Trevor Cooper Movies

Director Gillies MacKinnin and screenwriter Adrian Hodges team to adapt Victorian author H.G. Wells' intimate drama about a man who has forsaken his dreams to lead a life of suffocating mediocrity. Alfred Polly (Lee Evans) was once a man with truly extraordinary dreams, but unfortunately Alfred has chosen to walk the comfortable path of convention. Now saddled with a nagging wife (Anne-Marie Duff) and a failing business, Alfred becomes consumed by his own desperation. But no one who strives for a life of simple contentment will ever achieve anything truly extraordinary, and only when Alfred decides to take violent action will he finally realize what it takes for a gutless milquetoast to embrace his inner hero. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

In this detective drama a British gumshoe encounters an art dealer who turns out to be a supposedly dead criminal. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

After stumbling creatively in the 1980s due to an exile from Poland because of his ties to solidarity, director Krzysztof Zanussi returned to form with this English-language drama. Lothaire Bluteau plays Stefan, a Polish music student who wakes from a dream with the notes of a song still ringing in his ears. Unable to identify the tune, Stefan becomes certain that it involves Henry Kesdi (Max Von Sydow), a great composer who abandoned his career 40 years ago when his first wife was murdered in the Holocaust. Stefan seeks Henry out in Copenhagen, where the irascible, ailing man lives with his long-suffering second wife Helena (Sarah Miles). Henry rejects Stefan, but in a magical realist touch, it's revealed that Stefan has mysterious healing powers, and Henry relents when the young student is able to ease his pain. ~ Karl Williams, All Movie Guide

This made-for-television drama centers on the events that transpired at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant the day something went horribly wrong and a meltdown occurred. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Peter Greenaway wrote and directed this typically surreal and iconoclastic black comedy. Three generations of women who share the same name -- 63-year-old Cissie Colpitts (Joan Plowright), her daughter Cissie Colpitts II (Juliet Stevenson), and granddaughter Cissie Colpitts III (Joely Richardson) -- have all discovered the same way of dealing with their marital problems. The senior Cissie has drowned her husband Jake (Bryan Pringle) in the bathtub, her daughter sent her spouse Hardy (Trevor Cooper) to a watery grave in the ocean, and the youngest Cissie sent her husband Bellamy (David Morrissey) down in a swimming pool. Needless to say, local coroner Henry Madgett (Barnard Hill) has some questions about this sudden rash of drownings among the Colpitts husbands, and again all three women respond in the same way: they promise to sleep with Henry in exchange for recording the deaths as accidental (though none of the Cissies make good on this promise). When the local gossip mill begins working overtime about this sudden rash of water-related deaths, Henry's teenage son Smut (Jason Edwards) comes to the aid of the Cissies and organizes a tug-of-war, with he and the Colpitts women on one side and the doubting townspeople on the other (and, of course, a river in the middle). Along the way, Greenaway often stops to contemplate his obsessions with literature, astronomy, and numbers. Drowning by Numbers was released in Europe in 1988, but didn't find its way to American screens until 1991, following the success of Greenaway's The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

In the conclusion of the Doctor Who adventure "Revelation of the Daleks," the Doctor discovers that Tranquil Repose, a colony of cryogenics on the planet Necros, houses the supposedly dormant body of Davros (Terry Malloy), creator of the Doctor's perennial adversaries, the Daleks. It is thus up to the hero to "neutralize" Davros before he can foment a full-scale Dalek resurrection. Complicating matters are the entrepreneurial Kara (Eleanor Bron), who uses the bodies of cryogenically frozen people as fuel for her protein factory, and a mercenary bounty hunter named Orcini (William Gaunt). Written by Eric Saward, the two-part "Revelation of the Daleks" was originally telecast on March 23 and 30, 1985. This final adventure of Doctor Who's 22nd season was later re-edited as a four-chapter cliffhanger for American TV. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Jeremy Irons portrays Nowak, one of four Polish laborers, living in England. In exchange for a place to stay, Irons and his buddies -- none of whom have British work permits -- agree to renovate their landlord's flat within a limited time-frame. Despite their hectic schedule, the boys agree never to work on Sunday: this is the day that they communicate with their loved ones in Poland. On one such Sunday, however, the Soviets declare martial law in Poland, cutting off all telephone and telegraph service to the outside world. Nowak, the only one of the four who speaks English, learns of the turmoil in Poland before his friends do; he decides to keep the news secret, rather than jeopardize their living arrangements. When the flow of money from home ceases, Nowak takes to stealing to finance the renovation project. He pushes his friends mercilessly to make sure the project is completed on time, secretly burning their letters so that they remain in the dark about the Soviet incursion upon their native soil. When they do find out, they physically vent their anger upon Nowak, perceiving him to be as much an enemy and oppressor as the Soviets. This is clearly the allegorical point that director Jerzy Skolimowski is hoping to make in Moonlighting; wisely, he avoids conveying his message in fluent tract, relating his story with generous doses of humor and irony. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide