Yano Anaya Movies
In exchange for staying out of jail, down-and-out bounty hunter Vince Holloway (Dylan McDermott) agrees to work for corrupt IRS agents Vera (Tovah Feldshuh) and Strick (Dean Stockwell). Holloway travels to Diablo, a country run by criminals, to intercept a transfer of funds between crooked banker Cora (Jessica Harper) and gangster Reno (James Russo). Using a plot structure derived from Dashiell Hammett's novel Red Harvest, as well as from Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo and Sergio Leone's A Fistful of Dollars, Holloway forms competing alliances with all parties to steal the money. As expected, everyone tries to double-cross everyone else. A would-be parody of film noir and westerns, John Lafia's The Blue Iguana unfolds more like a cartoon or a pinball game. ~ Steve Press, Rovi
- Starring:
- Dylan McDermott, Jessica Harper, (more)
Most animation aficionados of the 1990s know "Savage Steve Holland" as the cocreator (with Bill Kopp) of the all-stops-out TV cartoon series Eek! The Cat. But Holland had been exercising his own peculiar brand of deviltry on live characters long before Eek! came into being. In Holland's Better Off Dead, John Cusack plays a lovestruck teenager, hopelessly enamored with Amanda Wyss. When she dumps him in favor of a more popular high-schooler, the boy's entire day quickly goes to Hell. In the words of Hamlet, all occasions do inform against Cusack: he is bullied, tormented and torn apart by everyone from the paperboy (who seemingly turns up everywhere) to the disembodied voice of a radio deejay. Cusack attempts suicide, but his efforts are just as unsuccessful-and amusing-as Bud Cort's in Harold and Maude. Meanwhile, French exchange student Diane Franklin, held a virtual prisoner by her host family, develops a long-distance crush on Cusack. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
- Starring:
- John Cusack, David Ogden Stiers, (more)
Nine years after the Yuletide slasher flick Black Christmas, Porky's director Bob Clark once again took on the holiday genre, switching from gasps to laughs with A Christmas Story. Adapted from a memoir by humorist Jean Shepherd (who narrates), the film centers on Ralphie Parker (Peter Billingsley), a young boy living in 1940s Indiana, desperately yearning for a Red Rider BB gun for Christmas. Despite protests from his mother (Melinda Dillon) that he'll shoot his eye out, Ralphie persists, unsuccessfully trying to enlist the assistance of both his teacher and Santa Claus. All the while, Ralphie finds himself dealing with the constant taunts of a pair of bullies and trying to not get in the middle of a feud between his mother and father (Darren McGavin) regarding a sexy lamp. ~ Matthew Tobey, Rovi
- Starring:
- Melinda Dillon, Darren McGavin, (more)
