burgeoning gay rights movement yet still tied to tradition in the form of the family business -- a Catskills motel called the El Monaco -- Tiber phones producer Michael Lang (Jonathan Groff) at Woodstock Ventures and offers boarding to the harried concert crew. Later, as the Woodstock Ventures staff begans arriving in droves, half a million concertgoers make their way to Max Yasgur's (Eugene Levy) adjacent farm in White Lake, NJ, to witness the counterculture celebration that would ultimately make history as one of the greatest events in the annals of rock & roll. Imelda Staunton, Emile Hirsch, Liev Schreiber, and Paul Dano co-star. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Demetri Martin, Dan Fogler, (more)
For his fifth effort as a feature-film director, one-time cinematographer Barry Sonnenfeld brought his cartoonish visual style and darkly humorous sensibilities to this adaptation of, appropriately enough, a tongue-in-cheek sci-fi comic book. Will Smith stars as James Darrel Edwards, a New York City cop with an athletic physique and a flippant, anti-authoritarian attitude toward law enforcement. After chasing down a mysterious perpetrator one night who turns out to be an alien, James is recruited by "K" (Tommy Lee Jones), a veteran of a clandestine government agency secretly policing the comings and goings of aliens on planet Earth. Nicknamed the "men in black" for their nondescript uniform of black suit, shoes, tie, and sunglasses, the agents are assigned to recover a bauble that's been stolen by an intergalactic terrorist (Vincent D'Onofrio). It seems the item is none other than the galaxy itself, and its theft has plunged humanity into the center of what's shaping up to become an interstellar war, unless K and his new wisecracking partner, now renamed "J," can stop the bad guy. On their side but somewhat in the dark is a pretty, unflappable city medical examiner (Linda Fiorentino) who has been zapped one too many times by K's ingenious memory-sapping device. Men in Black was a box office smash, inspiring an animated children's television series and a hit soundtrack album that featured a performance by star (and rapper) Smith. ~ Karl Williams, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Tommy Lee Jones, Will Smith, (more)
A story about a career television journalist who eclipses her mentor, this drama's plot resembles that of A Star Is Born, and it shares the same screenwriters as those who penned the 1976 version of that film, John Gregory Dunne and Joan Didion. It's based loosely on the real-life story of newscaster Jessica Savitch. Sally Atwater (Michelle Pfieffer) gets a job at a Miami TV station based on a demo tape from her hometown of Reno, Nevada. The station's news director is Warren Justice (Robert Redford), a former high-profile Washington newsman whose career has suffered from his insistence on integrity. He makes Sally his gofer and criticizes her clothes and appearance while she begs him for a chance to go on-air. She becomes the station's weathercaster and Warren gives her the stage name of Tally. With Warren's constant advice, she breaks into news reporting and her star rises quickly as the two become romantically involved. She takes a better job in Philadelphia, with Warren's blessing, and there she soon eclipses the anchorwoman Marcia McGrath (Stockard Channing). From there, Tally's career continues to flourish, while her relationship with Warren takes some strange twists and turns. ~ Michael Betzold, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Robert Redford, Michelle Pfeiffer, (more)
In the John Hughes-scripted The Great Outdoors, John Candy stars as Chet Ripley, an oafish paterfamilias who takes his family on a vacation at a lakeside resort. Their enjoyment is seriously compromised when brother-in-law Roman Craig (Dan Aykroyd) shows up with his wife and kiddies. The rest of the film is an ongoing war between Ripley's carefree aggregation and Craig's obnoxiously prissy brood, and making things worse, a driving rainstorm forces both families to remain under one roof well-past their threshold of patience. Annette Bening makes her film debut as Aykroyd's ill-tempered wife. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Dan Aykroyd, John Candy, (more)
